Steve Yuhas

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Steve Yuhas is an American conservative radio and television personality in southern California. He lives in both Rancho Santa Fe and Beverly Hills, CA. The Steve Yuhas Show airs on News Radio 600 KOGO.

Biography

Yuhas was honorably discharged from the United States Army and Marine Corps. He is a Lifetime Member of the Disabled American Veterans, the American Legion as well as the Paralyzed Veterans of America.

According to Yuhas' DD214 (on file with Los Angeles County), he was discharged from the United States military, Yuhas received honorable discharges from both services and received several awards, including the Meritorious Service Medal, the Army Commendation Medal with Silver Oak Leaf Cluster, the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters, two Good Conduct Medals and other awards including the Combat Medic Badge. According to the DD214, Yuhas entered the military in Los Angeles, CA and received an Honorable Discharge from the Army and Marine Corps. In total he served 7 years 8 months and 23 days on active duty and served overseas and in two combat zones.

Appearances & Controversy

Yuhas has made a point not to grant many interviews, but his few appearances have often led to controversy. In late 2000 Yuhas was an assistant press secretary for the California ballot measure that proposed to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. During an appearance on Larry King Live, Yuhas said that his support for the measure was not because it was about being gay, but because it is the right of the people in a state to decide important issues such as who should be married. In 2008 the California Supreme Court declared Proposition 22 unconstitutional. Following that decision the people of California passed Proposition 8 which was upheld by the California Supreme Court. In November 2008 Yuhas gave his support to anti-marriage forces and is listed as a contributor to the Yes on 8 campaign and is said there to have given $5,000 to the cause.

Yuhas was in favor of Proposition 8, he claims, because the people have a right to decide who marries. He rejects the civil rights argument of gay and lesbian people and embraces the far right, neocon claims that marriage should continue to be discriminatory. He goes further by saying that LGBT individuals cannot be compared to the African American civil rights struggle because being black is "immutable," but you cannot look at a person and know they are gay. He has been berated by gay advocacy groups for saying things like that and even had to fend off a formal FCC complaint for using homophobic slurs over the public airwaves.

Yuhas continued to speak out against gay marriage calling it a "uniquely heterosexual" institution. Instead of accepting the ruling, Yuhas endorsed a ballot measure to amend the California Constitution to declare gay marriage illegal. Gay groups continued their calls for him to be removed from the airwaves and his employer, KOGO 600 AM, continues to back him.

In December 2008 Yuhas, Clear Channel Communications and his station were sued by a high school principal, Michael J. Rood, for defamation and invasion of privacy. Michael J. Rood is represented by civil rights lawyer H. Paul Kondrick and Yuhas is represented by a team of lawyers from Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton including "super lawyer" Guylyn Cummins and James Chadwick. Yuhas claims that Rood, a well-respected high school principal in the San Diego School District, worked as an associate publisher of a pornographic magazine during school hours and using school resources. Hearings began in the case in summer 2009 and continue as Yuhas filed a costly Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, known as a SLAPP motion, forcing Rood into a position of fighting for his reputation in this case. A legal fund is available to assist Mr. Rood by contacting his attorney. Both men are gay, but Yuhas' homophobic and draconian manner of litigation is drowning Rood in legal bills and true to their reputations as power lawyers the attorneys at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton have filed ten times the number of motions as Rood. Yuhas refuses all requests for media interviews in this case and hides behind his attorneys.

One issue has made Yuhas controversial as his debate over the disappearance of Natalee Holloway. For Yuhas, the issue was that over the behavior of Holloway's parents and the fact that so many media personalities decided that without a trial that three young men were guilty before they were charged. Yuhas wrote a series of articles, but a few stood out and drew the ire of some media outlets in the South and Yuhas was asked again to appear locally, nationally and internationally over the topic. In the newspaper El Diario La Prensa, Yuhas wrote (translated to English - uncorrected syntax): "Beth Twitty comes across to the people of Alabama as a sympathetic character, and she is because she can’t find her daughter, but to much of America and the world she is an abrasive and rude woman whose disdain for the people of Aruba overshadows the goodwill that was initially shown to her in the opening days of this soap opera. Her following people around with television cameras in tow in order to confront people that she suspects had something to do with her daughters demise has become fodder for virtually everyone not within 500 miles of Mountain Brook, Alabama."

During an appearance on ABC, Yuhas was being interviewed about a column he wrote when one of the chaperones during the Alabama trip called into the program (Bob Plummer) - at first the debate was civil, but when Plummer found out that Yuhas was gay, he hung up his phone and said that Yuhas being gay made his participation unnecessary.

Yuhas is featured in The Unrevealed Time Lies , a documentary film by award winning Dutch filmmaker, Renée Gielen. The documentary was released in Holland in July 2008 and in the United States in September 2008. Yuhas is not alone in this documentary as Natalee Holloway's father agreed to an interview as did justice ministers, former investigators and friends of the Holloway and Twitty family. The feature will be shown on American television and a preview was released that features Yuhas' participation and that of the others. The trailer for the film allegedly shows compelling evidence that Beth Twitty arrived in Aruba before Holloway went missing .

Many news organizations picked up Yuhas' comments and columns about Natalee Holloway. A few of them were offensive to people who knew her and entire threads of message boards were dedicated to slamming Yuhas' opinion. Most recently Yuhas wrote about the search funds and the multiple arrests of the same suspects. Natalee Holloway: Where are the Search Funds? as well as being followed in Alabama - his appearances about Natalee Holloway's disappearance became international. On Rita Cosby's program on MSNBC Yuhas was scolded by another talk show host after he refused to endorse a boycott of Aruba.

After former New Jersey Governor James McGreevey came out of the closet in a televised confession after he was targeted for blackmail by his former lover, Yuhas wrote a column for the San Francisco Chronicle called Political Lies and Personal Lives. In the article Yuhas claims that McGreevey's "self-serving coming-out news conference" and showed surprise and anger that gay organizations stood behind the nation's first openly gay governor. In January of the following year, McGreevey appeared on Yuhas' show when he was in Los Angeles for a book tour.

On his radio show on January 25, 2009, Yuhas stated that actions by the George W. Bush administration that had caused more people to support terrorism were okay because it would create more people for the United States to kill.

During his radio show on May 19, 2009, Yuhas demanded that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger be recalled after the failure of all of the ballot measures that cost the state $35 million during a year with a $20 billion deficit.

His radio show on July 12, 2009 was surreal. Yuhas had a guest on named Eyal Feldman, the founder of an adult product company that Yuhas called a friend. Feldman owns Boy Butter Lubes and he blogged about the radio show and is pictured with Yuhas on the adult product's website. For Yuhas to claim "conservative family values" and to hang around with the owner of adult products proves his hypocrisy, but worse is that during the "debate" about gay pride parades, Yuhas said he believed that gay people can "pray their way" out of homosexuality.

On Being Gay

Perhaps the biggest controversy concerning Steve Yuhas in his public life has been that part of his life that he lives in private: Yuhas is openly gay. He began talking on the radio when he filled in as a guest host for Roger Hedgecock after he was fired for being too conservative from a gay newspaper. The paper eventually folded, but his firing put him on a course to launch his own website. He wrote an opinion piece for the San Diego Union-Tribune' that ran during the San Diego gay pride festivities and it brought out the ire of many in the gay community. An Odd Way to Bring Gays into the Mainstream was printed in the middle of the parade and festival and the reaction was almost instantaneous. Gay activists were offended, but many gays signed on to Yuhas' logic that if you want to be taken seriously that you have to fight the urge to appear on the fringe.

Yuhas has written many articles and commentary on the issue of being a gay conservative. He is opposed to issues that many gay people consider central to being homosexual: he believes that marriage is a 'uniquely heterosexual institution' and that adoption for gay couples is something that is not good for children because he believes that children need a mother and a father. Both of these positions are based on his conservative Jewish background.

Yuhas is featured as a "queer" columnist on the website Lavender But Not Pink and other mainstream gay websites where his brand of political thinking would have been considered taboo just a few years ago. Yuhas has stated publicly that it is quickly becoming more and more 'ok' to be a conservative thinker and gay and the Internet has allowed an explosion of conservative gay thinkers to be able to reach people quickly. It is quite possible that Yuhas is one of the most well known gay conservatives and his transition from gay press to mainstream has been slow, but is now complete.

Beginning in 2005 Yuhas began appearing on red carpet events and awards shows. He was also photographed at many charity and political events. Although he does not talk about his giving publicly and despite the fact that some have assigned him the moniker "self-hating gay" or "homophobe" Steve Yuhas: Keep The Righteous Wing Out Of Oregon's Constitution he continues to live a "normal" life in up-and-coming Hollywood. In a strange irony his quest for privacy was disrupted when in February 2008 he was photographed at The Ivy in Los Angeles with his brother. The picture, taken by one of the many paparazzi stationed outside most popular West Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Hollywood hot spots, appeared the following day on the celebrity blog Perez Hilton, someone known for his "outing" of celebrities and "breaking" other celebrity gossip. That picture was retracted, but not after it was picked up by other "news" outlets.

His photos have made it into some of the gossip sections, but most notable was one that questioned whether he was actually gay when he was photographed with friends at SBar and Katsuya in Hollywood. His desire for privacy is now a delicate balance - as it is with anyone - as a restraining order is on record for at least two people in southern CA for stalking.

Charity and Giving & Salary

Yuhas is known for charity giving and he was chronicled in the North County Times as the most prolific political contributor to the Republican Party in the media today.

Yuhas is also in attendance at many charity events including cancer research and he has asked his listeners to donate to PanCAN - Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. It is unclear why he took up the passion for this particular cancer, but he has both written about it and talked about it publicly on his radio program on KOGO. Yuhas embraced a number of charitable causes on his radio program and recently began advocating for another group, Homefront San Diego, an organization to assist low ranking members of the military obtain money, cars, food and shelter in the event they cannot afford it.

His salary is up for discussion, but it was reported on KCBQ in October 2008 to range from $400-700k for talent and upwards of $800k for advertising. KCBQ also lists his website in the top 10 for CA based radio talk programs at Townhall, the largest conservative website in America.

External links

• The Steve Yuhas Show
• Newsradio 600 KOGO