State Bill Protecting Gays Will Gauge Traditional Values

From time to time Bud Bisbee crosses my mind, a man I met a little more than a year ago. In his mid 50s, Bisbee was a choir director and associate music professor at a private Orange County church college. His professional record was exemplary and he was acknowledged by his superiors as an outstanding man of music.

Then, after about 10 years at the school, Bisbee’s bosses learned that he was gay. To make a long story short, Bisbee was fired.

I think of Bisbee, as well as the people who fired him, as the clock ticks on the fate of AB 101, the Assembly bill soon to be on its way to Gov. Pete Wilson that would protect gays from job discrimination. Actually, the bill wouldn’t have affected Bisbee because he worked for a church college, but it makes me wonder how many other Bud Bisbees there are out there.

I’ll concede that Bisbee’s case differs from the norm in that his employers cited church doctrine as grounds for dismissal. But it also speaks to the larger question of the potential for outright discrimination that gays and lesbians may encounter.

The Traditional Values Coalition of Anaheim is trying to persuade Wilson to veto the bill. If that fails, the evangelical Christian group hopes to get a referendum on next year’s June primary election ballot to overturn it.

The smart money says that Wilson, head of what his supporters call the “compassionate conservatives” now in power in Sacramento, will sign the bill. He told newspaper editors a couple months ago it’s “likely” he would sign such a bill and a spokesman in his office said Friday there’s nothing in the current bill that seems to dictate a change of heart.

The Traditional Values Coalition would have you believe there are no other Bud Bisbees out there. Steve Sheldon, the coalition’s executive director and son of its outspoken leader, Lou Sheldon, said AB 101 isn’t needed.

He said a Wall Street Journal story on gays’ earning power indicated that it’s higher than the national average, suggesting that, as a class, gays aren’t subject to job discrimination. Furthermore, Sheldon said, linking sexual orientation to civil rights causes of the past, such as that for blacks in the 1960s, diminishes those causes. And, Sheldon said, the bill could produce a spate of lawsuits.

If that’s as strong as the anti-101 argument gets, you know they don’t have much of a case. For starters, earning power figures don’t address the question of whether the employer knows the employee is gay or whether the wage earner is self-employed. Nor does the success of some bear any relation to the possible discrimination experienced by others.

If he were intellectually honest with himself, Sheldon probably would reach the same conclusion.

But that isn’t the crux of the matter. This is:

“It’s using the power of the state to coerce acceptance of homosexuality,” Sheldon said. “The issue is not discrimination, it’s values and beliefs.”

I agree, almost.

To assert that some employers don’t discriminate against gay employees is ridiculous. That flies in the face of our knowledge of human nature. If the record isn’t full of cases, it’s because it’s often not worth the ensuing embarrassment to bring the matters to light. It’s easier for most gays to give up and look for another job.

So, yes, it’s about discrimination.

But Sheldon’s right--it’s about values and beliefs, too.

Ask yourself a simple question about your values and beliefs. Do you think your cousin, or aunt, or good friend, or brother, or sister, or godfather of your child, or co-worker . . . do you think any of them should lose their job because they’re gay?

Would you stand by and watch it happen? Could you do that in good conscience? Is that your definition of traditional values?

That’s the values-and-beliefs component to this question, not whether the bill “coerces acceptance of homosexuality.”

“We’re gearing up for the veto,” Sheldon said. “If the governor doesn’t veto the bill, or if he allows it to become law (without his signature), there are going to be hundreds of thousands, I’d say millions of people interested, concerned and upset. So we’re not going to give up on the governor, we’re going to go through the drill, to educate and to raise the level of awareness of hundreds of thousands of people in the process.”

Expecting the governor to sign the bill, I’d almost welcome a referendum on it. Let’s accurately gauge what the values and beliefs of our fellow Californians are.

And let’s hope for the good of the society that when people ask themselves what they really believe in, the answers won’t be the same as those of the folks over at the Traditional Values Coalition.