Gay Rights Issue

The editorial entitled “The Freedom to Decide” (Oct. 8), while interesting, was nevertheless representative of a lack of knowledge of the facts.

Unfortunately, the Los Angeles Times detours from discussing the issue and resorts to name-calling.

What The Times considers “gay bashers” and “homophobics” are in actuality concerned individuals who feel that homosexuality is not written or prescribed in the genetic code, but a behavior that is acquired from possibly hundreds of different sources. Fortunately, reparative therapy and medical treatment is available for those homosexuals who desire change.

The Times accuses me of carpetbagging. This public policy debate should not be nearsighted. Irvine is not an isolated provincial city, but an overlapping community with invisible geographical lines in many ways. Numerous individuals from outside the city limits enter City Hall and seek to influence its body politic. This is a healthy exercise of society.

As a matter of fact, the Los Angeles Times is based in Los Angeles with an Orange County branch in Costa Mesa. Yet, it feels compelled to influence the entire scope of society, including a city ballot measure in Irvine. Those in glass houses should not throw stones.

I do not control nor financially underwrite the Irvine Values Coalition, Citizens for Equal Rights. The vast majority of their leadership and supporters are indigenous to Irvine.

However, the real issue is not the participation of Rev. Louis P. Sheldon but the concept of granting special rights (over and above those already guaranteed to all Americans by law) to homosexuals. In fact, the crux of this public policy debate is, should society recognize individuals whose underlining connection is the act of sodomy as an insular and discreet minority.

As individuals, those who engage in sodomy are deserving of equal and fair treatment under the law like anyone else. However, when these individuals, who are banded together by the act of sodomy, solicit the body politic for special rights, society must then discuss facts relevant in public policy debate.

Without a thorough public discourse, this behavior-based group should not be granted protected minority status.

Rev. LOUIS P. SHELDON

Traditional Values Coalition

Anaheim