Re “K. Silbiger Salutes Council and Scores Seehausen Letter”
Decidedly unhealed wounds from last November’s School Board election were, almost unobtrusively, gashed and re-opened at last night’s supposedly routine City Council meeting.
Last December, City Manager Mark Scott and the City Council, in a bizarrely memorable moment, locked arms to throw 83-year-old Dee Seehausen off the obscure Landlord-Tenant Mediation Board over a letter to a newspaper.
Convinced the elderly but extremely involved activist was homophobic because of a catalytic remark she had made a month earlier after two gay candidates had been elected to the School Board, the Council concluded she was henceforth and ever more incapable of reaching unbiased conclusions.
After two first-time candidates were elected to the School Board in November, one of them exulted because two gays had been voted onto the Board for the first time in history. However, their sexual orientations had gone undisclosed until after the voting. In a letter to the Culver City News (reprinted below), Ms. Seehausen said they likely withheld their orientations because otherwise they might not have won.
The comment was deemed “homophobic,” and that remains City Hall’s position.
In an impersonal manner last night, Culver City rejection history repeated when all five members of the City Council pointedly snubbed her attempt to be reinstated.
Unusually stoic, the normally loquacious Council members received her request without comment or changed facial expression. They subsequently ignored Ms. Seehausen, treating her as if she were an outcast, rather than even a stranger.
Here is why that was sore-thumb obvious:
On an evening devoted to the annual appointments to seven separate city commissions, Council members commented on virtually every applicant in and out of Council Chambers — except for Ms. Seehausen.
Six months to the day and hour after she wrote a letter (reprinted below), last Dec.14, to the City Council, pleading to be reinstated on the Landlord-Tenant Mediation Board, she was treated as if she were an outlier.
Even though Ms. Seehausen became quietly emotional during her straight-forward plea to the City Council, no member offered a verbal helping hand. On the verge of breaking down, she asserted huskily that while she and her husband are longtime property owners, “I never have been biased, prejudicial or discriminatory.”
Now in tears, she sobbed her words of protestation, that it was outlandish to stamp her a bigot since there never has been any evidence presented. “Throughout my life, I have been hired for every job I ever have applied for,” Ms. Seehausen said, fending off accusations of prejudice.
Before finishing, she critically mentioned a newspaper report from the Bay Area that the Alameda School District was teaching the principles of an “alterative lifestyle” to students in kindergarten. Some families wanted to opt out, she said, but their requests were refused.
After her latest rejection at City Hall, Ms. Seehausen stepped outside of Council Chambers and stood with her husband, Paul, whom she married 58 years ago.
Her face was drained and strained. Around her waist, following back surgery, she wore evidence of her latest hospitalization.
Her feelings were not a mystery. They alternated between being deeply wounded and resolutely feisty.
Emerging from the Council meeting, her first quiet words were, “I am hurt.”
Ms. Seehausen said that she has lived daily with the pain of this unintended controversy since it exploded the first week of last November.
She is both baffled and offended by the perceived deep freeze treatment from City Hall, as if she were contagious and no Council member wanted to be caught inside her sphere.
“My God,” she said, “I am a nurse. How can anyone call me a ‘homophobe’?”
Once again her spunkiness was overcome by emotion as the seven-month-old wounds flared and her tears returned before she could resume defending her honor.
“ I have treated all kinds of patients, white, black, Jews, Christians, homosexuals. My job is to take care of them, period. What did I care? I didn’t know, or care, what they were. “We had a business for 12 years. All kinds of people came in. I am a people person.”
Disappointed but not overwhelmingly surprised, the Seehausens quietly left the building, perhaps not to ever return.
Here is Ms. Seehausen’s 104-word letter to the Culver City News last November that sparked the controversy:
“The reason I am writing this letter is to say that my husband and I voted our choices for new School Board members via lawn signs and our absentee ballots. As fate would have it, we did not vote for either of the homosexuals (Paspalis and Silbiger, Nov. 5, Culver City News).
“A note to Silbiger regarding your statement in the Nov. 5 issue that you have ‘always been open with anyone who asked about my sexual orientation.’ I think the public would have liked to have known before the election. Why? Because I do not believe you would have been elected had the public known, and that is what I think.”
Here is Ms. Seehausen’s Dec. 14 letter to the City Council requesting to be retained on the Landlord-Tenant Mediation Board:
Re Dec. 14 City Council Agenda, Item A-1
Dear Mayor, Vice Mayor, and City Councilmen:
Since I am unable to speak before the Council on Dec. 14 because of my recent spinal surgery, I am sending this email regarding Item A-1 on the agenda.
I am not homophobic. I am not discriminatory.
How could I be?
I am a registered nurse, and I keep my license active.
I worked at Brotman hospital for 6 years on a Med-Surg floor. I certainly did not discriminate against any of my patients. They were from all walks of life — old, young, gay, straight, black, white, Jewish, Christian, etc.
I certainly was not homophobic or biased when I ran my successful tanning salon for 12 years in Marina del Rey. I had customers from all classifications and walks of life.
As far as being a landlord, my husband and I had gay tenants for several years and they were two of our best tenants ever. Therefore, as a Landlord-Mediator it is clear that I would certainly be unbiased.
I spoke with Mr. (Mark) Scott (the City Manager) on Dec. 10, and received the agenda for Dec. 14.
My husband and I then listened to the Nov. 23 Council meeting webcast (where the homophobic charges were raised) on our computer. I had no previous information that a Marvin Brown spoke before the City Council on that date against my letter to the C.C. News editor on the 19th of November. He called me homophobic and misrepresented what I said in my letter. I did not say that I was “happy” that I didn't vote for “them.”
I do not know Marvin Brown and, as far as I know, he does not know me.
It seems to me that perhaps someone told him that I am on the Landlord-Tenant Mediation Board and asked him to speak out against me! My goodness!! I would never say or do anything that would cause Culver City to be sued. I feel that Mr. Brown is insulting my intelligence by inferring that I might do so.
I wrote the letter while I was still in the hospital after my 5 1/2 hour spinal surgery. What struck me “in my face” was when I read the Nov. 5 C.C. News where Karlo (Silbiger) proclaimed the election meant a lot for “diversity in Culver City, as we will now have two School Board members from the LGBT community”, referring to himself and Ms. Paspalis.
It seems that if he felt that people needed to know that, why didn't he run his campaign on the same issues?
Like Mr. Resnick wrote in his letter to the C.C. News on Dec. 3, “I thought Silbiger was voted in to represent the Culver City community to work on school issues, not to politicize his or anyone else's sexual orientation.” That is actually what I was thinking and trying to express when I wrote my letter.
I respectfully ask you to let me continue to serve on the Landlord-Tenant Mediation Board.
Very Sincerely,
Dee Seehusen
