New Church Protest Law Bringing Quick Dissension : Civil rights: Freedom of speech and worship clash in legislation hiking penalties backed by O.C. Rev. Sheldon.

The Rev. Lou Sheldon figured he was stepping into the lion’s den, but he didn’t expect this.

The ubiquitous leader of the Orange County-based Traditional Values Coalition was preparing to deliver a talk one evening last September at a Baptist church in San Francisco when more than 100 gay rights activists descended on the scene.

It quickly got ugly. The protesters, incensed by Sheldon’s well-publicized attacks on the gay lifestyle, drowned out the service with shouts. A few tried to kick in a door. Others taunted parishioners through the windows. Riot police were called. Sheldon and the rest had to be ushered through the crowd by the armed officers.

Dismayed by the confrontation, and aware that similar protests have interrupted church services at Santa Ana’s Calvary Chapel and other conservative Christian enclaves, Sheldon turned to a trusted friend in the Legislature for help.

The result? A new law authored by Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach) that doubles the penalty for disrupting a church service, making it punishable with up to a year in county jail. Protests at church services, Ferguson said, “tear into the very heart of an individual’s freedom to worship.”

Ferguson’s measure, signed recently by Gov. Pete Wilson, has continued to draw the ire of civil libertarians and gay rights supporters who are galled by what they consider preferential treatment being given to fundamentalist Christians.

“Political protests happen against all sorts of gatherings--against abortion clinics, you name it,” said Cathy Dreyfuss, legislative advocate for California Attorneys for Criminal Justice. “What Lou Sheldon and his bunch are saying is that they should be more protected against a demonstration than any other meeting. That’s contrary to what America stands for.”

Critics also question whether the measure, which goes into effect Jan. 1, will have a chilling effect on their freedom to dissent.

“I don’t think any of it will hold up in court,” said Matthew Sharp, a spokesman for ACT-UP Golden Gate, a San Francisco-based gay rights group that deals mostly with the AIDS issue. “It’s really too much, it’s unfair, and it violates free speech.”

Sharp conceded that some of the activists who protested Sheldon’s appearance at Hamilton Square Baptist Church “got out of hand,” but he said the outburst was a reaction to continued rhetorical assaults by the religious right.

“They’re doing things their Scripture tells them not to do,” Sharp said. “Their interpretation of life is that there’s only one way to live. We’ve had to deal with a lack of compassion from these churches and their leaders. After a while, you get so frustrated and angry, you have to take it to the streets.”

Sheldon, however, takes the same facts and gives them a decidedly different spin. Noting that politicians have been making strides to keep anti-abortion protesters from blocking family planning clinics, Sheldon suggests his new law is simply fair play in the nation’s ongoing cultural war.

“If the pro-lifers can’t block the abortion clinic, then homosexuals can’t block the church,” he said. “It’s now a level playing field.”

He also argued that the demonstrators who interrupted his visit to San Francisco went well beyond First Amendment rights to free speech.

“For them to stand in the street and yell would have been fine,” he said. “But when they tried to break the doors down, when they smashed church property, when they laid down on the sidewalk, they blew it.”

Sheldon originally hoped for a law allowing prosecutors to charge church demonstrators with a felony punishable by several years in state prison. Ferguson, however, opted to press a softer approach for fear the bill would be killed right out of the chute by the Democrat-dominated Legislature.

The new law keeps church protests--defined as willfully disturbing a religious gathering with profane discourse, rude or indecent behavior or unnecessary noise--a misdemeanor, as it has been in California since 1872. But it doubled both the jail time and community service punishment. As an option to jail, a judge can order up to 80 hours of community service for a first offense and a maximum of 160 hours for a subsequent violation.

Sheldon said he is pleased with the law, although he still hopes the Legislature will go further in the future.

“You take what you can get in this Legislature with (Assembly Speaker) Willie Brown and company in charge,” Sheldon said. “Whatever you get is considered a miracle.”

But even the toughened penalties in Ferguson’s bill wouldn’t have helped Sheldon last year in San Francisco. Despite a scene that Sheldon described as a “melee,” there was only one reported arrest.

Sheldon contends that the new law, along with public pressure, will prompt police to make more arrests the next time.

To help make his point, Sheldon held a demonstration of his own in San Francisco last November. Along with more than 400 other ministers, he marched from the Hamilton Square Baptist Church to a county Board of Supervisors meeting. Along the way, Sheldon and the ministers were confronted by gay rights activists, a few outfitted in Speedo swimsuits and little else.

“When we got to City Hall, there were about 75 screaming, yelling, half-naked homosexuals,” Sheldon recalled. “I gave my three minutes before the supervisors and the homosexuals went bonkers.”

At one point during his speech, a gay man strode up to Sheldon and spat on him. Sheldon pointed the man out to police and watched as officers dragged the assailant away.

Local news cameras and a video team from the Christian Broadcasting Network recorded it all. Supervisor Carole Migden, who is openly gay, later dismissed Sheldon’s appearance as “a well-orchestrated publicity stunt.”