Battle Lines Drawn Over Oregon’s Anti-Gay Measure

On the first page of the Oregon voters’ pamphlet is a remarkable disclaimer that the usually staid ballot guide contains “language that citizens and parents may find objectionable”--one more sign that this isn’t an ordinary political season here.

This is the year of Measure 9, an unprecedented and intensely publicized ballot initiative that would write into the Oregon constitution a moral condemnation of homosexuality and require state and local government agencies to discourage it.

The proposal has turned this normally well-mannered state into an explosive battleground between the gay-rights movement and religious conservatives, who included a graphic description of sexual practices in the ballot arguments printed in the bulky voters’ guide.

On one side is the Oregon Citizens Alliance, which warns that the ballot measure represents Oregonians’ last chance to draw the line and save their communities from ruination by “homosexual radicals” who would turn their sylvan state into another San Francisco.

On the other side are most of Oregon’s religious, business and political leaders, who have denounced the initiative as a blight on the state’s progressive reputation and a blatantly unconstitutional mandate for discrimination and censorship.

One thing both sides agree on is that the outcome--along with that of a more mildly worded anti-gay initiative in Colorado--will ripple across the nation, framing similar political clashes to come.

“Clearly, these two initiatives, if the results are identical in either direction, are a potential foreshadowing of the kind of cultural politics you’ll see in this country,” said Ralph Reed, executive director of Pat Robertson’s Christian Coalition, which donated $20,000 to the Oregon alliance and is promoting both measures in political mailers.

Recent polls in the two states show the initiatives losing by hefty margins. But analysts say that could change with last-minute advertising blitzes by proponents. “I think (Measure 9) will fail, but I wouldn’t put any money down on it,” said Portland-based pollster Tim Hibbitts.

With the catch phrase “no special rights,” the initiatives would amend their respective constitutions to prevent local or state governments from adopting laws protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination. The proposed Oregon amendment further lumps homosexuality with “pedophilia, sadism and masochism,” declares homosexuality “abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse” and forbids government to promote or facilitate it.

Opponents of Measure 9--from Oregon Gov. Barbara Roberts to mayors and clerics--insist it would turn state and local government into morality squads, with dire consequences:

--Literary classics and textbooks that treat homosexuality in a neutral or positive light could be swept from the shelves of public libraries and schools.

--Openly gay teachers and police officers could be fired.

--Homosexual attorneys and doctors could be refused licenses to practice.

--Oregon movie director Gus Van Sant, who is gay, could have trouble getting permits to shoot his gay-themed films in the state.

--There would be no more gay pride gatherings on public property.

“I’ve lived here all my life and I can’t believe Oregonians would do this to themselves. It’s very troubling,” fretted Michael Powell, who has turned his sprawling downtown Portland bookstore into a center of opposition, filling his shop windows with anti-Measure 9 displays and selling thousands of buttons and bumper stickers that urge voters to oppose it.

Oregon Citizens Alliance founder Lon Mabon, who grew up in the San Fernando Valley, maintains the opposition has grossly exaggerated the initiative’s reach.

Still, the 45-year-old Mabon concedes that if it passes, openly gay teachers and other public employees who work with children would face reassignment. Landlords would be free to evict gay tenants. If the child of a gay parent went to a school counselor about problems at home, the measure would require that the child be told: “Your parents are engaged in something wrong.” If a gay theme in a book--such as in Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway”--were discussed in a class, the teacher would be compelled to condemn homosexuality.

Schools teach that drug use is to be avoided, Mabon argued, why not homosexuality?

The initiative, Mabon said, “is making everybody decide--is homosexuality a good thing or a bad thing? Is it something we want to promote or discourage? Is it something we want to celebrate or downplay?”

He added: “I believe the ramifications to our culture and society are going to be severe if we as a people are willing to accept (homosexuality).”

The alliance’s forays into statewide politics have mostly failed during its five-year history. The group’s candidates have lost their bids for various offices and an alliance-sponsored anti-abortion initiative was defeated by a 2-1 margin. The exception was a 1988 ballot measure to overturn a former governor’s executive order banning discrimination against gay men and lesbians in state agencies. The referendum won by 5 percentage points.

With Measure 9, the group is “going back to what they think works,” said pollster Hibbitts.

Despite Oregon’s liberal reputation, there is plenty of ideological room for groups like the alliance to take root, Hibbitts added. “The state is not Portland. In the rest of the state, we have some very strong conservative elements.”

Along with TV ads, the alliance’s campaign is relying on a grass-roots network of supporters, many of them religious fundamentalists, who distribute fliers and emotionally charged videos that characterize gay men as disease-ridden, promiscuous and prone to pedophilia.

The videos linger on the most outrageous aspects of San Francisco’s annual gay pride parade: nearly nude men simulating sex; obese, topless lesbians; Jesus depicted as a transvestite. Homosexuals are interviewed talking brightly about the joys of bondage and sadomasochism. This, the screen narration warns ominously, is what gay rights means.

Two children’s books that deal with gay and lesbian parents--”Daddy’s Roommate” and “Heather Has Two Mommies”--and the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Project 10 counseling program for gay teen-agers are held up as evils that will befall Oregon youth if Measure 9 fails. One flier features a fictional tale about an overweight boy, Chuckie, who talks a shy, 12-year-old friend into trying gay sex with the line, “How can it be wrong? . . . Even the governor says it’s OK.” Another claims that “the top 11 serial murderers in America have all been admitted homosexuals.”

That and many other alliance statements about gays are false or distorted and come from questionable sources, according to a parade of psychologists, child abuse experts and criminologists who have either called news conferences in the state or been interviewed in the Oregon press.

“The scientific information available . . . does not support the information they’re presenting,” said Dr. Fred Fried, president of the Oregon Psychiatric Assn., one of dozens of organizations that put 29 pages of ballot arguments against Measure 9 into the voters’ guide. “I think that (the alliance’s campaign material) is deceitful, invidious.”

Mabon dismisses such attacks as “campaign rhetoric.”

In the No on 9 campaign office, spokeswoman Carolyn Young accuses the alliance of “preying on fear and prejudice” and creating an atmosphere in which anti-gay violence and vandalism are on the rise.

Official police statistics collected by the state show that reported bias crimes linked to sexual orientation rose from 35 during the first six months of 1991 to 49 during the same period this year.

Measure 9, says Young, “is not a vote on whether you like homosexuals or approve of them. It’s about taking rights away. It’s about mandating discrimination in the Oregon constitution. It’s about censorship. And those are all issues we think Oregonians are responsive to.”

More than $900,000 has poured into the campaign against Measure 9 from Hollywood celebrities and donors elsewhere in the nation, about five times the amount the alliance had raised by Oct. 1. The anti-Measure 9 money is, among other things, paying for several TV ads designed by a Santa Monica political consulting firm, Zimmerman & Markman, whose partner, Pacy Markman, helped run successful campaigns against previous anti-gay initiatives in California.

In one recent spot, a veteran Oregon school teacher asks: “Do we want extremists telling us what we should teach, what we should read, how we should live and raise our families? Is that what Oregon is coming to?”

Staffed by more volunteers than it knows what to do with, the campaign is also going door-to-door in selected areas, taking out radio and print ads and calling voters.

Between ads, buttons and saturation press coverage, it’s hard to find an adult in Oregon who doesn’t know what Measure 9 is.

“You feel threatened if you publicly say yes or no. You may get hit in the head. It’s a very volatile issue,” said a 55-year-old truck driver who--like several others recently interviewed at the large mall in suburban Beaverton outside Portland--declined to give his full name.

He thinks the initiative “is way too strong. They’re going off and saying the homosexual community has the people who are the real sicko weirdos. I’m no expert, but I think they’re on both sides.”

Still, he plans to vote for it. “I don’t think (gays) need special rights. My feeling is, the gay community will come right back and ask for more” if the initiative fails.

A 51-year-old corporate worker, who also declined to give her full name, doesn’t know how she’ll vote. “I have mixed feelings. . . . My concern is, this could be the beginning of more racism, more bias against different cultures. On the other hand,” she mused, “I’m Christian and I believe in the edicts in the Bible. There’s a real dilemma for me.”

Engineer Erik Birkeland, 28, is a definite no. “It’s essentially a measure about hate.” In Colorado, another environmentally minded state with pockets of conservatism, the gay-rights battle is comparatively low-key, attracting less money and attention than Oregon’s. But the arguments are the same.

“The issue is that homosexuals want to have their lifestyles affirmed by law,” contended Colorado Springs car dealer Will Perkins, chairman of Colorado For Family Values, which put the initiative on the ballot and is using some of the same anti-gay material as the Oregon alliance.

“All we’re doing is defending the status quo in Colorado,” retorted Bobbie McCallum, spokeswoman for the Equal Protection Campaign, which is heading the opposition. “It’s (the family values group) that has an agenda, and it’s discrimination.”