Foe of Gay Rights, Abortion Takes Fight Beyond Pulpit

The Rev. Lou Sheldon was hunting through the confettilike stacks of paper on his desk--business cards, notes, jottings of names and numbers--for a copy of the magazine he publishes, when the telephone rang.

“Yes, we’re very much interested in family planning,” he told his caller. He listened awhile, then replied: “Well, we certainly want to put a stop to that nonsense.” He listened a bit more and rang off with, “Bye-bye, God bless.”

Sheldon explained that the “nonsense” was distribution of birth-control devices to high school students without the permission of their parents. His caller was a woman who “wanted to know if she could use our name in her newsletter,” opposing such distribution. The minister said yes.

The issue of contraceptives in the schools “is going to be a hot question,” Sheldon predicted. And it is a question for which he has an answer, as he does for homosexuality, pornography and the separation of church and state.

Pulpit and Politics

For much of his adult life Sheldon has shuttled between the pulpit and politics, leaving pastorates for months at a time, sometimes for a year, to work for candidates from North Dakota to Delaware during a ministerial career that brought him to California 16 years ago.

Now 53, gray-haired, trim and bespectacled, Sheldon works out of a suite of offices in Anaheim to educate voters, lobby politicians and donate money to the causes that please him.

He runs a group called the California Coalition for Traditional Values, which he says raised more than $20,000 last year. Records on file in the Santa Ana city clerk’s office show that $10,000 of the money came from a company called Success Realty Inc. of Costa Mesa and an additional $5,000 from the election committee of Rep. Robert E. Badham (R-Newport Beach). The records also show that the coalition spent $22,484 to support two candidates for the Santa Ana City Council in last year’s election. Sheldon said the group will also file as a political action committee in Sacramento in the near future.

Sheldon describes the traditional values as family integrity, economic free enterprise, national defense, pro-life and anti-abortion, values “that have been taught in the American scene since the inception of the nation.”

Lobbied Deukmejian

He was a key player last year in the effort to pressure Gov. George Deukmejian to veto a bill forbidding discrimination in employment against homosexuals. After the veto, Sheldon and others bombarded legislators with phone calls and letters to stop the bill from even getting out of committee this year.

Fresh from those successes, Sheldon has turned his eyes back to Orange County, vowing to provide workers and money for candidates for offices ranging from local school boards to the Superior Court, from city councils to the state Assembly.

Some find his views shocking.

At a press conference two weeks ago, Sheldon inveighed against politicians supporting an Orange County organization that says it is working to end discrimination against gays and women.

He said the elected officials were sympathetic to homosexuals. He brandished a book listing county parks and public restrooms where homosexuals supposedly could find partners and perform illegal sex acts. Then he linked the politicians’ sympathy and the illegal acts, claiming that the politicians are “condoning” homosexual acts in the public parks and restrooms.

Discussing the issuance of contraceptives to high school students, he said he didn’t want it done without the knowledge of parents, even if parents voted to let a school board issue birth-control devices without first getting permission. To do so, he said, would mean that “by default the state becomes the parent.”

Last year Sheldon urged the county government to establish a commission on traditional family values that, among other tasks, could decide what books were stocked in county libraries. County officials rejected the minister’s suggestion after getting attorneys’ opinions that such censorship was unconstitutional, though Sheldon says that many books in public libraries are works that “more than 50% of the population would never buy and put in their home.”

Assemblyman Richard Robinson (D-Garden Grove) has felt the wrath of Sheldon, and will again next year, when he is up for reelection.

“I’ve been the target of some of his (Sheldon’s) demagoguery in the past,” Robinson said. Although he credits the minister with getting volunteers to help Robinson’s opponent last year, the assemblyman said he is not sure how effective the volunteers were or how many there were. Robinson won reelection by only 256 votes.

He said that campaign literature distributed by Sheldon’s supporters “has resulted in turning more voters off and has not necessarily inured to the benefit of my opponent. I’ve received in the last couple of campaigns calls from people who were offended by either what was said at the door or by literature that was left by volunteers.”

‘Support the Constitution’

He said that Sheldon’s opposition “revolves around my voting to support the Constitution,” noting that the Supreme Court decision on the legality of abortion is the law of the land and legislators must uphold it.

“I don’t doubt the man’s sincerity,” Robinson said. “But it seems to me that for a man of the cloth who is to a great extent dependent on the First Amendment guarantee of free speech to regale constantly against other peoples’ constitutional rights, that seems to me to smack of inconsistency, to say the least.”

The view of Sheldon looks different from the other side of the political spectrum.

Bill Dohr, a Republican who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1982 against then-Rep. Jerry Patterson, received help from Sheldon and employed two of the minister’s four children on his campaign staff.

“As a conservative leader in Orange County I think Lou is someone you’d like to take seriously,” said Dohr, who now is acting deputy assistant secretary for economic development in the Commerce Department in Washington.

“He’s got a definite organization out there,” Dohr said. “When we needed volunteers, he really delivered in terms of precinct (workers). He was able to turn out hundreds of people. . . . That, in politics, is something you take very seriously, the ability to turn out bodies like that.”

14,000 Names on List

Sheldon said he has about 14,000 names on the mailing list for his newsletter, “The Midnight Alarm,” which he sends out periodically to report on pending legislation and topics of interest to the group.

The path that brought Sheldon to Anaheim and politics began in the most political city of all, Washington, D.C., on June 11, 1934. Sheldon tells of being born “in the shadow of the Capitol” to a mother who was an Orthodox Jew and a father of English Protestant stock but no particular religious convictions.

When he was 11, an older brother became a Christian. Sheldon followed suit at 16. He graduated from Michigan State University and Princeton Theological Seminary.

He was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1960, following in the footsteps of his brother.

And while progressing in his religious education, he was moving forward in his involvement in politics.

Sheldon recalls being taken by an older sister to the presidential campaign headquarters of New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey in 1944. Eight years later, he supported Dwight D. Eisenhower. A dozen years after that, another hero in the Republican pantheon, Barry Goldwater, drew his support.

While a pastor in North Dakota, Sheldon organized prayer breakfasts for the governor. In Delaware several years later, in a pause from his pastoral duties, he worked for a gubernatorial candidate. Before entering Princeton, he married Beverly, the daughter of Michigan farmers, who helps him in his work today. In 1969, the Sheldons came to California to be near his wife’s parents.

Worked in Encino

He worked in a Presbyterian church in Encino, which he recalls as a “middle-class, soft, easy-going church” buffeted by the growing “Jesus movement,” the charismatic, evangelical tide that began to sweep the nation’s churches. Drawn more and more to the new movement, Sheldon said he eventually resigned his pastorate and came to Anaheim to teach at the Melodyland School of Theology, an institution of the Pentecostal movement.

In 1974, a year after coming to Melodyland, Sheldon said, he became involved in the fight against the state law that removed criminal penalties for acts performed in private between consenting adults.

The clergyman blames the legislation for “igniting the spark of a scenario of degeneracy.” He worked unsuccessfully to get the law repealed and concedes now that there still is not enough support in the state to wipe it off the books.

Sheldon said he decided to leave Melodyland after the school’s officials urged him to spend more time preaching and less time politicking. In subsequent years he worked on the unsuccessful 1978 campaign to bar homosexual teachers from California schools, worked for Pat Robertson, host of the “700 Club” Christian television show and founded the interdenominational Trinity Church in Anaheim.

Political Watershed

Sheldon said the 1978 campaign was his first involvement with churches statewide in an effort to influence legislation. Even though he was on the losing side, he said the defeat turned out to be something of a political watershed.

He realized that he and those who shared his beliefs would need “a mandate that is philosophically based, that is rationally based, that is raring to go.”

“And the same time, my friend Jerry Falwell arises, you see, with Moral Majority in ‘79, and the New Right has its first inkling (of its power),” Sheldon said.

“And this is happening all across the nation. Individuals are rising independent of each other’s operation. So there’s no accident to this. I believe this is an ordained fact of God. . . . You could call that a kind of revival, a revival of the fundamentalists, who are now taking a harder look at how they need to address the political arena, the civic arena.”

Sheldon’s record in the political arena so far has been mixed.

Last year his group supported two candidates for the Santa Ana City Council: John Acosta won; Gordon Bricken lost. He was also active in the campaign of Rep. Robert Dornan (R-Garden Grove), who defeated Patterson last year.

Picketed Bookstore

He has taken the lead in organizing the picketing of a bookstore in Stanton where he said pornographic materials are sold. He unsuccessfully tried to get the Long Beach City Council to refuse permission for a two-day gay pride festival last June.

Besides supporting candidates in school board races this year, Sheldon is targeting city council members, judges and county officials for next year.

In particular, he has set his sights on men and women listed as members of an honorary dinner committee for an Oct. 5 fund-raising banquet of the Elections Committee of the County of Orange (ECCO).

ECCO describes its objective as creating “a political context which will help move society toward treating gay men, lesbians and women with the dignity due every human being.” It is a political action committee contributing money to candidates.

Sheldon said the politicians whose names appeared on the dinner committee “obviously are supporting the disintegration of the family and the foundation of our Western civilization.”

An animated man given to sweeping gestures and oratorical flourishes when his topic engages him, Sheldon pours the words out when discussing homosexuals and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), the disease afflicting mostly homosexuals.

Chosen a Life Style

There is no known cure for AIDS, which is almost invariably fatal. The virus believed responsible for the disease is transmitted by the exchange of bodily fluids--mainly during sexual contact--and by infected blood.

Sheldon said the homosexuals who have died from AIDS are not really “victims” of the disease, because they have chosen homosexuality as their life style. He counted as the “real victims” heterosexuals receiving tainted blood, especially hemophiliacs who require transfusions of large amounts of blood.

“It is time the homosexual community publicly chastises itself for their promiscuous sexual practices, which are causing the spread of AIDS to more of their own people and now to the heterosexual community,” the minister thundered.

He called for shutting bathhouses where homosexuals congregate and last April suggested that those suffering from AIDS be treated at “cities of refuge” similar to the leper colonies of old.

Sheldon said that even if AIDS is wiped out, he would oppose anything that would indicate that homosexuality is an acceptable life style. He will be satisfied only if gays (a word he does not use, preferring instead “homosexuals” or “sodomites”) go back into the closet, he said.

‘Would Be Ashamed’

Dr. Don Hagan, a homosexual Irvine physician who is co-chairman of ECCO and the son of a Baptist minister, said Sheldon was battling gays “under the shield of Christianity. And I think Jesus would be a little ashamed of him.”

Sheldon and Hagan tangled at a state Republican gathering in San Diego last month. Hagan said the minister approached a group of homosexuals “and started lecturing us on sodomy and the downfall of Western civilization.”

The doctor said he pointed out that he was a member of the Republican state central committee and that Sheldon was a guest, “so I was happy to have the chance to tell him to start acting as a guest.”

“That’s the only time I’ve ever met him face to face,” Hagan said. “He’s a short guy. I’m 6-foot-4 and weight 200 pounds. He’s intimidated by me.”

Sheldon said he thought he was on the Republican committee but found out he was not when he got to the gathering. He said he saw Hagan, asked if he was a homosexual and lectured him for being a member of a group that is spreading AIDS. He said he wasn’t intimidated by Hagan and “would like to debate him any time, any place, any way, any day.”

Opposes Discrimination

So far, local politicians singled out by Sheldon don’t appear too concerned.

Huntington Beach Councilman Peter Green, who attended the ECCO dinner, said he feels “very strongly” that no one should be discriminated against because of “race, religion, color or sexual preference.” Green said he doesn’t endorse homosexuality but does support non-discrimination.

Any campaign against him for being sympathetic to homosexuals would fail, he predicted. “I would have greater confidence in the voters than to think they would fall for such an accusation,” he said.

Green’s colleague on the Huntington Beach City Council, Jack Kelly, was also an honorary member of the ECCO dinner committee and was mentioned by Sheldon. Kelly joked that if Sheldon was planning to mount a campaign against him, the minister had “better hurry, because this is my last term.”

Kelly said he felt that campaigns for local office deal with “more parochial” issues than homosexuality. He said the major concerns in his last campaign were redevelopment and flood control.

But Sheldon said he wants to help elect people on the local level who, like him, are for family and patriotism, against abortion and homosexuality.

He’s been off to Houston and New Zealand this year, lecturing against homosexuality. And he continues to be a frequent visitor to Sacramento, lobbying on the same topic.

Now the battleground will expand to places like Anaheim, Irvine and Huntington Beach. Sheldon smilingly predicts lively times ahead.

“Wherever I go, things get stirred up,” he said.