Religious Group’s Anti-Schiff Mailer Ignites Controversy

A conservative Christian coalition has sent a mailer to the 27th Congressional District’s politically potent Armenian American community, calling Rep. James E. Rogan’s main opponent, state Sen. Adam Schiff, “a champion of the homosexual agenda.”

In response, a Washington-based coalition of religious groups Friday denounced the tone and content of the mailing, sent by the Orange County-based Traditional Values Coalition to 15,000 to 20,000 district voters with Armenian surnames. Schiff also sharply criticized the mailer, a one-page letter headed “Warning: Do You Really Know Adam Schiff?”

Rogan campaign manager Jason Roe said Friday that the letter was “nothing we would have put out” but declined to denounce it and instead attacked the Interfaith Alliance as a “sham organization” that he said is biased toward Schiff.

The heated exchange over the mailer comes toward the end of one of the most widely watched House races in the nation. Rogan, a conservative, Glendale-based Republican who took a leading role in President Clinton’s impeachment and subsequent trial, is battling for political survival against Democrat Schiff of Burbank in a district that is increasingly voting Democratic.

Printed in English and Armenian, the mailer says Schiff “is in favor of same-sex marriages” because he did not support Proposition 22, the voter-approved initiative that banned legal recognition of same-sex marriages in California.

The mailer also cites campaign contributions to Schiff from the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights organization, and from Hollywood producer David Geffen, who is gay.

Then, in boldface, capital letters, it says, “Does Adam Schiff represent your Christian values?”

The Rev. Lou Sheldon, head of the Traditional Values Coalition, said his group was only exercising its right to communicate with voters. He said that Armenian Americans hew to family and Christian values and that he wanted them to know that Schiff “just isn’t with them, and they need to know where he stands.” He said the reference to “Christian values” referred to Armenians and “has nothing to do” with Schiff’s being Jewish.

Sheldon’s mailer also cited two anti-hate bills that Schiff supported and that the Traditional Values Coalition says require California public schools “to teach children that homosexuality is a normal and positive lifestyle” and promote “homosexuality at taxpayer expense.”

The first measure cited in the mailer, AB 1785, added human relations education to public school curriculum and guidelines and decried discrimination based on race, religion, disability, gender, nationality or sexual orientation. The second bill, AB 1931, called for training programs to foster “a school environment free from discriminatory attitudes” and practices. Both measures passed the Legislature in the summer and were signed into law in September.

The Interfaith Alliance called on Rogan’s and Schiff’s campaigns to denounce the mailer’s “tactics of fear and dehumanization to play upon the prejudices that exist toward gay and lesbian Americans.”

Rogan campaign manager Roe indicated Friday that the congressman regretted having signed the Interfaith Alliance’s “civility pledge” earlier in the campaign.

Roe said no one objected when Sheldon’s group sent out a mailer accusing Rogan of supporting a measure allowing betting over the Internet on horse and dog racing.

Sheldon called the alliance a group of renegades funded in part by Democrats. The group was founded, its leaders say, to reflect a wider view of the religious community than that offered by high-profile conservative Christian groups.

Schiff said he believes that “hatred is not one of America’s traditional values” and denounced the mailer as “an outrageous insult to the Armenian community” and “part of a pattern of divisive and bitterly negative campaigning by Mr. Rogan and his supporters.”

“Although I do not support same-sex marriage,” Schiff said in a statement released through his campaign office, “I do support strong anti-discrimination laws and resent the deliberate and gross distortions of my positions in this mailing.”