Gays, Fundamentalists Fight in O.C.; 6 Arrested

Six people were arrested Sunday after a fist-swinging brawl broke out among more than 50 militant gays and fundamentalist Christians at Orange County’s first gay pride festival.

About 50 Santa Ana police equipped with riot helmets and batons were called in to quell the disturbance at the city’s Centennial Regional Park, but no serious injuries were reported as the two-day gay festival concluded Sunday evening.

The six people arrested--identified by police as both gay activists and fundamentalists--were taken to the Santa Ana police station, where they were cited for interfering with police, then released. The misdemeanor violation carries a maximum $500 penalty.

Those arrested identified themselves as Jade Stone, 21, of San Francisco; Todd Michael Bales, 24, of Buena Park; Patrick Kieran Brown, 19, of Placentia; Ruben Mario Chaves, 28, of Norwalk; Robert Charles Miller, 32, of Corona, and William Randall Chadwick, 35, of Corona. Stone told police he was a member of the Radical Fairies--Nomenus Inc. of San Francisco, a militant gay group.

Police had to keep separating the two sides, who continued to taunt each other for nearly an hour. Santa Ana Police Lt. Robert Helton said police were actively involved for about 15 minutes.

Police ordered organizers of the Orange County Gay Pride Festival to lock the gates to the festival grounds for half an hour after the brawl and considered shutting the event down early but decided to let it continue as scheduled for the rest of the day. Attendance estimates varied from 5,000 to 10,000.

The violence broke out near the park entrance on Edinger Avenue at Mohawk Drive, following a gay pride parade that had snaked around the park lake’s mile-long perimeter. Although the parade was inside the park, it was outside the gated festival grounds, where visitors had to pay a $10 admission fee.

About 75 gay participants of the parade, some of them members of the militant homosexual group Act Up of Los Angeles and the Orange County Visibility League, encircled about 20 to 25 fundamentalists on a grassy knoll near the intersection about 1:30 p.m.

The gays began chanting “kiss, kiss, kiss,” and several pairs began kissing each other. Several of the fundamentalists, clearly outnumbered, tried to retreat as they yelled “repent! repent!”

The fundamentalists were followers of the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, head of the Anaheim-based Traditional Values Coalition, who fought vehemently in recent months to prevent the city of Santa Ana from allowing the festival. Sheldon was not present Sunday and could not be reached for comment.

‘It Was Scary’

“It was scary. All of a sudden the homosexuals surrounded us and began doing stuff to provoke us,” said Forrest Ricker, a 60-year-old fundamentalist from Orange. “I held up my two Bibles and asked God to forgive them.”

Rick Turner, a member of Act Up, said the gays were merely staging a “kiss-in” as a “simple act of affection.”

“The fundamentalists are always saying we are full of hate,” said Turner, who is suffering from AIDS. “We were saying we are not. So, we proved it by . . . staging a kiss-in.”

But a moment after the kissing started, the two sides started shoving and hitting each other. Police moved in and wrestled two of the gays to the ground, pinning them to the asphalt with their batons.

“For several minutes, chaos broke out,” Ricker said. “I just turned and hustled out of there.”

Lt. Helton said officers finally intervened in the confrontation after “sporadic flare-ups” between the two groups.

But after the initial fights were quelled, other gays standing nearby in a growing crowd of around 200 people began pushing the fundamentalists out of the park. The two sides again called each other names and swung with fists, prompting police to rush back in.

Fundamentalists Regroup

The fundamentalists, at that point, left the park on their own, regrouping across Edinger Avenue in a residential neighborhood, witnesses said. Police reinforcements, meanwhile, began arriving from surrounding jurisdictions, including Costa Mesa, Fountain Valley, Newport Beach and the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. Helton said officers from outside jurisdictions were not needed, however, as enough Santa Ana police backups had already arrived to handle the emergency.

The police--now numbering about 50 and wearing riot helmets and rubber gloves--formed a line along the Edinger Avenue side of the park and began moving in with riot batons, forcing a crowd that had grown to about 500 people back toward the gay festival entrance in the middle of the park. Police made four more arrests.

Many of the bystanders ran back inside the festival, some crying. With emotions running high on the festival grounds and some gays shouting “You’re taking away our civil rights!” at police, Janet Avery, president of Orange County Cultural Pride, took the stage and pleaded for calm.

“We came here to celebrate,” Avery said as the crowd quieted. “If you have a friend who is not here to celebrate, please get them in the mood. This is our day in the sun.”

Robert F. Gentry, mayor of Laguna Beach and Orange County’s only openly gay elected official, said the clash resulted when “emotions boiled over” on the part of gays tired of what he called constant verbal harassment. The festival, Gentry said, marked the “first celebration in Orange County that validates” the existence of the gay community.

“And when you constantly hear voices calling you names, calling you a sinner and worse, you reach a breaking point,” said Gentry, who was watching the parade and said he was several hundred feet from the violence. “I hold Rev. Sheldon and the fundamentalists responsible for this.”

But Glenn Benjamin, a north Orange County fundamentalist who carried a sign that read “Jesus Saves,” fixed the blame on the gays for the incident.

“Why did they have to go that far?” asked an angry Benjamin, who is a member of a group called Christian Patriots. “They (gays) have the park, they got their way. We were within our rights. I hope they burn in hell.”

Bruce Gillings and his wife saw it differently. They had come to watch the parade and were “stunned and shocked” by the verbal attacks launched at the parade participants by fundamentalists, several of whom carried loudspeakers.

‘Humiliating the Gays’

“The protesters were humiliating the gays,” said Gillings, from Costa Mesa. “I’m not sure I could have resisted answering that kind of barrage.

“There’s a difference between disagreeing and this kind of inhuman agitation,” Gillings said. “It was lousy. . . .”

Members of gay and fundamentalist groups alike expressed concern that Santa Ana police did not intervene quickly enough to prevent the clash.

“Where were the police?” said Ricker, one of the fundamentalists who was in the midst of the ruckus. “When the gays moved on us, the police just watched. It wasn’t until there was shoving and pushing that the police seemed to take notice. And then there weren’t enough of them.”

John Todd, a Diamond Bar real estate agent and gay rights activist, agreed: “The police were slow off the mark. No matter who started it, the police should have sensed that trouble was brewing and stepped in. They waited too long.”

Before the parade, a police spokesman had said the department did not anticipate a repeat of Saturday’s trouble, and in fact was not deploying as many officers. Helton added that he did not believe police were slow in taking action.

“We took action as soon as it was appropriate for us to take action,” he said.

Some onlookers said they believed the police overreacted to the situation.

But Helton defended the department’s actions.

‘Not Overly Aggressive’

“I think we responded to a potentially very violent situation,” Helton said. “We were not overly aggressive. We were quite the contrary. We acted swiftly.”

Santa Ana Councilwoman Patricia A. McGuigan, a key supporter of the festival, defended the police.

“I feel that our department did a good job in maintaining control,” she said.

Helton said the police considered closing the festival early because of the potential for more violence. But with large numbers of officers patrolling the park on foot and on horseback, he said, Police Chief Paul Walters made the decision to keep it open until its regular 9 p.m. closing time.

There were no more serious incidents reported, although there was a lingering air of tension over the festival and many participants went home early. Organizers ended the event at 8:45.

Despite the violence that marred the festival, gay leaders are calling the two-day event “a triumph,” because they managed to open the doors and hold the parade. They pointed out that the parade was an otherwise peaceful event, marked by gay people kissing and hugging.

Avery, the Orange County Cutural Pride President, predicted that a second annual gay pride festival will be held in Orange County.

“There has to be,” Avery said. “There are too many people who have come up to me to tell me they came out of the closet in the last two days. We’re here to stay. They’re not going to push us back in the closet again.”

Times staff photographer Gail Fisher contributed to this report.