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Outrageous Proclamations

City Council Honors Abortionist and Gay Activist, Local Pro-Lifers Protest at Council Meetings

BY ANNE KNIGHT

In recent months, outraged San Diegans have haunted city council meetings to take the council to task for issuing two proclamations honoring controversial persons and organizations in the name of the City of San Diego. The haunting started after December 5, when the Council voted unanimously to proclaim that day "Mark Salo Day" in honor of Salo's January retirement after 31 years as the chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties. The proclamation was introduced by radical lesbian councilwoman Toni Atkins, who said, 'I've asked Councilman [Scott] Peters to join with me because he has been a long-time supporter of Planned Parenthood. In fact, I think Lynn [Peters' wife] served on the board."

Atkins said that, under Salo, "Planned Parenthood has led the nation in pioneering reproductive health services and education programs," and, "one out of every four San Diego County women have used Planned Parenthood services at some point, making them the provider of choice for San Diego," and that Salo "has changed our community for the better ... and has made a national impact on women's health and reproductive freedom."

Local pro-lifers learned of the proclamation in January. Subsequently Christian activist James Hartline and several others spoke against it at the January 31 city council meeting. Hartline, who publishes an email newsletter called The James Hartline Report, told the council that few events had caused more outrage among his 5,000 online readers than the Planned Parenthood proclamation. "In November of 2005," he continued, "the voters within the city of San Diego voted overwhelmingly to restrict abortion: over 59 percent of the city's voters approved Proposition 73 ... and yet the City Council decided that the will of the voters did not matter.

"On matters such as abortion, where there is so much disagreement, so much pain, so much controversy and so much death, it is just wrong for this city council to do this.... The concept of issuing proclamations to declare a day of honor on behalf of all of the citizens of this city was never intended to be used to promote the radical agenda of one particular council member. Political leaders who have extremely personal and controversial agendas can honor whom they will on their own time."

Phil Magnan, Biblical Family Advocates director, pointed out that "many of the leaders of Planned Parenthood, including its founder, Margaret Sanger, were signers of an anti-God, pro-abortion, pro-suicide document, 'The Humanist Manifesto.'" Magnan mentioned Sanger's intent to weed out "defectives, delinquents and dependents," and her statement that "we do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population," and the fact that Sanger frequently spoke at Ku Klux Klan gatherings. He added that Planned Parenthood supports partial-birth abortion.

Attorney Mark Ginella opined that the City Council shouldn't favor an individual clearly identified with either side of the abortion debate, but if it must choose people to honor, it should honor persons such as Mother Teresa, "who show love and compassion for the poor and homeless of this country and honor those who give women who are in difficult situations another choice."

Edgar Brown, of the San Diego chapter of Bound for Life, a national pro-life Christian youth organization, made an emotional plea for San Diego "to have a voice for life. A third of my generation is dead from the holocaust of abortion. Where is the fear of God? Where are we going to stand on the day of Judgment for 45 million [aborted] babies?"

Kimberly Regnier, the former director of Pregnancy Resource Center, an Oceanside crisis pregnancy center, told the council that during Salo's 31-year tenure as Planned Parenthood's CEO, over 300,000 San Diego babies were aborted. The Pregnancy Resource Center provides ultrasound technology for clients who wish to view their unborn babies. She challenged Planned Parenthood to offer women the same service: "Let them see their babies moving around."

Local Catholic activist Allyson Smith denounced the Planned Parenthood proclamation at the February 28 City Council meeting. "You could hardly have chosen a more horrific way to inaugurate Mayor Sanders' first day in office," Smith said.

She disclosed that James McElroy, the ACLU attorney working to remove the cross from Mount Soledad, is also Planned Parenthood's lead attorney. Smith asserted that Planned Parenthood "has viciously persecuted the First Amendment rights of pro-lifers who attempt to offer women real choices outside of Planned Parenthood abortuaries."

Smith pointed out that, when a lawsuit was filed a few years ago to compel Planned Parenthood to report suspected child sexual abuse, "Salo's organization ... vigorously fought against it, got it thrown out of court, and even imposed financial sanctions against the good-hearted attorneys who brought the lawsuit."

Smith further accused Planned Parenthood of encouraging "sexual anarchy among young people via its Teenwire website, where teenagers can learn about every aspect of premarital and deviant sex practices without their parents' knowledge."

Councilwoman Toni Atkins "is herself a former abortion clinic director and an open homosexual," Smith declared. "Abortion and homosexuality, two prominent aspects of the culture of death, often go hand in hand."

Holding up a photo of Atkins as a young child, she asked, "Whatever happened to you? You used to be such a nice little girl. Now you're a tireless crusader for the culture of death." Atkins, usually quite composed, winced noticeably.

"City Council President Scott Peters and his wife, Lynn Gorguze," Smith continued, "are listed as 'President's Council' members in Planned Parenthood of San Diego and Riverside Counties' fall newsletter," she continued. "This dubious distinction indicates their strong financial support of Salo's baby butchering organization."

The maelstrom of outrage caused by the Salo proclamation didn't end with the February 28 meeting. On March 7, Hartline, accompanied by a group of about 15 supporters, addressed the City Council twice. He lambasted the San Diego Gay Pride organization for "still going full steam ahead to mix young minors with those tied to the gay sex industry." He asserted that, at the homosexual group's annual Youth Pride event, "they bring in children each year as young as 14 years of age and mix them with adults in a venue that distributes sexually explicit items like condoms, anal intercourse lubricants, and soft porn magazines."

Hartline was followed by local Catholic Stephanie Hopping, who spoke on the Salo proclamation. She cited a 22-year study of Planned Parenthood-style sex education programs indicating that fornication, pregnancy, and abortion rates among adolescents had skyrocketed since the programs began. She provided council members with transcripts of calls made to Planned Parenthood clinics in San Diego revealing that most are not reporting the statutory rapes of minors. Hopping said that Planned Parenthood is now under investigation by the state attorneys general of Kansas and Indiana for failure to report sexual abuse. In 1963, Hopping said, Planned Parenthood issued the following statement: "An abortion kills the life of a baby after it has begun. It is dangerous to your life and health. It may make you sterile so that when you want a child you cannot have it." Nonetheless, Hopping asserted, Planned Parenthood has committed well over three million abortions since 1973.

On the docket for the same March 7 meeting was a resolution sponsored by Toni Atkins proclaiming February 15, 2006 as "Karen Marshall Day" in the city of San Diego. Hartline spoke against the resolution before the vote was taken. "Karen Marshall served as the executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Center in Hillcrest for six years," he reported. "During that time she received hundreds of thousands of dollars in public funds for her salary. Much of the money was steered to the Gay and Lesbian Center and Karen Marshall's salary via the San Diego City Council, Toni Atkins and Christine Kehoe [Toni Atkins worked for then-City Councilwoman Christine Kehoe].

"During Karen Marshall's hitch at the taxpayer-funded Gay and Lesbian Center ... Miss Marshall purchased a residential lot.... Miss Marshall resigned from the Gay and Lesbian Center near the time that Toni Atkins became a Council member. Nearly four years ago, Miss Atkins moved into ... the property that is owned by Miss Marshall. Because of the fact that we are now, as a city, being asked to declare a day of honor in the name of Council Member Atkins' landlord, we are also being asked to honor a woman that has supported abortion, same sex marriage, and the removal of the Boy Scouts from Balboa Park.... It is not the prerogative of this City Council to utilize taxpayer resources, time, and money to use this City Council for a platform for individuals' pet projects.... If Councilwoman Atkins wants to honor an individual, she certainly has the right to do so from her own office ... but not on behalf of the entire city of San Diego."

Atkins then made this response to Hartline: "It's clear that there are people who don't support this proclamation for an individual who has served the community, and while they may disagree with the type of service that she has provided, [Marshall] has done so. And for the record, the community development block grant dollars that have gone to the Center, much like those that have gone to numerous organizations in the city, be it the Vietnamese Federation-- any number of organizations in the city-- have been bricks and mortar money. That money goes for capital improvements to a building that provides services to people in this community. And I would say there are thousands and thousands of people who use services at that organization: veterans in San Diego who have sought out services related to the military service, youth, seniors.... The City Attorney's office is more than welcome to investigate and look at the use of those dollars.

"For the record -- now, I shouldn't have to do this, but I'm perfectly fine to give this information -- Miss Marshall was the director of the Center more than five years ago, well before I was elected to office. She resigned and went into private practice years ago. I was elected to office; I nominated her to be on the Human Relations Commission.... She stepped off of the Human Relations Commission Board; they recognized her last month for her service to the Human Relations Commission."

Atkins then confirmed that, for the last four and a half years, she has rented a residence in the South Park/Golden Hill area "that meets all of the regulations of the city." Moreover, she said, "I pay rent, I pay utilities, all of those things that you would expect me to do legally ... and I would welcome the [City] Attorney's office to look into that as well should he feel the need to. I really have no other intent today than to recognize a woman who has given service to this city, to a large population of people that calls this city home. And it is for that service that she has provided to the LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered] community and her service on the Human Relations Commission that I think she should be honored. And because she happens to be a friend of mine as well should not preclude someone from being recognized for the work that they have done."

The Council then voted unanimously to approve Atkins' resolution to proclaim "Karen Marshall Day."

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