MARCH 10, 1995 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

15

COMMUNITY GROUPS

The interconnected web of right-wing organizing

by Bill Henderson

Fourth of a series on the new Radical Right.

In the past summer and fall it has become clear in Ohio that anti-choice groups are organizing against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered communities. Phyllis Schlafly and New York's Cardinal O'Connor have conducted organizing seminars in Steubenville; Randall Terry traveled around the state last fall fundraising for their candidate Joe Slovenec.

Right to Life of Geauga County, led by Rev. Ernie Sanders of Chardon and Sister Mary Luisanne, have circulated a particularly vicious booklet to the general public. Physicians for Life, led by psychiatrist Sam Nigro of Cleveland Heights, distributes free anti-gay and anti-choice videos, including The Gay Agenda and Gay Rights, Special Rights, to local libraries.

Citizens for Excellence in Education, a California-based religious right group is now organizing in Northern Ohio, focusing on suburban school systems to promote restrictive curricula and creationist "science" programs. They claim to have elected thousands to school boards across America.

Most alarming for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered communities, the Oregon Citizens Alliance is now registered to operate as the Ohio Citizens Alliance. Their national director Lon Mabon was recently a featured speaker at a rally in Columbus against outcome-based education. Ironically, the rally was held on National Coming Out Day.

The Oregon Citizens Alliance is the most experienced and successful proponent of discrimination against the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Americans. They have organized in half a dozen states, and while they have lost every statewide initiative, they have won over 25 local initiatives to rescind or halt civil protections from discrimination, even though these are eventually ruled unconstitutional by state and federal courts. They continue to wage these expensive campaigns, which sap funds and energy from all progressive organizations struggling to improve the lives of the poor, women and children, and the disempowered. OCA worked closely with Cincinnati's Phil Burress to develop Project Spotlight. Our work is clearly going to become more necessary!

Wrapping up what we see occurring in Ohio, Colorado for Family Values played a major role in the financing, training and campaigning for Burress' Issue 3 anti-gay initiative in November of 1993. A look at who sits on their boards reflects the core of power behind the nationwide radical political movement.

Phyllis Schlafly of Eagle Forum sits on the advisory board of Colorado for Family Values, as well as on many right wing boards and councils. In the '70s she created Eagle Forum to advocate her conservative ideology and to support the profit interests of the ubiquitous insurance industry.

That industry, to add some perspective, is home to some of the most profitable business and highest paid executives in America. It is also the business of the men in her family. The Equal Rights Amendment for women, passed by Congress for ratification by the states, would have had great impact on the insurance industry, forcing changes in actuarial assumptions related to women, altering profitability of many types of coverage, and ensuring an end to wage and salary disparities common throughout the industry.

Schlafly took the lead in defeating ratification, guided by "special-rights" type language and strategies inspired by Paul Weyrich. Her main weapons were classic radical right techniques: misleading and manipulative language, innuendo, sexist bias and homophobia. She asserted the ERA was "special privilege" for women, would damage traditional family life, and would end the tradition of "deferential treatment" for females.

Most damaging was her manipulation of homophobia to drive heterosexual allies from

the women's rights movement. “I'm not a feminist, but..." was the typical woman's code phrase for "don't think of me as a lesbian." ERA's defeat demoralized the National Organization for Women. For all intents and purposes, Phyllis Schlafly stopped the near adoption of equal status for women, and in that process, assured her own personal gain at the expense of the rights of millions of other citizens.

Concerned Women of America, founded by Beverly and Tim LaHaye in 1979 as the "Christian woman's alternative to the National Organization for Women," is now a $15 million dollar lobbying organization, claiming 600,000 members in 1,200 chapters nationwide. Based in Washington D.C., it is a model of

successful

vative religious leaders in African American communities through regional “family values" training seminars. In the anti-gay propaganda film Gay Rights-Special Rights, African American men and women are shown with Sheldon at the Lincoln Memorial, restating Sheldon's contention that lesbians and gays are attempting to subvert the 1964 Civil Rights Act to gain "special rights" over those Americans covered under the Act.

Others are shown stating that gays and lesbians feel, "in the historic tradition of the Civil Rights movement," that they have "earned" civil rights. Statements are also made that gays and lesbianss have not

OUTVoice

grass-roots organizing. Its focus is anti-abortion, anti-gay, and pro-censorship of schools and media. It promotes a "Christian values"based government.

LaHaye has sat on the board of the Coalition on Revival. This "think tank" for religious based political reorganization seeks to unite charismatic, Pentecostal, and fundamentalist Christians in created a “Christian"led (i.e., theocratic) America by 2010. The underlying principles they follow are "reconstructionist": the Bible as a rulebook for all society, whether Christian or nonChristian. An oath of obligation to the Bible until death is sworn by all coalition members.

The Coalition on Revival, under director Dr. Jay Grimstead, recently relocated to Colorado Springs-what a surprise. A quote from Beverly LaHaye in Ms. magazine sums up the radical right infusion by religious extremist philosophy:

"Yes, religion and politics do mix. America is a nation based on Biblical principles. Christian values dominate in our government. The true test of those values is the Bible! Politicians who do not use the Bible to guide their public as well as their private lives do not belong in office."

Concerned Women of America is well organized in Ohio. JoAnn F. Corradetti is chapter leader in the Cleveland suburb of Mayfield Village; Susan Jeske leads Akron; Susan Wish, Bellefontaine; Terri Barton leads in Galena; Mary Margaret Eckert, Columbus; and Marlynn McDonald in Springfield. Bert Nelson, regional director of CWA in Colorado, sits on the Colorado for Family Values board.

The chair of Traditional Values Coalition in Colorado, Barbara Sheldon, sits on the executive board of CFV. The Traditional Values Coalition was founded and continues to be directed by Rev. Louis Sheldon. Sheldon has a 20-year history of anti-gay organizing work.

Inspired in the '70s by Anita Bryant's "Save Our Children" campaign, he created the "California Defend our Children" initiative, better known as the Briggs initiative. This would have permitted firing any person who educated about, promoted, or encouraged homosexuality in public education and prohibited lesbians and gayss from being hired as teachers.

Nearly 15 years later, Sheldon remains a driving force behind these efforts nationwide. When the Briggs initiative was defeated in California, he went to work for Pat Robertson to foster legal codification of "morality," one of Robertson's pet projects. He also worked in Los Angeles to oppose counseling of lesbian and gay students in public schools. In '86 and '88, he supported an anti-gay initiative sponsored by Lyndon LaRouche and endorsed quarantine camps for people with AIDS. He also proposed that a two-thirds majority vote be required in California in order to pass protection from discrimination laws for gays and lesbians.

The Traditional Values Coalition has as its organizing priority recruitment of conser-

struggled against the same history of violence and death.

Once again, can we clear this up? Civil rights are not

earned they are guaranteed in the Bill of Rights of our Constitution. African Americans did not earn civil rights from conservative politicians! No group has the right to confer or to withhold rights of others. The historic civil rights movement forced politicians to reaffirm what was intended for all citizens by the Constitution, but had been withheld from them.

Gay people are, like African Americans before them, seeking to have reaffirmed the rights guaranteed to all citizens but withheld historically-against the intent of our Constitution. Clearly, by equating civil rights as "special rights," granted by the vote of others, the new radical right is setting up the African American communities while it seeks to dominate lesbain and gay communities.

Finally, lesbians and gays have, indeed, been the victims of bigotry, violence, and death in this country-solely because of who we are. These continuing tragedies take nothing away from the horror inflicted for the length of America's history upon all peoples of color. These tragedies rename, in an additional community, the same evil that has plagued all oppressed peoples. Conservative African Americans need to remain aware that radical right leaders, especially Lou Sheldon, lobbied against the civil rights acts of 1988 and 1991, which reinstated and renewed the 1964 one!

Also, on the CFV advisory board is Rev. David Noebel, president of Summit Ministries of Colorado, a 30-year-old ultra right wing activist training center. Noebel formerly preached with Billy James Hargis' "Christian Crusade," an old radical right partner of the John Birch Society. These

folks believed the civil rights movement was a communist plot, that the National Council of Churches "promoted" communist thinking, and that the United Nations was controlled by the Communist bloc. Noebel maintained his John Birch Society membership until at least 1987, and for years Summit Ministries has continued to recruit through John Birch publications.

In 1977 at the height of Anita Bryant's campaign, Noebel published "The Homosexual Revolution" which continues to be distributed by many of these groups I've been discussing. Here Noebel asserts homosexuality is America's most serious "social problem," and, incidentally, that rock-n-roll is corrupting American youth. He has also co-authored books and articles with professional homophobe Paul Cameron, and he is featured in, and likely helped create, the anti-gay propaganda films Gay Rights-Special Rights and The Gay Agenda. These have a great fundraising impact for the new radical right, and use techniques, found effective by Nazis, to dehumanize citizens by stereotyping, and to create paranoid fears by manipulative language, misinformation and lying.

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Dr. James Dobson moved Focus on the Family to where else-Colorado Springs in 1991, bringing enormous resources, political sophistication, and national stature to a small, local anti-gay organization, Colorado for Family Values.

Focus on the Family has 1,000 employees, an $80 million budget and owns 50 acres of prime Colorado Springs real estate. Dobson is a featured closing speaker at Billy Graham Crusades, and yet, he is also known for his particularly nasty printed diatribes. In one publication, for example, he equated gay men with "people who find sexual satisfaction from intercourse with animals, and you wouldn't want to give them civil rights, would you?" Domino's Pizza Corp. recently named Dobson "Humanitarian of the Year." Dobson's radio broadcasts are carried daily on over 1,000 stations.

Ohio affiliates of Focus on the Family are led by David Zannotti, director of Northeast Ohio Roundtable and Freedom Forum. Regional offices are organized statewide. On its board of most significant donors and leaders are prominent business and industry leaders, journalists, executives in the insurance, land development, banking and construction industries; including in northeast Ohio the president of Lubrizol, former director of Society Bank, president of American Portrait Films, and numerous CEOs of local companies. Many current and would be politicians are also on its board, including state representatives Mike Wise, Tucker Marston, and Loren Loving Vail.

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