Whose Values Are These, Anyway?

Last month, Gov. Pete Wilson signed a bill offering a symbolic victory to the head of an ultraconservative organization whose name I can’t say without smiling just a little: the Traditional Values Coalition.

Traditional , I guess, refers to the group’s rabid anti-homosexual, anti-abortion positions. I always smile to think of that particular definition of traditional , since homosexuality and abortion are not recent phenomena. I get a kick out of people who use traditional as shorthand for bemoaning the passing of the “good old days.” Good for whom? I wonder. Was life so perfect a few decades ago? Were there no deaths from illegal abortions? No racial discrimination? No innocent lives ruined by red-baiting zealots? No angry housewives hitting the bottle out of boredom? What do they mean , exactly, by traditional?

But I digress.

The bill Wilson signed into law on Aug. 31 doubles the amount of time--from six months to one year--to which a person convicted of disrupting a religious service may be sentenced. It’s still a misdemeanor, although the “traditional values” folks had hoped to attach an even harsher sentence. The bill--clearly aimed at the gay community--was inspired by a rowdy gay rights demonstration last year at a San Francisco church where the head of the Traditional Values Coalition was scheduled to speak.

It seems to me that activists who oppose abortion have screamed rather loudly about the trampling of their First Amendment rights after recent court decisions have imposed restrictions on demonstrations near medical clinics.

So why would they wrap themselves in the First Amendment, then turn around and try to limit the rights of others to protest?

As a “traditional values” leader explained it to a reporter last week: “If the pro-lifers can’t block the abortion clinic, then homosexuals can’t block the church. It’s now a level playing field.”

Maybe. If you live on Mars.

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It’s a specious tactic, trying to equate anti-abortion demonstrations with pro-gay ones.

But there is a fundamental flaw in the logic: While anti-abortion demonstrators are trying to shut down abortion clinics, trying to prevent women from ever exercising their legal, hard-won right to opt for abortion, gay demonstrators are not trying to shut down the churches where they have gathered to protest anti-gay leaders. They are not out to criminalize religious worship, nor are they out to end it.

Gay activists are, in the best American tradition, making their points of view known. They are fighting for the civil rights they richly deserve.

And, on the whole, they are doing it rather peacefully.

To my knowledge, no gay activist has killed a cleric, no gay activist has firebombed a church, nor sprayed acid in its halls. No gay activist has called for the death of any member of the clergy as an act of justifiable homicide, even though gay activists have accused the Catholic Church of “killing us,” as in a famous ACT-UP demonstration in New York’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 1989.

It is true, however, that some demonstrations have gotten out of hand. And people who destroy church property should be punished.

Which is why I have no compelling objection to the newly amended law, even though it is of dubious necessity, except as a political tool to aid the reelection of the increasingly cynical Pete Wilson.

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What made the law a symbolic victory, instead of a practical one, for the “traditional values” people is that they had originally pressed for a law that would make disrupting religious services a felony , punishable by several years in state prison.

But in politics, as nearly nowhere else, symbols reign supreme.

And Wilson’s pen stroke on this legislation--just like his mean-spirited and anti-family veto last week of a measure that would have allowed domestic partners to register with the state in order to obtain limited benefits now reserved for married couples--symbolizes a willingness to deny civil rights to people who are not heterosexual.

It symbolizes a willingness to use the civil rights of gays as chits to placate voters on the extreme right.

We don’t need stiffer penalties for church disruptions. And we shouldn’t deny unmarried partners (of any sexual orientation) the ability to visit each other in the hospital or to easily will property to one another.

But it’s an election year, remember, a time when “traditional values” and hypocrisy go hand in hand.

* Robin Abcarian’s column is published Wednesdays and Sundays.