2 Gay Rights Activists Acquitted, Another Fined for Disrupting Sheldon Seminar

Two gay rights activists were acquitted Monday while a third was found guilty on charges that they disrupted a speech by Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) during a heterosexual ethics seminar in March.

Orange County Municipal Court Judge Stephen J. Sundvold convicted David Barton, 29, of Orange on a misdemeanor count of disturbing the peace, fined him $100 and placed him on informal probation for one year.

As a condition of probation, Sundvold ordered Barton to stay 50 feet away from Dannemeyer and the seminar’s leader, the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, an outspoken proponent of traditional values who described the gay protesters as “neo-Nazis” on the witness stand.

“He can heckle, protest, do whatever he wants, as long as he stays 50 feet away from them,” Sundvold said after a brief court trial. “What I’m trying to avoid is a direct confrontation.”

Barton and three others were arrested March 8 at a two-day seminar titled “Preservation of the Heterosexual Coalition.” All four had bought $50 tickets to attend the event sponsored by Sheldon’s Traditional Values Coalition and held at the Power Community Church in Anaheim.

About 45 minutes into Dannemeyer’s speech, Barton moved to the front of the church and began reading from the Bible. A married couple who support gay rights, Paul Courry, 36, and Larkette L. Lein, 38, of Irvine then joined Barton with protest signs that said, “Pray to End Gay Bashing.” They were accompanied by a fourth member of their group, David Cammack, 32, of Orange.

Sundvold dismissed charges against Cammack during the trial last week after a videotape of the incident showed he had remained passive in the emotional confrontation that followed Barton’s interruption of Dannemeyer.

Monday, the judge found Courry and Lein not guilty of misdemeanor conspiracy, trespass, and disturbing the peace, explaining that if their signs had shown support for the majority in the group, their arrests would have been unlikely.

“I think the interruption was the reaction to the signs,” Sundvold said.

The judge also found Barton not guilty of trespass and conspiracy. But the judge said the videotape and Barton’s own testimony proved that he was not there just to exercise his right of free speech.

When he stood up during Dannemeyer’s speech, Barton announced, “The agenda calls for me to interrupt.”

“Clearly, it wasn’t his intention to engage in dialogue with Mr. Dannemeyer, but to shut down the meeting,” Sundvold said. “Mr. Dannemeyer had spoken for 45 minutes and Mr. Barton’s reaction was: ‘That’s all you’re going to get, because I’m going to bring this meeting down.’ ”

The judge said that if Barton had raised his hand and asked the right to speak, or if he had at least tried to communicate an exchange of ideas with Dannemeyer, his actions might have been covered by a freedom-of-speech defense.

“It was a fair hearing,” Barton said after the trial. “I think the next time I will go about this a little differently. I do not want to go to jail.”

Lein said she had been ready to volunteer to go to jail with Barton if it had come to that. She described herself and her husband as “straight Christians who believe that Lou Sheldon is trying to give Jesus a bad name.”

Barton’s supporters had been angry earlier in the day when Sheldon, the focal point of their protest, testified about what took place that day.

Sheldon had little to say on the witness stand because he had been outside the hall doing a news interview when Dannemeyer’s speech was interrupted. But many Barton supporters quietly hissed and snickered when Sheldon told the judge that “the homosexuals have made a commitment in writing that they want to shut down free speech.”

The homosexuals who protested at the seminar, Sheldon testified, “use Gestapo tactics. A neo-Nazi movement is really what it is. If you just look at their dress, and their approach, it’s their tactics more than anything else.”

Sheldon entered the courtroom through the judge’s hallway, which he said was a precaution the court permitted for his protection. He was accompanied by a bodyguard.

Barton, who is active in the group Act Up, which stands for AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, said he does not intend to let his arrest and conviction deter him from vehement protests against Sheldon’s group.

“Hell no,” he said. “I believe in what I’m doing. I did what I did (at the seminar) because it was the only way I could get Dannemeyer’s attention. He won’t meet with me in his office.”

In his testimony, Barton said he considered his interruption of Dannemeyer “a redress of grievances.” But he said he agreed with the judge that there might be better ways to go about it in the future.