Gay Fete’s Organizer a Target for Foes

Janet Avery felt her heart pounding as she stood outside Santa Ana’s city hall waiting for a council meeting to begin.

Even though she was with more than a dozen friends, she felt threatened on that May night when protesters and supporters of the county’s first gay pride festival gathered to voice their opinions to a bewildered City Council.

Before her were the festival’s opponents, waving signs that declared, “Homosexuality Is a Sin.” Some people made derogatory slurs about Avery’s sexual orientation, and the words stunned her even though she had heard it all before.

“I felt it was all directed at me,” said Avery, president of the festival’s organizing group. “It was as if all this hate was rushing at me. I was scared. I wanted to run and run fast.”

Low-Key Leader

The Janet Avery who stood her ground that day is the low-key leader of the festival that has many opponents up in arms and gay activists hoping that it will be a success.

As president of the festival’s organizing group, Orange County Cultural Pride, she is in charge of making sure that the festival is a success despite heated opposition that has caused shouting and shoving outside City Council chambers. And as one of the key leaders of OCCP, she has become an instant lightning rod for ardent foes.

Avery is not surprised by the rumblings caused by the festival, but she admitted that the seesaw struggle to get the festival anchored has taken its toll.

She has been called psychologically sick by fundamentalists and other festival foes because of her sexuality. She has lost count of how many hours she has spent on the festival during her free time after working as a data center manager for PacTel Cellular. And she has had to make dinner dates with her lover to make sure they have time together.

“It’s like having a baby in a sense,” said Avery, who is the mother of a 20-year-old. “There’s little time for yourself. You spend more time worrying about the festival. And after the birth, or in this case after the festival is held, we want to show the festival off. We can’t wait to say, ‘Isn’t this festival the most beautiful baby you ever saw?’ ” Avery said.

The county’s first gay pride festival had a simple beginning.

In February, the OCCP filed an application with Santa Ana’s Recreation and Community Services Department. Within months, the application was approved with no fanfare.

But in May, the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, the leader of an Anaheim-based lobbying group called the Coalition for Traditional Values, found out about the festival, and the issue exploded.

Since then, he has tried repeatedly to get the City Council to revoke the park permit on grounds of morality and of his fear that the festival would cause “clear and present” danger because of the number of people it would attract.

So far, he has not succeeded. The city attorney has advised council members that they cannot legally revoke the festival’s permit at this stage.

Fears Swarm of Outsiders

Sheldon has said that OCCP’s ads in gay publications statewide will bring a swarm of outsiders to the county.

“I am not in this to win or to lose but to be faithful to what is truth and morally right,” Sheldon said.

Sheldon, who is paid by the coalition to lobby state legislators over issues such as abortion, gays and pornography, is blunt about what he thinks of Avery: She needs “reparative therapy” to reverse her sexuality.

He called her sexuality a “behavior problem.”

“Such individuals may be very successful in their vocations, but their life styles may be in shambles,” Sheldon said.

But he insisted that he does not dislike Avery personally: “We love Janet Avery as a person and only encourage her to recognize the need for reparative therapy.”

Avery said she went to mainstream therapy when she was 30 and was told it was all right to be gay.

“I’m going to slump this off like any of his comments,” she said. “He’s having a rough time that I exist as a person and as a lesbian. But frankly, the same God that made him made me.”

Open About Sexuality

Avery, 43, a native of upper New York state, has been open about her sexuality for years. She has California license plates that read GUPPY, which stands for gay yuppie. She is proud about her lover and keeps a photo of her on her office desk.

Her primary worry nowadays is the festival and its outcome. That has been her primary responsibility outside of her PacTel job since she became president of OCCP in April.

“I was the only one foolish enough to take it on,” she jokingly said.

She bristled at the idea that the festival has become strictly an exercise in the right to assemble in Santa Ana.

“It’s not only about the First Amendment,” she said. “We’ve had to educate a lot of people, thanks to Rev. Sheldon. We’ve even had to educate the gays and lesbians in Orange County that they have to stop picking on themselves.”

There is always a longing to lash out at the other side, said Judith Doyle, executive director and founder of Long Beach Lesbian & Gay Pride Inc., which organizes that city’s festival. Doyle said that as the leader of Long Beach’s festival she went through a difficult time, and that Avery is going through the same pains.

“She’s got to be articulate, but not argumentative. She’s got to stand firm, but not invite rebukes. She’s got to be strong,” said Doyle, who was in Avery’s shoes five years ago when Long Beach had its first festival.

Jean O’Leary, executive director of National Gay Rights Advocates, based in Los Angeles, said the Orange County festival will be tracked and followed by anti-gay and gay organizations in the country.

“It’s going to be a bellwether for many cities,” O’Leary said. “There’s so many cities like Orange County. There’s going to be far greater impact than just the local area.”

O’Leary said that in the future the festival can be as successful as San Francisco’s gay pride festival, despite the hurdles its organizers have to leap over, but that it will take time for residents in the county to become familiar with it so it will take hold.

But Sheldon said the OCCP leadership is forcing foreign ideas on county residents, most of whom, he declared, are against the festival.

“I’m acting in response to their political agenda that they are pushing on Orange County,” Sheldon said. “Their values are being pushed on us. It’s West Hollywood values.”

Sheldon has succeeded in intimidating some participants and food vendors--mostly gays from Orange County--from attending the festival, Avery said.

Still Hopes for Ban

Sheldon stands firm in his belief that the festival must be stopped. He is angered by those who say he is motivated by the public attention that the festival has brought to him. His hope is that the City Council will pass an emergency ordinance prohibiting the festival on the ground that it would be a danger to public peace and welfare.

“I’m not grandstanding,” Sheldon said. “I’m just doing what I know is morally right.”

And Avery believes that she and the OCCP are right. “Gays and lesbians from Orange County feel they can participate in Long Beach and West Hollywood,” she said, “but not in their own county. To participate in their own back yard is a little scary. They have a right to be proud in their own county.”