Committee for Equal Rights - confusing name, dangerous agenda
by Tom Flint

     The "Committee for Equal Rights not Special Rights" has
emerged as the political front for the Washington Public Affairs
Council (WPAC)to promote an anti-Gay initiative in Washington
state, but the Committee was originally designed as a "compromise
front" between WPAC and Lon Mabon's Citizens Alliance of
Washington, according to an inside source.
     In 1993 Lon Mabon met with leaders of the WPAC and worked out
a compromise agreement between the two anti-Gay organizations that
they would work together to promote only one anti-Gay initiative in
Washington state.
     Part of the early agreement was that the two groups would form
a separate committee to sponsor the anti-Gay initiative, the result
being the "Committee for Special Rights not Equal Rights."
     During the negotiations Mabon and the Burman group quarreled
and two factions separated ways, with each group sponsoring their
own anti-Gay initiative.
     According to our source, the conflict between the two groups
came to a head when Lon Mabon insisted on controlling the mailing
list for the Committee in an attempt to build his power base in
Washington state. The Citizens Alliance is currently unsuccessful
in building it's membership in this state, and by joining with WPAC
Mabon hoped to obtain lists of supporters.
     Burman and the WPAC refused to give Mabon control of the
mailing lists and the two groups separated ways. Robert Larimer,
head of the Citizens Alliance of Washington, was dismissed by Mabon
because Larimer wanted to cooperate with the WPAC in sponsoring one
initiative.
     Larimer has formed a new fledgling organization, Washington
for Traditional Values, which will work to support the anti-Gay
initiative.

Mom-in-tennis-shoes, not
     Cathy Mickels is the current spokesperson for the Committee
for Equal Rights not Special Rights." and is a member of the WPAC
advisory committee.
     Mickels is well known in Republican circles as one of
fundamentalist extremists who have overtaken the state Republican
party in recent years. She helped craft the bizarre platform
attacking Gays and Lesbians, yoga, and "witchcraft" in the schools.
     Mickels is head of an organization called Washington Alliance
of Families, which presents itself as a non-threatening "group of
moms" even lobbing the legislators while delivering chocolate chip
cookies. Mickels described one such incident in 1989, "We wrapped
the chocolate chip cookies in little baggies, and we put little red
bows on them and we went to Olympia on Valentine's Day, and we
distributed all these chocolate chip cookies" while lobbying the
legislators.
     Mickels also served on the national platform committee that
crafted the extremist platform presented at the National Republican
Convention in Houston.
     She is well known as a relentless adversary of sex education
and AIDS prevention education in the schools.
     The Bellingham Herald reported, "By all accounts, she pestered
and badgered the governor's office to allow her to represent pro-
family views on a governor's commission on AIDS. On the commission,
she was instrumental in getting language adopted that emphasized
'sexual abstinence outside legal marriage' in AIDS education."
     She fought education reform recently enacted by the state
legislature. Indeed Mickels appears to be an adversary of all
public education, and is an active supporter of the home-schooling
movement. Mickels has stated that she believes the public schools
corrupt children by undermining the family values they're taught at
home.
     Phylis Schafley, director of Eagle Forum, was so excited by
Mickels activism that Schafley personally visited Mickels home town
of Lynden and helped found a chapter of Eagle Forum.
     In the 70s Mickels was a radical feminist until she decided
feminism was a "liberal lie."
     "I concluded I was buying a liberal feminist lie. I saw there
were forces at work in the nation that were actually tearing the
nation apart. After one semester in 1972 I came to terms with where
my head was at and threw my Karl Marx books int he garbage,"
Mickels told the Bellingham Herald in 1989.
     Though Mickels presents herself as a "regular mom" she is
reality a sophisticated political activist who first gained
political prominence in the state in 1989 as leader of the
opposition against the Children's Initiative.
     Mickels was featured in an article on Christian political
activism inthe March issue of Citizens Magazine, a publication of
Focus on the Family. In the article Mickels emphasized the need for
sophisticated marketing techniques to present the organization as
more powerful and sophisticated than it actually is.
     "You have to remember that you're marketing ideals," Mickels
told the magazine, "You have to be able to get your ideas into the
marketplace of ideas. When you jump into a political arena like
this , you must be willing to look and act the part.'
     "Whenever you send things out, you always make it look like
it's done professionally. Remember that anything you send out from
your group is going to be sending a message as to who you are. So
make sure that if you don't have a typewriter or computer that does
it nicely, then you pay the eight bucks to have somebody typeset it
on a laser printer.  And then they'll think you're an 800-pound
gorilla with an advertising agency.

Public Affairs Council
     The main organization behind the "Committee for Special Rights
not Equal Rights" is the Washington Public Affairs Council, headed
by Doug Burman.
     The WPAC represents the real political power of the
Fundamentalist movement in Washington state, and will present a
formidable opponent to supporters of Gay/Lesbian civil rights.
The WPAC advisory board includes such influential individuals as
Senator Harold Hochstatter, and Representatives Val Stevens  and
Steve Fuhrman.
     Doug Burman led the successful effort to repeal the Tacoma
Gay/Lesbian civil rights ordinance in 1989. In 1991 Burman was the
vice-chair of the Washington Untied, a political action committee
that led the fight against a pro-choice and right-to-die
initiatives on the ballot that year.
     Burman was the first executive director and founder of the
Washington Family Council, the state chapter of the "traditional
family values" organization Focus on the Family. He left that
organization in September 93 in an effort to conceal his
connections with national right-wing organizations as he prepared
to launch an anti-Gay initiative in Washington state.
     Representatives Val Stevens and Steve Furhman are connected
with three of the nation's most radical fundamentalist activists,
R J Rushdoony and Tim and Beverly LaHaye. They all serve on the
advisory Committee of Impac, a state political action committee
"designed to put Bible believing Christians in leadership in our
state. Genuine, long term reform will come only when Bible-
believing  people are making, interpreting and enforcing the laws."
     Rushdoony is founder of the Christian Reconstructionist
movement. According to the Political Research Associates, a liberal
research foundation based in Boston, "The Christian
Reconstructionist would replace the US Constitution with their
literal interpretation of biblical law and would adopt, for
example, the Old Testament's draconian provisions for capital
punishment....The Christian Reconstructionist seek and end to
democracy and the imposition of a Christian republic that in fact
is totalitarian, ruling all dimensions of societal life."
     Rushdoony told Christianity Today that "True to the letter of
Old Testament law, homosexuals, adulterers, blasphemers,
astrologers, and others will be executed."
     He has also called democracy a "heresy."
     The Reconstructionist have established the Coalition on
Revival (COR) "which advocates a 'muscular' form of Christianity
that 'takes theology to the streets.' COR has developed detailed
plans for taking over government, law, education, media, economics,
and entertainment in the US and Canada. it represents a key
umbrella of various leaders and far-right activists" the Political
Research Associates reported in the book The Coors Connection.
     Tim LaHaye, Impac advisor, was a leader in the Moral Majority
and an architect of the "pro-family" traditional values movement.
LaHaye believes that secular humanists have overtaken the schools,
universities, media, religion, and government.
     LaHaye, along with his colleagues Jerry Falwell and Pat
Robertson, "believe that men and women have different natures and
roles, assigned by God and beyond question. All three men condemn
feminism and believe that government should penalize nontraditional
sex roles. Since they see the legitimacy of US criminal codes as
derived from Judeo-Christian morality, sins such as adultery,
homosexuality, and bestiality should also be criminal offenses."
     Though Val Stevens and Steve Furhman have never publicly
expressed these views as far as the SGN is aware, their affiliation
with Rushdoony and the LaHayes clearly indicates the radical
perspective of the Washington Public Affairs Council.

What's in a name
     The anti-Gay campaign has settled on the name Committee for
Equal Rights not Special rights, the identical name of the group
which recently passed an anti-Gay ordinance in Cincinnati. This
choice of names may also indicate the choice of strategies that
will be used.
     If the WPAC settles on the Cincinnati model we can expect to
see certain key features in their anti-Gay campaign including
widespread distribution of the video "Gay rights Special Rights,"
a production of the Traditional Values Coalition. The "equal rights
not special rights" theme was profoundly confusing to Cincinnati
voters who believed they were voting for equal rights, while the
pro-Gay/Lesbian campaign was never able to dispel the confusion.
     In Cincinnati there was concerted effort to set up divisions
between racial and ethnic minorities and the Gay community that may
be repeated in this state.
     Another key feature of the Cincinnati campaign was a last
minute media blitz during the final two weeks of the campaign, when
it was too late for the pro-Gay side to respond. Outside anti-Gay
organizations flooded the city with money during the final phase of
the campaign.
     In Washington state, the anti-Gay groups are highly sensitive
to charges of being supported by outside organizations, so WPAC
will not likely accept large outside contributions during the
campaign. But as occurred in Cincinnati, national anti-Gay
organizations might stockpile money outside the state and funnel it
into Washington state during the final faze of the initiative when
it's too late for Hands Off Washington to respond - unless they
have prepared ahead of time for such an eventuality.

     [This article includes background information  from "The Coors
Connection" by Russ Bellant, South End Press, a Political Research
Associates publication.]