Gays Threaten a South Coast Plaza Boycott : Debate: Activists claim that a memo from C.J. Segerstrom & Sons discourages hiring and promotion of homosexuals.

Local gay activists threatened Monday to boycott South Coast Plaza after obtaining an internal, 2-year-old memo from the mall’s owner, C.J. Segerstrom & Sons, that activists say discourages the hiring and promotion of gays.

In a memo to managing partner Henry T. Segerstrom, operations director Skip Stephenson warned against setting down a formal statement on the hiring of gays at one of Orange County’s biggest development firms.

Legally, he said, “we can refuse to hire a person on the grounds that he or she is gay or lesbian. . . . If we wish to continue to be able to refuse to hire or promote because of sexual preference, I recommend we make no present statement or announcements to curtail that ability.”

The memo applied only to the 250 employees of Segerstrom’s development firm and the mall’s management. The more than 200 shops at the mall maintain their own hiring practices.

Segerstrom officials would not say what effect that position has had on actual management practices. But gay activists, outraged over the memo, maintained that the signal sent by the owner of one of the biggest malls in the United States is particularly ominous in the wake of Gov. Pete Wilson’s recent veto of a bill to ban workplace discrimination against gays.

“The message here,” said one gay employee at the Segerstrom company who spoke on the condition that his name not be used, “is that even if you do happen to get hired, there’s no way you’ll get promoted.”

The memo was written on Nov. 9, 1989, just two days after voters in Irvine repealed a portion of a local civil rights measure that banned discrimination against gays. It was the debate over the Irvine initiative that apparently prompted Henry Segerstrom to write a note to Stephenson, asking if the company should have a policy on the issue.

Asked about the memo Monday, Stephenson said initially: “Holy mackerel, that’s amazing! You normally don’t think of those things being exposed. . . . I don’t remember that memo; I really don’t.”

Later in the day, however, Stephenson acknowledged that he wrote the memo after conferring with the company’s labor attorney. And he confirmed that when the company revised its employee handbook around the time that the memo was written, it decided not to add any provisions about sexual orientation.

The current policy, he said, is that Segerstrom has no position on the issue. “We have absolutely no expressed or implied policy against hiring based on sexual preference,” he declared.

Stephenson said he was aware of no complaints among the company’s employees about gay discrimination, but he declined to comment on other aspects of management policies.

“I think the memo speaks very well for itself,” he said. “I don’t want to get into a broad discussion of our hiring practices.”

While activists have long contended that anti-gay discrimination is common in the workplace, they said the problem has rarely been spelled out in such black-and-white language.

“It’s pretty outrageous that they would reduce this to writing,” said Joel Loquvam, a local attorney and gay activist. “Legally, (Segerstrom) is on solid ground . . . but morally and ethically, the message they’re sending is that it’s OK to deprive someone of their economic livelihood because of who they sleep with, and I find that repugnant.”

At the time, the memo was distributed to several managers at Segerstrom and at the mall, according to the notation at the bottom of the memo.

The gay employee at Segerstrom’s, who works in administration at the mall, said the memo is part of the reason that he has kept his homosexuality a secret at work.

“Had Gov. Wilson signed (AB 101), I probably would have come out at work, but after seeing this memo, there’s no way,” he said.

David Cammack, a member of Queer Nation, a small but vocal and radical component of the local gay community, said activists may send openly gay people to the company to apply for jobs.

Although Segerstrom officials have declined to detail the assets of the privately held company, South Coast Plaza is known to be one of the biggest moneymakers of any mall in the country. It netted $692.3 million in retail sales in 1990, a third more than its closest competitor in the Southland--Del Amo Fashion Center, according to one survey.

Cammack said gay groups are considering a boycott against South Coast Plaza if Segerstrom refuses to change its position on gay hiring. Stephenson said company officials would be glad to meet with gay representatives.

The “dilemma” faced by the activists is that some stores in the mall--such as Bullock’s and Robinson’s--have been generally supportive of gays through the years, Cammack said.

Activists may work around the conflict by polling stores for their position on gay hiring and then boycotting only those seen as hostile, Cammack said.

Memo Details Gay-Hiring Stance

The following memo, obtained by Orange County gay activists and provided to The Times, discussed whether C.J. Segerstrom & Sons of Costa Mesa should address the issue of hiring gays in its employee handbook. It was sent from Skip Stephenson, director of operations, to managing partner Henry T. Segerstrom. It is dated Nov. 9, 1989, two days after voters in Irvine voted to repeal gay rights protections for city residents.

The only “protected classes” against which we may not discriminate under Federal and State law are race, gender, religion, natural origin, handicapped (and California only) marital status. Stated another way, we may discriminate for any other reason as, for example, we could refuse to hire golfers or people who went to USC. More to the point, we may also refuse to hire people based upon their “sexual preference.” In other words, we can refuse to hire a person on the ground that he or she is gay or lesbian. . . .

Given that we have full discretion on the issue of sexual preference in our hiring/promotion practices, it would seem to me that we would not want to voluntarily limit that discretion by any statements, including the Handbook. If we wish to continue to be able to refuse to hire or promote because of sexual preference, I recommend we make no present statement or announcements to curtail that ability.

Note: In the memo, the words underlined above were underlined.