Heady Days for a Bible Thumper

A big week for the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon. For several years now Sheldon and his Traditional Values Coalition in Anaheim have toiled in the political fields, promoting their odd mixture of homophobia and “creation science.” You might have regarded this stuff as a cultural anachronism, something from the ‘50s, like fins on cars. The past week suggests something different.

In Sacramento, Sheldon won a symbolic victory when the State Board of Education eliminated a key phrase from its guidelines on the teaching of science. That phrase referred to evolution as an observed “fact.” Making it disappear from the guidelines was one small part of Sheldon’s larger campaign to erode the standing of evolution science in California schools and elevate the biblical story of creation.

Sheldon did not succeed in that larger campaign. Actually, he did not come close. But his victory on the key phrase issue was more than had been expected. And in politics, exceeding expectations gives you momentum.

Then came Tuesday. In three California cities--San Francisco, Concord and Irvine--voters turned against their local gay communities on a variety of issues, and the Traditional Values Coalition sought to take full credit. All glowy from the results, Sheldon zipped from Anaheim to Sacramento, giving sound bites and predicting that sex education classes in public schools will be next to feel his fire.

What’s going on here? Sheldon would like us to believe that a new dawn has come for the Christian fundamentalists. A new dawn that will allow the homophobes and fake-science-types to muster their own version of jihad against anyone who dares stand against them.

Don’t count on it. The news of the past week was, indeed, grim for the gay community and disturbing--at least--for anyone who believes that religious fable should be kept out of science texts. But there’s evidence aplenty that Sheldon’s coalition was merely a hitchhiker on a couple of the darker subcurrents running through California politics.

First, let’s take the evolution issue. The science guidelines proposed by a subcommittee of the Board of Education amounted to one of the strongest endorsements of Darwinian theory ever advanced by a public education body. The idea behind the guidelines was to send an unmistakable message to textbook publishers that California would no longer tolerate dumbed-down science texts.

These guidelines would have met resistance before the full board whether or not Sheldon had arrived on the scene. The reason is simple. Gov. George Deukmejian has packed the board with new appointees who seem to come from some time warp. They’re head scratchers, suspicious of new-fangled science, fully willing to muddy the intellectual waters. Or to listen to the likes of Sheldon.

Sheldon saw this opportunity and took advantage of it. He carefully cultivated his natural allies on the board. And he was the one, at the right time, with his face in the television cameras. That may make Sheldon a political player of some ability. It does not make him the creator of a backlash movement.

The anti-gay vote is different. Most likely it does represent a backlash movement of some sort. The question is, what sort? Were the voters rushing to affirm what Sheldon calls the values of the “traditional family,” or were they reacting to something more troubling? I suspect the second.

Consider this. In Concord and Irvine the issues involved protection of gays against discrimination. Now, discrimination can take place in many forums, but basically it involves schools and jobs. That means citizens walked into voting booths asking themselves whether they would support the right of young AIDS victims to attend the same schools as their own children, and the right of older AIDS victims to work next to them in offices and factories.

I cannot prove this, but I think the voters thought it over and said no. It was too scary. And in San Francisco, where the issue was different, they said no, gay relationships could not be equated with heterosexual marriage.

All of which is not good news. These election returns were hardly a rational response and may spell more trouble in the future for the gay community. You have the sense that some long pent-up anxieties are being set loose in the voting booth.

But surely what those votes don’t represent is a ringing endorsement of the Rev. Sheldon and his band of Bible thumpers. Sheldon was simply there at the right time, and proved to be very good at twisting the worst within us to his own advantage. You might think of that next time you turn on the television and watch him offer his sound bite.