Gay Deputy Clerk Who Quit May Challenge Lancaster Vote

A gay Lancaster city official, who quit at a City Council meeting as a public protest against an anti-gay rights vote, is considering challenging the council’s action in court, saying it violated the state’s open-meetings law.

Alan Robertson, 44, the city’s deputy clerk for the past year and pastor of a gay-oriented church group, said Tuesday he had been told privately by co-workers at City Hall nearly two weeks before Monday’s meeting that the council planned to go on record as opposing two gay rights bills in the state Legislature.

When the council passed the motion Monday night, Robertson protested and handed in his resignation. He said he had decided during the weekend that he was going to quit after he failed to get council members to postpone their decision so gay groups would have a chance to comment.

He contends a majority of the council members had secretly arranged their votes in advance with anti-gay religious groups.

“I have absolute reason to believe there was an absolute silence that was meant to conceal,” said Robertson, who is also pastor of the Sunrise Metropolitan Community Church of the Hi Desert. Robertson said he intends to discuss with the church’s attorney a lawsuit against the city.

Council members, meanwhile, said they did nothing improper leading up to Monday night’s 5-0 vote to oppose the pending state Assembly bills, which would recognize marriages by couples of the same sex, and outlaw discrimination against homosexuals in jobs or housing.

City Atty. David McEwen agreed, saying he saw no legal problem that a majority of the five-member council, in groups of one or two, had held at least three private meetings with conservative religious activists in recent weeks to discuss plans for Monday night’s council vote.

Although Robertson knew in advance that the council would take up the subject Monday, the public agenda released late last week made no mention of the topic involved, listing only the numbers of the bills, and the item lacked the usual city staff report describing the issue.

Robertson contends the council violated the state’s open-meetings law, the Brown Act, by conducting its inquiry on the two bills and reaching a consensus to act through the series of private meetings with the religious activists.

State law generally requires city councils to give adequate public notice of the issues lawmakers intend to consider and to deliberate and make decisions in public session. Citizens can have decisions that violate those rules invalidated in court.

Meanwhile, Lancaster Mayor Henry Hearns, a minister who spearheaded the council’s action, sent a letter Tuesday on behalf of the council to Gov. Pete Wilson, urging him to veto the two Assembly bills, saying they “threaten the traditional family unit and traditional family values.”