Modesto Bee , CA
Dec 29 2011
Modesto’s Kullijian a man of many causes
By Jeff Jardine
[email protected]
MODESTO — Long before he became Carol Channing’s husband, ersatz
agent and partner in promoting the arts, longtime Modesto resident
Harry Kullijian followed a different calling.
Several, in fact:
– He became an advocate for the elderly, spearheading the renovation
of the city’s Senior Center at 211 Bodem St. while serving on the
Modesto City Council in the 1970s.
– He championed for the disabled, once spending a day in a wheelchair
to call attention to the difficulties they face every day.
– Of Armenian descent, some of Kullijian’s relatives died during the
Armenian genocide that began in the mid-1910s. He spent years
campaigning to honor those holocaust victims.
– And when he died Monday at 91 in Rancho Mirage, his latest calling
involved looking for ways to keep the arts in education, giving school
children the same exposure to music both he and Broadway legend
Channing enjoyed.
“He was a crusader,” said Eleanor Lacore Currie, a friend since 1970.
“He always had to have a cause.”
But perhaps the most intriguing one came became the fight against
pornography, which he led in Modesto for more than two decades. In the
late 1970s, he joined an organization called Morality in Media. He
chartered a Modesto branch that protested when a theater planned to
show films depicting Jesus in ways he and other local Christians
considered offensive and blasphemous.
In 1987, Kullijian and other members of Modesto’s First Baptist Church
appeared at a City Council meeting to ask the council to prohibit
adult bookstores and theaters displaying material in places where
anyone could see it.
Soon after, Kullijian and the others founded Citizens Leading
Effective Action Now (CLEAN), protesting the goings on at the Foxy
Lady Theatre and other adult venues.
In one instance, they got the city to force owners of an adult
entertainment business to tear down the walls of the small rooms where
sexual acts occurred. Opening up the rooms ultimately put the venues
at odds with city ordinances prohibiting such acts in places where
they might be viewed by the general public. Officially, the group
cited the AIDs epidemic – not pornography – to compel city officials
to act.
“We made it a health issue, not an obscenity issue,” Kullijian told
The Bee in a 1987 story.
Another time, CLEAN convinced the city to force video rental stores to
keep adult-content tapes behind a curtain or in a separate room, where
underaged visitors could not see them.
CLEAN also protested radio station KTRB, which began airing sex
therapist Ruth Westheimer’s show. The station’s owner refused to pull
it from the lineup.
And in 1989, the City Council began discussing a non-discrimination
clause for its hiring practices. Carol Whiteside, mayor at the time,
said the rough draft included language involving gender and sexual
preferences.
“That was of great concern to some,” she said.
Whiteside said Lou Sheldon, a Christian conservative activist from
Orange County, planned to come to Modesto to protest the language.
Meanwhile, she also got word that members of the AIDS Coalition To
Unleash Power (ACT UP) would then come from San Francisco to protest
Sheldon in Modesto.
“Just the thing we needed here, to be on ’60 Minutes’ or the cover of
Time Magazine,” Whiteside said.
She called Kullijian, who told her, “You get ACT UP to back off and
I’ll get Lou Sheldon to back off.”
“Then Harry came in and we worked out language that was acceptable to
everyone,” Whiteside said. “We avoided a big scene.”
That, Whiteside said, represented vintage Kullijian. Having served
eight years on the council, he knew the nuances of goverment. He
understood the politics, free speech rights, the protocol and
procedures, and therefore could accomplish what he set out to do in a
non-confrontational manner.
All of this happened during a time of great change in Modesto, said
Eleanor Lacore Currie, whose first husband, Bud Lacore, was among
CLEAN’s founders. Rampant growth put the city’s small-town feel and
family friendly atmosphere at risk, she said. She worked closely with
Kullijian to build the group’s membership to nearly 4,500, enlisting
other churches as well.
“The mission was to educate people about pornography,” she said. “We
brought in experts in the field. One year, we filled the Downey High
Auditorium with people who were interested in what we did. It was the
‘Gospel of don’t get involved in pornography.’ It was important. There
were even pastors in town who were hooked on porn and didn’t know how
to get out of it. Some were observed going in and out of these
places.”
Groups formed to combat pornography in other cities used CLEAN’s
techniques as their blueprint for effectiveness.
CLEAN disbanded several years ago. Ultimately it couldn’t fight air
and fiber optics. Now, the kinds of movies and material that once
filled adult theaters and stores are available 24-7 via the Internet
and television. Premium channels, they’re called.
Still, Currie believes Kullijian’s crusade succeeded because it
reached so many people.
“It’s not that he was on a tirade against evil,” she said. “It’s just
that he knew what the evils of pornography did to people. He didn’t
want it to ruin their lives. We won in the respect that we helped so
many people.”
Tuesday morning, headlines across the nation reported the death of
Carol Channing’s husband, a title he embraced, and the final calling
of a man who impacted so many people along the way.
From: A. Papazian
http://www.modbee.com/2011/12/28/2003872/modestos-kullijian-a-man-of-many.html