A Difficult Test : After ‘Coming Out,’ School Board Member Jeff Horton Faces a Battery of Tough Questions

Jeff Horton recalls his conservative, middle-class upbringing: His father was a corporate executive, his mother a homemaker who raised three children in the “mildly Protestant, not very religious family.”

At La Habra High School, he was student body president and valedictorian of the Class of ’65. As a youthful, right-wing Republican activist, he campaigned for Barry Goldwater.

Horton drifted through an apolitical phase at Yale, majoring in philosophy while struggling with his own identity. After graduation, he taught in Italy and made a stab at writing and directing before finding his career, in 1975, as an English teacher at Crenshaw High School.

The drifting over, he resurfaced as an activist, only this time “real radical and left-wing.”

Even now, Horton admits, after pausing and reflecting, “I am still pretty left-wing.”

And his religious beliefs?

“Now I’m an atheist.”

The tally starts to register on his face:

“Gay, atheist, left-wing--their worst nightmares.”

When Jeff Horton was elected to the Los Angeles Board of Education in April, his political views and union activities were well known and not designed to win conservative votes.

But until recently, Horton himself had not become an issue. That changed on Oct. 11, National Coming Out Day, when he announced at a news conference: “I am a gay man, a homosexual.”

Although he had never hidden or denied his sexual orientation, Horton had been wanting to “come out.” He says his decision was reinforced by Gov. Pete Wilson’s veto of AB 101, a gay rights bill. It was a risk, he knew, but he wanted “to steal some of the thunder” from those accusing him of having a “hidden agenda”--specifically, of “luring recruits” to homosexuality.

Before Horton’s announcement, Christian fundamentalists and angry parents had been protesting the school board’s Blue Ribbon Task Force report on HIV/AIDS education. The report--which Horton champions but did not introduce--recommends AIDS prevention education at all grade levels and condom distribution in junior and senior high schools.

Then, last week--just 10 days after coming out--Horton introduced a motion to establish a Gay and Lesbian Education Commission “to represent the interests of gay and lesbian young people, employees and of the broader gay and lesbian community in general.”

Citing the high dropout rate for gays and lesbians, and evidence of above-average rates of substance abuse, suicide, harassment and discrimination among them, Horton said the board should be advocates for all students: “It is time that these interests are represented.”

He concedes that his introduction of the commission proposal may have been ill-timed, as the task force report is still before the board. (Four public hearings, as yet unscheduled, will be held before the board votes on the report.)

Opponents of the task force recommendations and the commission proposal have begun to link the issues. And to tie them to Horton.

He repeatedly insists he is not a single-issue board member, but his opponents have taken to calling him one and labeling the issues as his “homosexual agenda.”

Several critics, including LaVerne Tolbert, director of Christian education for Faithful Central Baptist Church in South-Central Los Angeles, says this alleged agenda compromises Horton’s position and that “he should be removed” from the board.

Next week, after discussion and public comment, the board will vote whether to establish the Gay and Lesbian Education Commission.

Horton predicts: “The meeting on Nov. 4 will be hellacious.”

At 43, Jeff Horton is a slightly paunchy man with a young face who goes around in shirt sleeves and suspenders, carrying an ever-present cup of coffee into his district-supplied Oldsmobile, into the board room and meetings, and through the halls. Recently, he’s followed a packed schedule all over his district, often skipping lunch or making a fast-food pit stop. Yet, he never seems rushed.

In some ways he is an anomaly--an even-mannered, patient man who listens with interest, does not mince words and comes on strong.

At his July 1 swearing-in, he delivered a scathing assessment of the “attack” on public education. He attributed it to the “rise of a cult of self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment through the exploitation and impoverishment of others which has shamelessly cloaked itself in the pious and self-serving rhetoric of preserving family values and unquestioning obedience to the harsh dogmas of fundamentalist religions of all types.”

Just weeks into the job, he crashed Gov. Wilson’s press-accompanied visit to Norwood Street School and spoiled the proceedings.

Wilson had been praising the school as a “one-stop social center” that combines community educational and social services. Horton approves of Wilson’s proposal to create such centers, but he rained bad news on the governor’s parade, telling Wilson that, thanks to him, the center had no money and was not in operation.

More recently, Horton disrupted a news conference by the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon at school district headquarters. Sheldon, who says his Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition represents 6,500 churches, was there with supporters to denounce the proposed distribution of condoms in the schools, although he said he supports AIDS education.

He laid much of the blame for condom distribution on the “homosexual agenda.” Horton arrived, called Sheldon a bigot and hate-monger, and a shouting match ensued.

Later, a Sheldon supporter wrote to Horton demanding an apology and accusing him of violating a district policy against the use of slurs related to race, sex, religion, political belief or sexual orientation.

Horton says no apology is in order; he does not believe he made any such slurs.

Former school board president Jackie Goldberg, author of the policy on slurs, agrees. Goldberg preceded Horton as the representative for the 3rd District, which includes Hollywood, Echo Park, Silver Lake and mid-Wilshire. She has served as his mentor since the late ‘70s, and says she has “watched (Horton) do and say things I’ve wanted to do. I was more timid.”

While she praises his boldness, she also calls him a very gentle man: “In personal life as well as political, he looks for ways to reason with you, but he does not back down. He won’t budge on principles. Details, yes.”

The gentle man is being tested now as some of his principles, and his character, come under public attack.

Larry Pickens, Horton’s companion for eight years, says: “Jeff can handle heat. . . . He definitely can handle the gay issue, but he’d like to get past that and deal with issues facing school kids.”

During a recent board committee meeting, speaker after speaker referred to Horton’s homosexuality, to “the homosexual agenda,” to homosexuals allegedly using the AIDS issue as a vehicle to ride into the classroom.

Echoing other parents’ comments about the school system doing a “lousy job” in its primary responsibility to teach, Sergio Palos demanded: “Leave my child alone. My child has been brought up by my values. . . . Jeff Horton may call it homophobia. I don’t want my children to deal with these issues in school, pushing homosexual values on heterosexuals.”

Through it all, Horton listened calmly. Only once did he show emotion, after a speaker called homosexuality a lifestyle choice.

Voice shaking, Horton said, “Let me finally say . . . I did not choose to be a gay man. You will have to take my word for that.”

Later, he commented on his generally calm demeanor:

“I do not feel I’m boiling away inside and not showing it. I think I pretty much express it when I’m angry. I feel assured enough that just personal attacks and criticism don’t make me angry. . . . Partly it’s an effort to see where the other person is coming from. If they are idiots and knaves, what’s the point?

“But if they are people I empathize with, I want to see why they’re angry. They have a reason.”

And despite the personal attacks, Horton says he empathizes with parents:

“I can imagine how they feel. They live in a world that offers such potential corruption for their children. They must feel beset by violence and sex in the most materialistic forms. And then, here comes this AIDS--on top of everything else. And now in the school. It must feel as if the world is crashing in on them.”

His empathy does not extend to Sheldon, however, whom he calls a “parasite who preys on people’s fears and confusion. . . . I’ve known about him and hated him a long time, but not tangled with him until recently.”

It is lunch hour at Los Angeles High School on Olympic Boulevard and Principal Pat DeSantos leads Horton to a classroom where he will meet with teachers and staff who want to discuss the school budget.

A woman in a T-shirt and sweat pants falls into step with the men: “Are you really the turncoat they say you are?” asks Nancy Pierandozzi, an English teacher and head of the school’s United Teachers-Los Angeles chapter.

“No,” Horton answers.

She is not talking about Horton’s “coming out.” She is talking about how Horton--the former teachers’ union activist who admits he owes his seat to the union and calls himself one of its “bought and paid for” board members--supports a board decision to impose a 3% temporary pay cut and forced leave without pay on all district personnel.

“With all the ‘coming out’ stuff, really the most difficult thing has been my relationship with teachers and the union,” Horton remarked privately. “I almost can’t believe within a few months of being in office, I’m voting for a pay cut. I feel I’m doing the right thing, given the horrible set of options. But I know the teachers say, ‘How could you?’ I may not be forgiven.”

An understatement.

While eating their brown-bag lunches, the Los Angeles High teachers and staff let Horton talk with little interruption.

He says the school-financing disaster did not arrive overnight and blames Proposition 13, the Reagan and Bush administrations, and Govs. Deukmejian and Wilson for it.

“The enemy is in Sacramento not on the (district) hill,” he says, adding a warning: “By making the school board into the villain, the teachers are playing into the hands of the real adversaries of public education.”

The teachers don’t disagree with Horton’s analysis, but they are not dissuaded from their conviction that the district administration is top-heavy and overpaid, that the board can get rid of personnel such as “temporary advisers”--words the teachers tend to hiss.

The group laughs outright during a discussion of the payback of the 3% reduction when Horton acknowledges: “Maybe we won’t be able to pay you back next year, or the year after . . . “

That’s followed by a painful litany of complaints from the teachers that drags into the hallway when the bell rings.

“We feel betrayed by Jeff,” Pierandozzi says. “We look to Jeff to come in riding that white horse and he sort of dropped the reins. We’re worried about him.”

Horton says he did not run as a gay candidate, because “it would be too hard to keep that from being the only issue. I just didn’t think it was relevant to my qualifications. I was clear I would not lie (about his homosexuality); that if asked, I’d say yes, but not announce it.”

His sexual orientation was no secret within the school community, where he had been active in organizing gay and lesbian teachers.

“It will become increasingly clear I am not going to be a one-issue board member,” Horton says. “I have so many interests . . . bilingual education, union concerns, ethnic communities (that) I don’t anticipate it being a problem.”

Board member Roberta Weintraub, who 12 years ago was elected on an anti-busing platform, says she understands the detrimental effect of a one-issue candidacy.

“But,” she says, “Jeff was not elected that way. Let’s hope (his coming out) is real positive.” Horton could be tagged “the gay board member.” To some extent, “it’s up to him,” she says.

Such a tag would be unfair, says Goldberg: “Remember, I didn’t meet him at a gay and lesbian caucus. I met him at an integration project.”

While he was at Crenshaw High School, Horton joined Goldberg and a group of activist teachers who were involved in the Integration Project, a study-turned-advocacy group that hoped to make integration work.

“It ended up being very significant that I was at a black high school. I learned about discrimination, oppression, being a minority. I learned a lot from black people,” he says. “I, too, was in a minority group, but not openly so.”

But he will not ignore his sexual orientation.

His call for the Gay and Lesbian Education Commission “goes up against a vicious stereotype. I can’t let it stand in the way and not take advantage of the situation. We need to provide programs for these young people.”

To some, Horton’s public actions make him a hero.

On a recent Saturday night at the Century Plaza Hotel, the gay and lesbian community and its supporters are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center in Hollywood.

As Horton and Pickens stand in the crowd outside the ballroom, a family--Martin and Peggy Olson of Palos Verdes and their son Peter, a teacher who is openly gay--rushes over, commenting joyfully on his actions.

Later, as numerous elected officials are introduced, the crowd gives Horton the largest roar of cheers and applause.

Besides participating in a few marches and organizing gay teachers, he has never been that active in the gay community. He met Pickens when they campaigned for Goldberg in her first school board bid in 1983.

“Most of our friends are not gay,” Horton says. “They’re political. Larry and I don’t go out to gay establishments much.”

Although he has become in many ways a profoundly different person than his upbringing might have indicated, Horton hasn’t made a complete break with that past. He credits his upbringing for making him who he is:

“I had a pretty secure childhood. My family was reliable (and supports him now). I was successful in school. I have a fair amount of self-confidence. I can help others and I feel some obligation to do that. But I also enjoy this life. I’m suited for it.”