Violent Gay Protest Likely to Backfire

S. I. Hayakawa yanking wires from the protesters’ loudspeaker. Ronald Reagan telling screaming students to “observe the rules or get out.” Pete Wilson catching an orange and tossing it back at angry demonstrators.

By such events are political careers advanced.

And in the view of many political analysts, the gay rights activists who have been aggressively protesting Gov. Wilson’s veto of a bill aimed at protecting homosexuals against job discrimination probably have been helping the governor and hurting their own cause.

Experience tells them that when a governor is showered with debris and obscenity-laced taunts while trying to give a speech, as Wilson was Tuesday at Stanford University, and when demonstrators around the state smash windows, set fires and block traffic in protest of a governor’s action, he is the winner and they the losers.

“I don’t think they’re making any converts,” Wilson observed at Stanford.

Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Los Angeles), the bill’s author, seemed to agree with that thesis when he admonished gay rights activists, “Now is not the time for smashing windows, blocking doors or spilling blood.”

A statewide opinion survey conducted by the independent California Poll before Wilson’s veto had found that the public, by more than 2 to 1, wanted the governor to sign the bill. But that support now could be reduced by the violent protests, said the poll’s veteran director, Mervin Field.

“The gay demonstrations just help the governor because the demonstrators start losing public sympathy and then Wilson’s decision gains a little more credibility and a little more acceptance,” Field said.

The pollster added: “In the tool kit of any campaign manager is a reminder that ‘if there’s any way we can be assaulted or booed or heckled, get it on tape.’ ”

The capture by television cameras of San Francisco State University President S. I. Hayakawa ripping wires from the demonstrators’ sound system propelled him to fame and ultimately into a U.S. Senate seat. Reagan, as California’s governor, never shied from confronting demonstrators. They pumped up his adrenalin and also his poll numbers.

Former President Richard M. Nixon thrived on demonstrations before Watergate. One widely photographed incident was at a San Jose campaign rally where the President stood on a limousine facing rock-throwing protesters and raised both arms while flashing the victory sign. “That’s what they hate,” he gleefully told an aide.

“It was hand-to-hand combat between him and anti-war demonstrators and he was not beyond using that and I don’t blame him,” said Ken Khachigian, a former speech writer for Nixon, Reagan and ex-Gov. George Deukmejian.

As for the anti-Wilson demonstrations by gay rights activists, Khachigian said, “Let’s put it this way: A lot of middle-class people felt they were hurt by the sales tax increases this summer. Did they go out and break windows and things? No. The average person feels like, ‘When something happens to me I don’t like, I don’t go out and bust windows or throw rocks.’ There’s an automatic negative reaction.”

Marty Wilson, a private political consultant and longtime adviser to the governor (no relation), said: “If it had been in people’s minds that they were in favor of the bill, when they see this kind of violent reaction it’s just got to plant a seed of doubt in their minds. . . . Sometimes in politics you’ve got to be judged by your enemies.”

Ed Rollins, a veteran of California politics and former political director in the Reagan White House, said that “most people are not worked up one way or the other on this (gay rights) issue. But when they see demonstrators being disrespectful to a governor, it just has to make the blue-collar guy, who may be a little mad at Wilson for putting in a snack tax, say, ‘Well, this guy has guts.’ ”

Pollster Field said that gays and lesbians, because of their lifestyles, have a special problem winning public support through demonstrations. “The public will tolerate gays, they will recognize that gays have rights, but they really do not accept the lifestyle,” Field said. “Those demonstrations are just a kind of ‘in-your-face America’ and the public is not ready to be confronted that way. They are really putting middle-America to the test.”

Republican gay activist Frank Ricchiazzi of Laguna Beach, who told the governor that he had been deeply disappointed by the veto, agreed that the anti-Wilson demonstrations “can backfire” and “turn off middle-America.”

“My advice to the demonstrators would be to pull back,” said Ricchiazzi, executive director of the Log Cabin Political Action Committee, a GOP gay organization. But he added, “The problem is you’ve got a number of them (with AIDS) who have six months to a year to live and they’ve got nothing to lose and they’re going for broke.”