EDITORIAL

After leading a quiet existence, Costa Mesa’s Human Relations

Committee appears to be getting at the very issues it was created to

address, albeit not in the way some members may have planned to.

Issues of hate. Issues of racism. Issues of intolerance. How the

committee handles these issues may very well define how useful it will be

and signal whether the city is destined to unite across different

cultural, political and religious lines or fracture into tight-knit, but

alarmingly separate, enclaves.

What is at the center of this debate depends on whom you ask. It is

either that three committee members, including one City Council

candidate, posted allegedly racist and homophobic comments to a Web site

dedicated to Costa Mesa issue (and therefore should not be members of the

tolerance committee) or that the trio has been unfairly targeted for

having different viewpoints -- ones they describe as conservative -- from

the majority of the committee.

Less important than the root of the argument is finding a solution to

it, however. And that solution must involve both sides bending toward

each other in a gesture of understanding and tolerance.

For the trio accused of the offending comments -- candidate Allan

Mansoor and residents Jan Davidson and Joel Faris -- that bending means

looking at what they have written and understanding why it has upset

people so severely. An example are posts by Mansoor citing the Family

Research Council and a supposed link between gay men and child sex

abusers. The problem with these is that the council is not an unbiased

source of information and their promotion, drawn from the group’s mission

statement, of “the Judeo-Christian worldview as the basis for a just,

free, and stable society” is counter to the cause of the Human Relations

Committee, which presumably would not promote one “worldview” over

another.

Other posts or statements that denigrate one group in favor of another

are equally counter to the committee’s goal and deserve rebuke and

criticism, from whichever side it may come.

Those charging Mansoor, Davidson and Faris -- and the rest of the

committee, as well -- need to remember that the only view the committee

should be promoting is tolerance and understanding. Certainly, any group

preaching tolerance should be able to include residents who have

different political and religious beliefs, as long as there is agreement

on the basic mission of the committee. That is the point of the group,

after all.

Simply being a “conservative” member of the committee is not reason

enough for removal. But being hateful is. Because the mission of the

Human Relations Committee is clear, the onus is on all members of this

committee, not just Mansoor, Davidson and Faris, to prove that they are

committed to tolerance and understanding. If they cannot, then they have

no place on the committee.

The handling of their defense will be the crucial test for the rest of

the committee. If members cannot cope with these internal problems, it

will be difficult to conceive of them managing citywide issues of hatred

or racism.

But if they can bring their divergent beliefs together, then there

truly is hope for a better Costa Mesa tomorrow.