Brody's Notes... Anti-Gay Traditional Values Coalition Founder Holds Press Conference, But-

Reverend Louis Sheldon press briefing September 26th, 2011
Photo courtesy of the Courage Campaign

By Brody Levesque | SANTA ANA, CALIFORNIA -- An adamant opponent of LGBTQ Equality Rights, the Reverend Louis Sheldon, founder of the Traditional Values Coalition — one of three California “pro-family” organizations leading the effort to overturn the Fair Education Act, SB-48 — issued a media release inviting the Southern Californian press corps to attend a press conference on TVC efforts regarding the Referendum efforts aimed at placing the provisions of SB 48 before the voters on the June 2012 ballot.

Sheldon and the ‘Traditional Values Coalition' assistant who joined him at the briefing yesterday in Santa Ana were joined by exactly three others, all staff from the LA based LGBTQ Equality Rights Advocacy group the Courage Campaign. There was not a single reporter in evidence.

Sheldon, whose organisation has been promulgating anti-gay propaganda for several decades and also has been classified as a hate-group by the Southern Poverty law Center, was forced to give his "briefing" in the parking lot of the offices for the Orange County, California Voter Registrar after officials told him that he couldn't be present inside the building to give his presentation.

According to the Courage Campaign’s National Field Director Arisha Michelle Hatch who was present:

With such low attendance, Courage staff got a front-row seat for this press conference and even got to ask a few follow-up questions before he abruptly ended his presentation. He struggled to stay on message, often times contradicted himself and seemed to suggest that his biggest problem with the Fair Education Act was that it doesn’t allow negative portrayals of the LGBT community.

Rick Jacobs, the chair and founder of the Courage Campaign said:

“The Rev. Louis Sheldon and the ‘Traditional Values Coalition’ have been peddling so-called “facts” about gay people for decades now. All they’ve managed to do is hurt people and earn themselves a place in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s pantheon of hate groups together with the Ku Klux Klan.

Their latest lies are about the Fair Education Act, a law that requires California schools to integrate lessons about social movements, current events and the social contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals into existing social studies lessons. Rather than encouraging learning about the diversity of American history, Rev. Sheldon, like his friends at Westboro Baptist Church and other fringe groups, seek to foment division and hatred, the opposite of Judeo-Christian teachings.”

A copy of Sheldon's invitation to the media to attend yesterday's briefing can be read on the Courage Campaign's Prop 8 Trial tracker website.