Binion Replaces Ripston : For New ACLU Chief, Issues Aren’t Different--Just Bigger

Perhaps it’s an occupational hazard, but the new executive director of the Southern California affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union is dogged by a vague feeling of deja vu.

“Somebody once said there are only seven or eight great issues in the world and none of them are ever resolved,” said Gayle Binion with a smile as she sat in the sunny living room of her Santa Barbara home, contemplating her partial view of the ocean and an immediate future in the less peaceful climes of Los Angeles.

Binion, 39, was named earlier this month to the top job of the influential local affiliate of the civil liberties organization. The local group has a membership numbering more than 23,000, and in recent years has been the spawning ground for some of the ACLU’s most controversial positions and, also, its entrance into areas the group once ignored. The local group, for instance, took an early position that the death penalty is a civil liberties issue, and opposed President Reagan’s decision to invade Grenada while the national board did not.

Binion, who has been on the faculty of the political science department of the University of California at Santa Barbara since 1974, replaces Ramona Ripston, the often outspoken 13-year veteran of the post who stepped down to join People for the American Way, television producer Norman Lear’s organization opposing political efforts by fundamentalist religious groups.

Ripston, 53, was pretty much the face the ACLU presented to the public in the Los Angeles area. In recent years, she and the affiliate engaged in occasional battles with national ACLU leaders over independent lobbying by the local group with Congress and how to share funds raised by the relatively prosperous Southern California affiliate with the national.

Neither Binion nor ACLU officials in Los Angeles foresee any immediate change in local ACLU policies. But the relatively stormy situation between the local affiliate and national headquarters seems less likely to pop up again under Binion’s leadership, ACLU officials agree.

“Gayle, I’m sure, will approach questions with the national from a different point of view and, perhaps, from a more calm position,” said Laurie Ostrow, local chairwoman of the ACLU Foundation, the legal arm of the group.

Different Backgrounds

Where Ripston--like Binion, a born and bred New York City woman--was a product of activist and civil rights groups of the 1960s and the New York national headquarters staff, the new executive director is an academician.

A member of the ACLU’s Santa Barbara board for only three years, Binion conceded that she was a less than obvious choice for the post.

“Ramona was a long-term political activist for both the ACLU and other causes in New York,” Binion said. “I’m more an academic--as an educator and administrator. But the differences are more in style than in substance. My background is clearly not that of a community organizer, but I feel right at home with the substance of what the ACLU is all about--civil rights and civil liberties.”

Binion--who did her undergraduate work at City College of New York, got her graduate degrees from UCLA and chaired UCSB’s law and society program--was the unanimous choice of the nearly 100 members on the boards of the Southern California affiliate, members said, after a national search that brought in more than 100 resumes.

“Her (Binion’s background) is almost tailor-made for us,” Ostrow said. “There’s her involvement with the ACLU in Santa Barbara and her work on civil liberties for the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions and her academic background.”

Both Ostrow and Fred Okrand, legal director emeritus of the affiliate, agreed it was unlikely that the affiliate will strike out in new directions under Binion’s leadership.

“I sense no difference in direction,” Okrand said.”

Mary Ellen Gayle, president of the affiliate, said major changes in policy are unlikely.

“We’ve been out in front of the national organization on a lot of issues, but I think that was a function of the progressive nature of the board members,” she said. “Undoubtedly, like any new executive director, Gayle Binion will put her own stamp on the job, but I think we will continue basically as we have been.”

On some recent cases involving the ACLU in Los Angeles, Binion offered these opinions:

- A pending suit against Big Brothers of Greater Los Angeles, which is an attempt to open the organization up to homosexual and bisexual men. “The whole basis of the ACLU is to defend popular principles in unpopular cases. We’re not fighting Big Brothers; we’re fighting for the right of mothers and guardians of fatherless children to decide who they want to be big brothers to their children.

- A suit against Downey, a successful effort to remove an illuminated Nativity scene from in front of City Hall there. “A lot of our supporters question this kind of work on the grounds that it is not a very important issue. Then there are people who think Christmas and Hanukkah decorations are wonderful. I think it a very important principle to keep religion private. If government can support religion, then ultimately it can regulate it. “

Sex Bias Charge

- A recent ACLU suit challenging the constitutionality of a California statute that allegedly mandates sex-based discrimination in the sale of life insurance, favoring men over women because women, who live longer, receive smaller monthly annuity payments. “Sure, women on the average live longer then men, but there is no statistical predictability on the level of any given woman or man. . . . Other insurance questions are important, too. Blacks die younger than whites by a significant margin, yet insurance companies have never given blacks a discount on pension insurance. And with auto insurance, people should be charged according to their own driving records, not on the basis of the neighborhoods in which they work or live.”

- The ACLU case against the Los Angeles Police Department, challenging its use of a motorized battering ram to burst into fortress-like homes of suspected drug dealers. “That kind of activity, if it goes unchecked, is a danger to us all.”

- The Elizabeth Bouvia case, in which ACLU lawyers first battled in vain for the quadriplegic cerebral palsy victim’s right to starve, and now are seeking to keep a Lancaster hospital from force-feeding her because, they claim, she is voluntarily consuming enough nutrient to keep her alive. “People are very uncomfortable talking about death . . . and don’t like an organization that makes an issue of people wanting to die. But the ACLU does respect the right of the individual to make that choice.”

Relief, Refugees

Other issues that the ACLU and Binion are continuing to work on are the level of Los Angeles County relief grants to homeless indigents, the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s policies concerning Central American refugees, book and student newspaper censorship in some Southern California school districts, and efforts in Sacramento to expand the use of the death penalty.

Taken together, it might begin to look as though perhaps there are more than seven or eight major issues waiting for her in Los Angeles.

“I’ve just been reading our docket and it’s enormous,” she said. “More than 100 cases. We have to turn away a lot more than we take. But I don’t want to be in a position where you try to rank the importance of human rights.”