Oregon, in First, Votes by Mail on Anti-Gay Issue

Today Oregon becomes the first state in the nation to conduct a statewide vote-by-mail election, and the growing and powerful right-wing Oregon Citizens Alliance is using that ballot to bring a toned-down anti-gay measure to several rural communities.

State officials say they believe that the mail-in vote may save as much as $330,000 and increase voter turnout.

“That’s where the 21st Century is going to be with elections,” said state elections director Colleen Sealock.

Oregon voters only have to put a stamp on a pre-addressed envelope and postmark it by midnight tonight, or drop it off at county elections offices.

Eventually, Sealock said, “we’ll deliver it to you electronically.”

Until now, most mail ballots around the country have been reserved for small, local elections on things like school levies that generally generate little interest.

But about 1.7 million Oregonians can vote in today’s election. In addition to the OCA-sponsored measure, voters statewide will decide whether localities should be able to exempt urban renewal financing from Oregon’s 3-year-old property tax limit.

But the item making the most waves is what has become known here as the “Son of 9” anti-gay initiative.

Proposition 9--which equated homosexuality with pedophilia and would have required state schools to present homosexuality as “abnormal, wrong, unnatural and perverse”--failed in November, 56% to 44%.

Now the OCA is hoping several localities will pass a toned-down measure, which would bar localities from establishing civil rights protections for gays as a group and prohibit civic spending to “promote” homosexuality.

According to OCA President Lon Mabon, passage would mean “no city expenditures for gay day parades, which cost in terms of police protection, rerouting of traffic and garbage services.”

Founded in 1986, the OCA now has 33 chapters in 36 counties and organizes on a grass-roots level in churches.

The new measure is to be voted on in four counties and two towns where Proposition 9 fared well last year: Junction City and Canby, and Douglas, Josephine, Klamath and Linn counties.

Overall, the OCA hopes up to 30 municipalities will adopt the measure before the end of the year, building momentum for another statewide initiative in 1994.

The OCA and its supporters claim that the measures are necessary to halt what they believe is an aggressive homosexual agenda that undermines families by granting special status to homosexuals.

Oregon gays and lesbians respond that they do not seek special rights but instead only want protections against discrimination in jobs, housing and public accommodations.

Mary Wendy Roberts, the state’s labor commissioner, has been trying to pass protective legislation at the state level. But her bill is languishing in the state House, bottled up in the Judiciary Committee.

State Rep. Gail Shibley said she wants to break the deadlock and has offered a scaled-down bill that would grant gays protection from discrimination in employment only.