A Waltz With Truth or Trouble? : Bias: Ever since he sued Disneyland over its ban on same-sex dancing, Andrew Exler says he has been campaigning for men’s rights by filing complaints. But some call him a pest.

The kid who sued Disneyland has grown up.

This week marks 10 years since Andrew Exler was kicked out of the Magic Kingdom for dancing with another man. Exler was 19 then. He won a civil rights battle that made headlines around the world and Disneyland ended up allowing same-sex dancing.

As a sort of anniversary party, Exler has invited gay and lesbian friends to join him Saturday at the amusement park and “dance the night away.” He wants to celebrate, to relax.

It has been a busy decade.

The Disneyland case lasted four years and was a turning point in Exler’s life. He was an argumentative teen-ager who’d always seen himself as something of an activist. Now he had found an outlet. Exler embarked on a crusade. He sought out injustice. He filed more lawsuits.

First he sued Chippendales because men weren’t admitted to its male strip shows. Next he sued a Hollywood nightclub, claiming its “ladies free night” was sexually discriminatory. He even sued a senior citizens mobile home park in the Palm Springs area, where he lives, charging age discrimination.

As Exler’s legal experience grew, his litigious wrath expanded. He discovered that submitting a civil rights complaint to the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing was nearly as effective as going to court. He promptly went after gas stations here. Some of the self-serve stations advertised: “We Serve Ladies.” Now, when you drive through town, you see signs that have been changed to read “We Serve You--Just Ask.”

In August, Exler filed suit against Gloria Marshall Figure Salons because they don’t admit men. It was his sixth well-publicized lawsuit to go with several smaller cases and 30 state complaints.

Exler’s activism has been directed primarily at men’s rights. He has been lauded as a pioneer in the field, and to some extent, epitomizes the little guy who dares to make a difference.

But, at a time when minorities, gays and women are still fighting for equality, anyone who speaks up for a relatively privileged class is a target for contempt. And Exler’s affinity for lawsuits has led him to be branded by critics as a professional litigant.

“Enough of Exler,” read a letter in the Desert Sun newspaper in the wake of the mobile home park suit. “Mr. Exler is not satisfied with attacking women, private enterprises, Mickey Mouse, now he directs his selfish, warped sense of values toward senior citizens. . . . He is a troublemaker who should get lost.”

Exler is unfazed by such criticism. His words, though self-righteous, are calmly spoken.

“Black people tell me, ‘Don’t compare what you’re doing to what civil rights leaders of the ‘60s did,’ ” he says. “But I don’t see any difference between what I’m doing and what Rosa Parks was doing when she refused to get up and go to the back of the bus.

“I know I’m right and I fight.”

Dark clouds hang close over the desert as shards of lightning flash in the hills. Exler steers a pale blue Cadillac through rain-washed streets that are deserted in midafternoon. The unseasonal storm has driven people indoors.

Life is generally quiet in this resort town, so it has not taken long for Exler to become known here. Or despised, some would say. In the three years since he moved from Los Angeles, the newspapers have received many letters from him, the radio station many phone calls. The woman who runs the public law library often sees him pawing through the stacks. Palm Springs’ gay community has repeatedly asked Exler, who is openly gay, to tone down his act.

“People wonder what he is trying to accomplish,” says Jim Suguitan, editor of a gay and lesbian publication called the Bottom Line. “I used to think he was out for the notoriety. Now I can see that Andrew has his heart in the right direction but sometimes he’s misguided.”

The American Civil Liberties Union refused to endorse Exler’s Disneyland suit. Other activists have complained that his cases distract the court from more pressing civil rights issues.

“With the Chippendale’s case, I’ve heard people say ‘What do we need this right for?’ ” said Jon Davidson, a senior staff attorney for the ACLU of Southern California.

Undaunted, Exler filed similar complaints against Zelda’s, a Palm Springs Club, and Pompeii, in nearby Cathedral City. He says, simply: “People have always been against me.”

In person, this man is not contentious. He is pudgy and pale, wearing a Mickey Mouse watch and two earrings, though his left ear has five piercings.

His business card reads: “Andrew Exler, Danced at Disneyland, legal assistant, civil rights activist, free-lance journalist, 1991 law student.” And he is not shy about using the word crusader in self-assessment.

Critics scoff. Exler has not attracted any sort of organized following, they say. Nor does he fight with the activist’s more established weapons of protest or boycott.

“Lawsuits are much more effective and they can be quicker,” Exler responds. “I can go to court and make a change. I can file a complaint with the state and stop a business from discriminating.

“And you don’t have to go looking for these lawsuits,” he says. “When people are getting screwed, you see it. You read about it in the newspaper and hear it on the radio.”

Doubters have also accused Exler of profiting from his lawsuits, of living off the settlements he makes with businesses that he files against.

Exler says that, as part of such settlements, he is prohibited from revealing specific amounts. He insists that he’s received no more than $4,500 over the past decade.

Some of that money has come from lawsuits, though he says he didn’t make a dime from the Disneyland case. The rest has come from submitting state complaints under the Unruh Civil Rights Act, which legislates against discrimination by businesses. Any business found in violation must change its discriminatory policy and pay a minimum of $250 to the complainant. Exler says he often withdraws his complaint without payment if the business agrees to reform.

“Civil rights plaintiffs lose more often than they win,” says Erwin Chemerinsky, a USC law professor. “Can someone get rich from filing civil rights suits? It’s possible to imagine that but I don’t think so.

“The question really isn’t whether he does or doesn’t make money,” Chemerinsky says. “The question is whether he is bringing meritorious or frivolous suits. My instinct is that he’s serving a social function because he’s testing what the law means and questioning gender roles.”

If Exler is making money, he does not show it. He drives a 14-year-old car and lives in a mobile home that he owns. He has worked, in recent years, as a filing clerk, a hospital employee and a paralegal.

“The only gain made in civil rights cases is changing the law. Usually the plaintiff and the attorney lose money,” says John J. Duran, an Anaheim gay rights attorney who is representing Exler in the case against Florentine Gardens, the Hollywood club that admits miniskirted women free of charge on certain nights. “Andrew is working to ensure equal rights for men. . . . Andrew is a part of the reformation of American culture.”

Not all of Exler’s lawyers speak so glowingly.

Gloria Allred took on the Chippendales case in June, 1988. Allred has made a name for herself handling similar suits and she initially sang Exler’s praises. Theirs might have been a match made in civil rights heaven.

But it didn’t work out that way.

Exler says that he (and two co-plaintiffs) were hoping to take the case to court and win a judicial ruling that would set legal precedence for male strip clubs. Allred, however, was convinced they should accept a settlement. She believed that Chippendales offered better terms than Exler et al. could have won in court.

“I was surprised,” Exler said. “I felt this would be a very strong case.”

Heated telephone conversations ensued. Then, Exler says, Allred promised that if he settled the case, she would get him on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.”

“I have never promised to get anyone, including Andrew, on any television show,” Allred says. “I do not produce ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ and I have no control over who that show will choose as its guest.”

When Exler did not accept the settlement offer, Allred says she withdrew as his attorney. Exler subsequently settled out of court, anyway. Chippendales gave him a letter of apology, an undisclosed amount of money and a promise that men would be allowed into the show, Exler says.

Beyond rebutting his claims, Allred tersely declines to talk about Exler. He says he remains disappointed.

“I was always Gloria’s biggest fan,” he says. “I’m not anymore.”

Maybe activism, like charity, begins at home.

In 1974, Marilyn Exler was determined to say a blessing over the Torah at her son Andrew’s bar mitzvah. Few Conservative temples afforded women such privileges then. But Marilyn Exler had often discussed the importance of civil rights with her three boys and she wasn’t about to back down from this fight. She protested and became the first woman to take part in a service at Temple Beth Emet in Anaheim.

“What I said to Andrew was that if you believe in something you should fight for that belief,” recalls Marilyn, who is a family law attorney.

The incident remains vivid among Exler’s childhood memories. Not that he needed much goading.

“Always arguing,” Marilyn recalls of him. “Yes, there were some difficult times.”

By fifth grade, Exler was refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance or take part in the noontime prayer at school. By age 16, he was writing letters to local newspapers condemning the school board for what he saw as inadequate sex education.

And by the time he went to Disneyland with a gay friend, Exler was determined to challenge the amusement park’s ban on same-sex dancing. He had discovered a larger arena in which to do battle.

“It makes life very tough for him,” says his mother. “Whenever you speak out, especially on issues that are unpopular, you are going to have people attack you. I don’t know that I’d be able to withstand the criticism that he has.”

Not all of Exler’s causes are popular at home. His father, a retired engineer, disagrees with the Gloria Marshall case. His brother, an Orthodox Jew living in Israel, does not accept Andrew’s homosexuality. Soon, Exler says, he will challenge discounts given to senior citizens.

“My parents qualify for those discounts,” he says. “They don’t like it when I bring that up.”

To this day, Disneyland insists that its decision to allow same-sex dancing had nothing to do with Exler. The scope of the ruling, park officials say, was limited to him and his partner. Yet Disneyland quietly changed its policy in 1985, at roughly the same time it dropped an appeal of the Exler case.

“Of course it had to do with me,” Exler says.

The cases are pending against Florentine Gardens and Gloria Marshall--Exler filed separate suits against the figure salon in Orange County and Los Angeles Superior courts. In the meantime, Exler works at a temporary job as an administrative assistant and lives with a man who is continually mistaken for the one who danced with him at Disneyland. Exler has also restricted himself to a diet of salads and has lost nine pounds “in spite of Gloria (Marshall),” he says.

The line is thin, perhaps, between someone who feels he must fight injustice and someone who simply goes looking for a fight. If so, Exler has always consciously treaded that line and continues to do so.

He recently took on the public law library because it wouldn’t stay open on Saturdays. Entering a restaurant for lunch, he picks up a senior citizen’s discount coupon as fodder for a possible future case. And he has a suit pending in small claims court against the company that maintains his trailer park. He claims they got tar on his Cadillac while repairing the driveway.

“If you don’t fight,” he says, “you don’t get anything.”

Should Exler get accepted to a law school next fall, he doesn’t expect to be filing many suits in the near future.

“I’m going to have to start slowing down because there won’t be the time once I start studying,” he says.

Undoubtedly, some people will be relieved to hear that.

“A few,” Exler says. “But I’ll catch up with them eventually.”