Measure N Approval Teaches a Sad Lesson

The ugly campaign run in Irvine against the city’s ordinance protecting gays from discrimination in employment, housing and other city services was a particularly disheartening event in Orange County. It appealed to people’s basest notions about homosexuals and promoted fear and paranoia where virtually none was warranted. And it did so with a barrage of homophobic campaign literature that made outrageous claims about gays that were largely distortions or outright lies.

Sadly, it worked. More depressing still, approval of Measure N on Tuesday by a 53%-47% margin forebodes more of the same, as the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon gloatingly vowed at a press conference the day after the election. Next, Sheldon said, he is taking on Orange County schools to make sure teachers do not encourage homosexuality. Sheldon is the leader of the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition, which successfully supported ballot measures in Tuesday’s election against gay rights in three California cities.

We were given some idea of what Sheldon means to do next by a failed attempt Tuesday to unseat three incumbents in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District. The “traditional values” group of opposing candidates claimed the incumbents allowed sex-education programs that fostered premarital sex among students instead of abstention and traditional monogamous, heterosexual relationships. Voters recognized these distortions and turned them aside.

In Irvine, the aim of Sheldon’s forces was the gay-rights portion of an anti-discrimination ordinance. Left intact were protections to women and minorities. The ordinance reinforced the city’s commitment to human rights, which also are protected under state and federal law.

It was disappointing that the anti-gay measure succeeded, especially in a community that has been widely praised for its progressive attitudes toward many social issues. We watch with awe as democracy takes hold behind the Iron Curtain and as the Berlin Wall crumbles, and we had hoped that right here, in Irvine, voters would realize that an attempt to withhold rights from any group of people diminishes us all.