Gay Pride Event Spurs Face-Off : Crowds on Each Side Chant and Push Outside Santa Ana City Hall

Debate over a gay pride festival planned in Santa Ana in September erupted into angry shouts and occasional physical confrontations Monday as more than 550 protesters on both sides of the volatile issue clashed outside Santa Ana City Hall.

Gay activists armed with placards shouted “Shame, shame, shame!”, “Lies, lies, lies!” and “Two, four, six eight--Orange County ain’t so straight” at opponents of the Gay Pride Festival.

Fundamentalists and other festival opponents countered those shouts by reading Scripture and later started a chant of their own: “No special rights for sodomites!”

Police Call In Reinforcements

Santa Ana police brought in 40 additional officers to add to their original 20, and scanned people entering the council chambers with metal detectors. But they said the situation was under control and reported no arrests or incidents of major violence.

Despite indications from some City Council members that they wanted to reconsider a city permit issued for the festival, the council took no action on the question at its regular meeting. Instead, Mayor Daniel H. Young directed the city attorney to further study the legal issues surrounding the event and report back to him within a week.

The city attorney has already told the council that organizers of the festival have a constitutional right to go ahead with plans for the event at Centennial Park on Sept. 9 and 10.

The first of its kind in the county, the festival is to include films, live entertainment, historical displays and other activities. Opponents have said that a gay festival was inappropriate for a family-oriented park and sought to have the event held at the Civic Center in downtown Santa Ana.

On Monday, religious groups and others who oppose the festival turned out in force before the council meeting to protest, although they changed their tactics somewhat to highlight legal and law-enforcement concerns, rather than moral-based ones.

They were outnumbered by gay activists on the patio outside City Hall. The chants of the gay rights supporters were aimed specifically at the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon of the Anaheim-based California Coalition for Traditional Values, the most vocal opponent of the festival.

Sheldon had planned to hold a news conference just before the council meeting to expound on that opposition, but that plan was scuttled by the protests. As Sheldon sought a quiet spot, activists followed him around the plaza area, whistling loudly and banging on two drums that they had brought with them. Finally, Sheldon abandoned plans for the news conference and spoke instead with individual reporters.

And about a dozen of Sheldon’s supporters, seeking to buffer him from the rancor, formed a human chain around him at one point. That led to occasional light shoving matches between the two sides as some of the gay activists tried to surround those who surrounded Sheldon.

“This needs to be reported--that my life is in jeopardy,” Sheldon said. ‘My liberty is being infringed upon.”

Inside City Hall, it was a different scene. About 200 people from among the 550 protesters packed the council chambers. One speaker made a reference to death threats against leaders on both sides of the issue, but on the whole, the meeting proceeded calmly as each side presented two speakers to voice their concerns.

Arguments by speakers opposed to the festival--Sheldon and Charles Farano, an attorney who represents six city residents seeking to block the event--centered on the “clear and present danger” that they said the festival would pose to the community. They maintained that participants in the festival would far exceed the 2,500 suggested in the event’s permit--perhaps by hundreds of thousands.

And Farano, while acknowledging that “we cannot deny the pride group or any group” their rights to assemble, insisted that “the (city’s) recreational facilities are being used for political use, not recreational use.”

But Eleanor Cyr of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays in her address to the council said: “I have rarely seen Christians with so little understanding and so much hate. Mr. Sheldon has nothing to fear with the word homosexual . What he has to fear is the lack of knowledge.”

Councilman John Acosta, who requested that the issue be put on Monday night’s council agenda for discussion, has said he would like for the county to cancel or relocate the festival.

But City Atty. Edward J. Cooper has ruled that the City Council cannot retroactively revoke the permit. Cooper, in a memo to the council, said “the group in the present case has a constitutional right of free speech and assembly. . . . There are no facts to indicate that this group poses any ‘clear and present danger.’ ”