Gay Festival Opens: Taunts, Clashes Take Center Stage

Gay rights advocates and fundamentalist Christians shoved and taunted each other Saturday at Orange County’s first Gay Pride Festival, but organizers called it a miracle that the festival even occurred.

“I can’t believe this is Orange County,” exclaimed Marcy Aguirre, a lesbian attending the festival. “It looks like we finally made it here. This is so beautiful.”

Dozens of uniformed police and mounted officers patrolled the festival grounds at Centennial Regional Park in Santa Ana, where someone sprinkled tacks in the parking lots to puncture tires. But despite the shouting and shoving, no violence occurred and no one was arrested.

Inside the park, surrounded by a chain-link fence, the festival was a peaceful scene of strolling couples, barbecues, bright balloons, and musicians. Police estimated that about 1,000 people had arrived by mid-afternoon.

Tom Nolan, a member of the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors who is gay, said both gay activists and opponents of gay rights throughout the state will be watching Orange County as the festival continues today.

“It’s a miracle that this is happening in Orange County,” Nolan said of the two-day event. “When people think of Orange County, they think of anti-gay conservatives. This is going to give other smaller communities the strength to carry on and have their own festivals.”

Janet Avery, president of Orange County Cultural Pride, the festival’s organizer, said, “I’m exhilarated. It’s here and it’s happening. Nobody can ever take this day away from us.”

John J. Duran, an attorney for Orange County Cultural Pride, said the festival’s success was a victory for gay rights.

“I’m going to be on pins and needles until this is over,” Duran said. “But right now, we’re the victors. We’ve been the winners in this battle since the gates opened this morning and the festival came alive.”

But the clashes also began soon after the gates opened at 10 a.m.

Along the sidewalks of the 87-acre park on Edinger Avenue and Fairview Street, picketers circled, waving signs and shouting at arriving cars. One sign read: “Sodomy, Drugs, AIDS and Abortion All End in Death.”

The continued magnet for the controversy was the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, head of the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition and the leader for the last several months of an unsuccessful effort to prevent the festival.

Sheldon and his supporters have filed recall notices against six of the seven Santa Ana City Council members who refused to sign a “pro-family” resolution, drafted by Sheldon, that would have banned the festival from the park.

Sheldon’s plan for a noon press conference at a park entrance became a verbal battle between the two sides. Fundamentalists shouted, “Sinners!” and “Sodomites!” and gay activists countered with, “You bigots!” and “Liars!”

Instead of the press conference, Sheldon spoke with individual reporters. The tense atmosphere led to occasional pushing matches as homosexuals sought access to Sheldon’s mini-press conferences.

“They’re violating our civil rights,” Sheldon said of the gay protesters.

“We’re not here to win or lose,” Sheldon said. “We just want to show these people their sins and lead them down the right path. We want to help, but it doesn’t seem like most of them want help.”

After some escalation in pushing and shouting between the two sides, police directed Sheldon’s group to congregate in the northeast corner of the park, effectively cooling the confrontations.

Sheldon was a target within the festival grounds. One booth at the festival featured a balloon dart game where players paid $1 to shoot three darts at six targets, one of which bore the minister’s name. Other names on the targets included Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) and entertainer Anita Bryant, both staunch opponents of gay rights.

The festival also was an opportunity for some homosexuals, male and female, to become open about their sexuality for the first time.

“I’ve seen more people come out of the closet and show who they are because of the festival,” Aguirre said. “People want to come out and see each other and know they are not alone in this.”

Before the festival, even the rental of a carnival dunking booth had become a controversial issue.

Organizers of the Election Committee of the County of Orange, a gay political-action group at the festival, had signed a contract with an Anaheim firm to rent a dunking booth. But the firm abruptly canceled the contract late last month due to “unforeseen circumstances,” firm officials wrote in a letter to the committee.

The unforeseen circumstance, it turned out, was the discovery by officials at Carnival Services Inc. that the booth was to be used at the Gay Pride Festival.

“The whole gay life style is morally objectionable and distasteful to me, and we decided we really didn’t want to rent out equipment for that event,” firm owner Dean Brainard said Saturday. “It was a moral issue.”

But Brainard eventually changed his position and honored the contract, allowing festival-goers the chance Saturday to take three shots at dunking a friend or foe into a shallow tank of water.

Committee organizers maintained that Brainard backed down from his original stance only under threat of a lawsuit. But Brainard insisted that he simply had a change of heart.

“It was a false issue that was just creating a barrier to dialogue,” he said.