‘ACTING OUT A LIE WAS NOT GIVING ME ANY SATISFACTION’ : Gay Seeks Say in Power Structure

Seated in his Spartan office, surrounded by dozens of piles of paper and four bulging Rolodexes, Werner Kuhn recalled the thrill of escorting debutantes to their coming-out parties when he was a student at a prep school in Connecticut in 1960.

He also remembered his own coming-out 15 years later, when he began to talk openly to friends and relatives about being a homosexual.

“It gave me a greater sense of independence, a greater sense of self-identity,” he said. “I chose to act on my homosexuality because I was unfulfilled as a human being; acting out a lie was not giving me any satisfaction.

“And that’s the bottom line,” he added. “Don’t we all deserve to reach our full potential as human beings?”

Kuhn, 42, the new director of the Orange County Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, says he hopes to help other homosexuals reach their full potential by making the gay and lesbian community a more integral part of the Orange County power structure.

Kuhn, who is registered as a Democrat in New York, says he especially wants to see gays and lesbians gain clout in the Republican Party, where support for homosexual rights traditionally has been weaker than among Democrats.

“What’s happening in Orange County is a tremendous birth of a gay political consciousness, and I feel that consciousness is very much Republican,” he said. “One of the things Republicans have to recognize is that the Jerry Falwells don’t represent the tradition within the party; the tradition is one of respect for minorities.”

Kuhn sees the 2-month-old Orange County chapter of the Log Cabin Club, a group of gay Republicans who describe themselves as “progressive,” as one means of achieving political power for gays. Another homosexual group, called the Election Committee of the County of Orange, recently raised about $3,200 for state Sen. Ed Davis of Chatsworth, a Republican who supported a state bill barring employers from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.

However, Republican Party officials say gays and lesbians must be willing to support a broad party agenda before they can become a force in Republican politics.

No Activity Seen

“I haven’t seen any real activity by any organized gay or lesbian group in the two years I’ve been down here,” said Greg Haskin, executive director of the Republican Central Committee in Orange County. “Like any other group, they’ve got a special interest, and if they want to see their interests served by the Republican Party, they’ve got to serve the party’s interest. We haven’t seen them walking precincts, or registering voters yet.”

Since joining the Garden Grove-based Community Services Center two months ago, Kuhn has started a gay and lesbian chapter of Narcotics Anonymous and expanded the center’s counseling staff to a total of six part-time volunteers. He also hopes to attract more people to the center’s AIDS Response Program, which includes counseling and referrals, and to its discussion groups.

The discussion groups are aimed at helping gays and lesbians accept their sexual identity and deal with those who react negatively to them. Kuhn, who told his German immigrant parents about his homosexuality in the heat of an argument, knows how wrenching the experience can be.

“I was living in the city (New York), going home occasionally, and enjoying a degree of independence I hadn’t had since college, and we got into quite a lot of conflict,” Kuhn said. “One time my mother was saying, ‘Why are you acting so strange, are you on drugs?’ I said, ‘No, I’m gay.’ Her first reaction was, ‘We’ll help you change.’ ”

“That obviously was totally the wrong way to deal with it because I hadn’t really asked myself how I could give them a better level of understanding and comfort about the issue.”

Raised in Westchester County, N.Y., Kuhn attended the Brunswick School, a prep school in Connecticut, and graduated from Dartmouth College. He earned graduate degrees at Columbia Law School and Business School.

Enjoyed Debutante Parties

“Prep school put me on an interesting track,” said Kuhn, who still wears a button-down shirt, blue blazer, tan chinos and penny loafers. “I enjoyed those debutante parties and I enjoyed those . . . aspirations of working yourself up to upper-class situations and breeding and all those things.”

After finishing business school, Kuhn decided on a political career. He taught international law at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy on Long Island, then moved to Albany to work with the Public Utilities Law Project before serving as president of the National Assn. of Business Councils from 1981 to 1984.

Kuhn said his work with the association as a lobbyist and proponent of gay rights taught him how to help business and political leaders feel at ease with homosexuals and issues of concern to them.

“If you go to a cocktail party where there are 50 or 100 people, I’ve found it’s better to meet and talk to five or 10 of them and get some real human interchange going than to meet 20 or 30 people, speak very briefly with them, and get your card in their hand,” he said.

Donald Hagan, an Irvine physician who is co-chairman of the Election Committee of the County of Orange, described Kuhn as “a good talker and a good listener.”

“One of the greatest qualifications he possesses is that he is committed to helping people within the gay community and helping people on the outside understand us. You have to do that in a non-confrontational manner, and he can,” Hagen said.

Like his predecessor, Niles Merton, who is now publisher of The Advocate, a gay newspaper based in Malibu, Kuhn says he believes full acceptance of gays will be achieved only when people stop thinking of them in terms of sexual behavior. “Gay people are not just defined by whom they happen to sleep with,” he said.

Different Life Styles

“The community of younger gays that frequents the gay bars a lot and may get involved in a number of different couplings sequentially is just a small part of the community, certainly in Orange County. But, it’s the visible part. What we need to do now is emphasize and celebrate the many people who are not involved in that life style.”

According to Kuhn, gays and lesbians choose to live in suburban Orange County instead of “gay ghettos” in cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles because they share the middle-class values of the community. Because they know the feeling of being outsiders in a heterosexual society, however, they also bring with them a special sensitivity to the needs of others.

Kuhn de-emphasizes the existence of prejudice against homosexuals in Orange County but says the possibility of harassment by police who patrol gay bars, as well as the possibility of moral condemnation or violence, leads many gays and lesbians to hide their sexual orientation.

“Either the person is totally integrated in the society as a closeted straight person and a major part of their personality isn’t visible, or they’re open and they become almost a non-person. I’ve experienced . . . wanting to get to know people better or have dealings with people in a non-gay setting and, because I’m openly gay, not having that available.”

In Laguna Beach, where he lives, Kuhn recently encountered a more dramatic display of prejudice.

“One day I was going into a bar and there were some street kids nearby, slinging epithets like ‘fag’ and ‘faggot.’ It was not comfortable. My immediate visceral reaction was to feel a little bit threatened,” he said.

Kuhn said he thinks that some vocal groups of fundamentalist Christians in Orange County, who believe homosexuality is immoral, are partly to blame for fostering prejudice.

“There are some people who have the hatred and discomfort just oozing out of them; I never found that very strong feeling in upstate New York,” he said.

“I have to keep telling myself . . . that is a minority view. I think there are sophisticated people around, despite the alleged swing to the right politically.”