A Single-Issue Activist Reconsiders Her Obsession : Movements: Zeal for a cause sometimes makes adherents myopic; concerned citizens : can become fanatics.

The other day, while listening to a group of women testify before the L.A. County Commission for Women, where I sit as a commissioner, I found myself watching how these women interacted with one another. They are bright women who have dedicated their lives to helping rape victims. Yet when new ideas were suggested to solve problems they admitted existed, these caring, intellectual women became threatened and unreasonable.

The point of this article is not to discuss the pros and cons of this or any issue, but to examine what happens when a rational person goes into a movement and moves from concerned citizen to fanatic.

For 12 years, I was the spokesperson for the Right to Life Movement in Los Angles, an experience I will forever cherish. During those years, abortion was also the main issue for the Pro-Family movement. As time went on, however, and secular humanists began infiltrating our public-school system, other issues became increasingly important for conservatives: opposing condoms in high school and teaching the gay lifestyle as early as first grade, backing school choice and prayer in schools and a myriad of other social issues promulgated by the left.

A year and a half ago, I left the single-issue organization, Right to Life, and moved to a multi-issue organization, Pro-Family. I didn’t notice at first, but slowly I began to see society anew. I began to feel strangely free. Not that I had or ever will change my mind on the issue of abortion; I proudly remain pro-life. But I found myself meeting people for the first time and not judging them on their pro- or anti-abortion stand. I could interact with people who did not agree with me and they were no longer my enemy. It was not as necessary to convert. My circle of friends expanded and other issues became important. Though I still do not believe in compromise on abortion, I began to understand those who do. As I watched the women testify before our commission, it hit me: Single issue movements can become self-imposed prisons.

As I began to interview activists in other movements, I discovered a common thread running through all of them. Be they pro-life or pro-choice, animal rights, gay rights, environmentalists or peaceniks, all had one thing in common--obsession. Unknowingly, the members of each group were controlled by one another in an almost cult-like atmosphere.

You lose your sense of the world around you, staying more and more in your own cloistered society, protecting one another from outside thought. Your ability to reason is lost and the smallest compromise is viewed as betrayal. The movement itself splits between the militants and the moderates. Those less militant are seen as less dedicated. Peer control begins to strangle individuality. You speak with one voice, not many. And at any time, the militant wing of your cause can turn on you, and you become the enemy.

Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is a perfect example. For years, Frank has been an outspoken leader in the gay community, but once he suggested compromise on gays in the military, radicalgays denounced him. I was told never to discuss my pro-birth control stand, even though the official policy of Right to Life is neutral on the topic.

The protester whose leg was severed when he lay down on railroad tracks on the California coast a 1987 Earth First protest is another example of how far activists will go. At UCLA, Latino students told us they would die for their beliefs. Like out-of-control gang members, activists excuse and support one another. Bizarre behavior is praised, while caution is condemned.

Most activists are not fanatics, but all fanatics are activists. Certainly, they are needed to raise the consciousness of society. But once individuals cross the line from concerned citizens to irrational fanatics, they run the risk of not only destroying themselves, but destroying their movement as well. Militants are usually responsible for bringing an issue to the public’s attention, but too many times, they are also responsible for its downfall. Most of those involved in any cause are good people, but along the way many move from rational people to obsessed, dogmatic ones.

It was a slow drive home from my commission meeting. I couldn’t condemn those women. I understood them, I even admired them. In my heart, I suppose I will always be an activist, but, thankfully, I can no longer understand fanaticism.