Orange County Gays Assume High Political Profile

At the podium of a Disneyland Hotel ballroom stood Thomas F. Riley, retired Marine Corps general and chairman of the Orange County Board of Supervisors, lauding the contributions of two members of the community. The subject of his praise: a gay couple who had worked to combat AIDS and discrimination against homosexuals.

Even Mickey Mouse was there, roaming the black-tie audience of 700 and posing for pictures with homosexual couples.

For Don Hagan, one of the honorees, that April evening was hugely significant in demonstrating the gains that he and others in the gay community have made in Orange County.

“It was a symbol of the change in attitudes, in acceptance, here in Orange County. That was something you would never have seen here even three or four years ago,” he said.

The gay movement in politically conservative Orange County--slower in developing than in other urban centers throughout the state--is seeking, with unprecedented visibility, to flex its political muscle. But even as gay leaders seek to make their presence felt, they have been met by a ferocious attack from opponents, especially the religious right.

“The homosexuals are going for broke these days, clearly,” declared the Rev. Louis Sheldon, head of the Traditional Values Coalition in Anaheim and a fierce anti-gay activist. “The battle is now, and the community as a whole is going to have to decide if it’s going to accept this repugnant behavior as somehow normal. I don’t think they will.”

At no time in the development of the gay political movement in Orange County has this political clash been seen more vividly than in recent months:

*In Santa Ana, a group dominated by those of the religious right is seeking to halt plans for a Gay Pride Festival that organizers bill as the largest cultural celebration of the homosexual community ever held in the county. As opponents of the festival pressed City Council members to revoke the event’s permit, several hundred gay-rights activists met them head on last month outside City Hall with chants of “Two, four, six, eight--Orange County ain’t so straight!”

*In Irvine, a group of residents is trying to persuade voters to approve a November ballot initiative that would delete the words “sexual orientation” from the city’s human rights ordinance, thereby removing homosexuals from the protection other minorities have against discrimination.

*In Corona del Mar, a high school psychology teacher earlier this year was ordered to stop his 19-year practice of inviting homosexuals to speak to his class after opposition mounted from at least 70 parents.

*And in the most far-reaching clash to date on the sensitive issue, the county Board of Supervisors in June rejected a measure that would have outlawed discrimination against AIDS victims in housing, employment and public services. The measure was pitched by some supporters as largely symbolic, but the three supervisors who opposed it maintained that it needlessly duplicated existing laws.

Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder, who supported the measure along with Riley, lamented later that the vote would only solidify Orange County’s image as a “recalcitrant” community that has not yet achieved an urban outlook.

The supervisors’ rejection of the AIDS anti-discrimination plan, some in the homosexual community say, exposed the weakness of the county’s gay movement. But, the leaders say, the defeat has galvanized them for an even stronger fight.

‘Got Overconfident’

“We got overconfident,” said Jeff Le Tourneau, co-founder of the Orange County Visibility League, a gay activist group formed in 1987. “It was a failure on our part to realize that logic and reason aren’t enough. We failed to anticipate the arm-twisting and political intimidation of the religious right and respond to it. And that was the blow that awakened the sleeping giant.

“We have to put the Rev. Sheldon and his people on notice that we are at war here in Orange County.”

The Orange County struggle has been watched and in some cases joined by gay activists in Los Angeles.

“This is a very exciting time of progress in Orange County, and we here are just delighted with it,” said Morris Kight, a longtime leader in Los Angeles’ gay community. Kight said he is issuing an “emergency call to action” asking Los Angeles-area gays to support their brothers and sisters to the south.

Added Mark Kostopoulos, a spokesman for ACT UP/LA, a gay rights group known for its aggressive tactics: “Obviously, the (gay and lesbian) people of Orange County are not satisfied with being invisible and are finding a new assertiveness.”

Yet Kight acknowledged that, even with such progress, Orange County gay leaders face greater obstacles--largely in the form of such strident anti-gay leaders as Sheldon and Reps. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) and Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove)--than those faced in Los Angeles. “They’re going to have a fight on their hands,” Kight said of Orange County gays.

Some in the Los Angeles community have shown a willingness to help in that fight. At a recent rally at Santa Ana City Hall in support of the Gay Pride Festival, for instance, about two dozen members of Los Angeles’ gay community--most from ACT UP/LA--drove down to show their support, according to Kostopoulos.

Sheldon, however, sought to turn this support to his advantage by maintaining that the bulk of the more than 400 gay-rights supporters had to be “bused in” from Los Angeles--evidence, he claimed, that grass-roots support in Orange County was minimal.

Gay rights organizations also claim to be growing in numbers. Their leaders say there are about 700 “activists” who will come to protests and other public events in the county, but that the potential for future growth is enormous. Although the number of homosexuals in Orange County is not known, gay community leaders estimate there are several hundred thousand. Sheldon and other anti-gay forces say the figure is much lower.

In a recent letter on the Gay Pride Festival issue, Dannemeyer urged Santa Ana Mayor Daniel H. Young to “take a stand and affirm the heterosexual ethic as the foundation of our society. . . .”

“Please do not allow the homosexual community to bully you into advocating their perverse life style.”

Laguna Beach Mayor Robert F. Gentry, the county’s only openly gay elected official, says that conservative leaders such as Dannemeyer and Sheldon are “out of step with the people of Orange County” as reflected by public opinion yardsticks.

In a 1986 survey conducted by a UC Irvine pollster, 67% of county residents said that “homosexual relations between consenting adults in the privacy of their home” should be legal, while 27% said they should be illegal. Nationwide, a Los Angeles Times Poll that same year found that 53% of the people surveyed said such relations should be legal, while 35% said they should be illegal.

“The old stereotype of traditional, intransigent Orange County doesn’t hold up on the gay rights issue,” Gentry said. “We may not have won yet, but the very fact that these issues are being discussed so heatedly and so frequently now is a huge step.”