Sex Education Sparks an Unlikely Alliance

By their own admission, it is an odd match.

Here was Claire Connelly, a lesbian activist from Ventura County, recently engaging in political strategy with the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon of Anaheim, one of the most notorious opponents of homosexuality.

So cozy have they become that Connelly joked that if all went according to plan, she promised not to make a pass at Sheldon’s daughter, Andrea, who works as a lobbyist for Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition. The reverend smiled, grabbed Connelly’s hand and kissed her on the cheek.

What political cause could be so great to create such an unusual alliance?

Connelly, after all, has a lesbian partner and believes “homosexuality can be a healthy and natural way of life.” Sheldon, meanwhile, made a name for himself--initially in California and later in other states--by preaching that homosexuality is not “normal.” He also has called House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s lesbian sister the “black sheep of the family.”

The answer came from Sheldon as he and Connelly went over testimony she was about to present to a congressional panel exploring the teaching of moral virtue in public schools. Together, they are questioning how federal funds are used to teach sex education and HIV/AIDS awareness in public schools.

“We are not minimizing our differences,” Sheldon said recently. “We are just agreeing to set them aside for the purpose of raising the level of awareness in America that the federal government, unconsciously but very specifically, is funding a national promiscuity program, or a national--I can’t say that word--brothel.”

Each had their own reason for being there--a classic case of the end justifying the means.

American history is filled with stories of compromise for the sake of political gain: John F. Kennedy ran with Lyndon B. Johnson on the 1960 Democratic presidential ticket even though both despised each other, but Kennedy needed Texas and the Texan needed the glory; conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan and liberal consumer advocate Ralph Nader shared opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement; the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Assn. combined political muster to fight the anti-terrorism bill proposed after the Oklahoma City bombing.

“In politics, there’s a certain degree of showmanship. There really is not any confluence of interest, it just happens that on one particular matter, they agree for totally different reasons,” said Stephen Hess, a fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

For at least this moment, Connelly and Sheldon forgave each other’s biases.

“If a person wants to be a homosexual, like Claire has chosen to be, well then, we let her live,” Sheldon said. Connelly, seated close by, chimed in: “There are people who would like to execute me and put me in concentration camps. Those are homophobic bigots. People like Lou Sheldon . . . are not.”

Connelly’s reason for being there grew out of a political dispute she had a couple of years ago with the Ventura County HIV Care Consortium, an umbrella group that distributes federal funds for HIV/AIDS services.

As president of the Gay & Lesbian Resource Center in Ventura County--where she still works--Connelly publicly accused the umbrella organization of misusing federal funds. The consortium denied the charges and expelled her from its board.

Connelly and Sheldon maintain that federal money is filtering down to local groups that send representatives into local schools to “recruit” students, not to teach abstinence.

Sheldon said it would be as if tobacco supporters came into classrooms to teach smoking: “They have not tried to come in and give free cigarettes and talk about all the ways to hold the cigarette and all the ways the position of the cigarette should be.”

Last week, before the House Economic and Educational Opportunities oversight subcommittee, Connelly repeated her beef--that about $3 billion in federal money is used by local gay and lesbian groups for salaries and expense accounts and to “infiltrate the public schools,” not to teach abstinence or promote AIDS awareness.

The Human Rights Campaign, a national gay lobbying group, called Connelly’s testimony a “complete distortion of the facts.”

Connelly, brought to the witness table by Sheldon, in turn bolstered his argument that homosexual and bisexual “promiscuity” is promoted in public schools.

Before the hearing, Sheldon boldly advertised in a fund-raising letter how he had received Gingrich’s commitment to hold discussions on this issue. His involvement prompted the gay lobby to describe the forum as a “witch hunt,” and caused political embarrassment for the subcommittee chairman, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.)

Sheldon was not asked to testify, nor did he get all of his preferred witnesses before the panel.

But together, Sheldon and Connelly got results. He got his congressional hearing, and Connelly’s political charges--greeted by some with skepticism--created enough doubt to instigate a closer review of federal funding for sex education-related programs.

This new style of coalition building is proving effective because special interest groups have learned that if they carefully define the issue, unlikely allies will join in to pressure Congress, said Colin Campbell, director of the graduate public policy program at Georgetown University.

With the public paying little attention to the finer details of the debate, he added, “strange coalitions will carry the day.”