Gay-Rights Activists Arrested at Rally Fined : Court: They plead guilty to reduced charges of disturbing the peace but promise to continue protesting the veto of AB 101.

A group of gay-rights activists pleaded guilty Monday to disturbing the peace at a boisterous Garden Grove demonstration last month but vowed to continue vocal protests against Gov. Pete Wilson’s veto of a gay anti-discrimination bill.

Municipal Judge Daniel J. Didier imposed $212 fines on each of the 16 defendants--among them the wheelchair-bound mother of a gay man and a gay Air Force reservist--who were arrested Oct. 5 during one of Orange County’s largest gay rallies.

The court appearance was punctuated by a slew of catcalls from several apparently anti-gay people sitting in the courtroom at West Orange County Municipal Court.

“It’s homophobia as usual. It’s the same as racism,” said John J. Duran, an Anaheim attorney who represented the group and who helped author AB 101, which would have banned job discrimination based on sexual orientation.

The protesters faced up to six months in jail on misdemeanor civil disobedience charges, but the charges were reduced last week to infractions after attorneys met with the district attorney’s office, Duran said.

“This was a good deal,” Duran said. “A very good deal.”

After the court appearance, the defendants held an impromptu press conference and said they will not stop voicing their frustration over the failed bill.

“We worked hard and gave a lot of money to Wilson,” said Elaine Kaplan, 70, a self-described disgruntled Republican who said she voted for Wilson because she believed that he supported the bill.

Sitting in her wheelchair outside the courtroom with her son behind her, Kaplan said she and others had deliberately broken the law to make public their displeasure with the veto.

The arrest “was for all my gay and lesbian friends and for my son’s future,” said Kaplan, holding a water bottle that read “Discrimination Sucks.”

Gay-rights activists have accused Wilson, who ran as a moderate Republican, of failing to live up to his 1990 campaign promise to provide better job protection for gays if he was elected.

At the time, Wilson characterized discrimination against gays and lesbians as “abhorrent,” distancing himself from conservatives in his party, who have opposed job discrimination protection for gays.

Addressing a group of newspaper editorial writers last spring, Wilson indicated that it was “very likely” he would sign AB 101, sponsored by Assemblyman Terry B. Friedman (D-Los Angeles).

On Sept. 29, he vetoed the bill, saying existing laws provide sufficient civil rights for the gay community.

Incensed by the veto, gay activists across the state organized daily demonstrations in major cities.

Orange County gay activists staged their Oct. 5 demonstration along a stretch of Garden Grove Boulevard, the site of numerous gay bars, gay-owned shops, the Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center and the AIDS Response Program.

The 16 were among 1,000 protesters that night.

During the protest, which also drew dozens of anti-gay counterdemonstrators, gay advocates burned a California state flag and effigies of both Wilson and U.S. Sen. John Seymour (R-Calif.). The 16 were arrested after they purposely wandered outside a demonstration area set up by police between Harbor Boulevard and Euclid Street.

Some of those arrested said on Monday that they not only were willing to face the legal consequences of civil disobedience but were aware they chanced workplace reprisals for publicly announcing their sexual orientation.

Mac McCarthy, 29, of Stanton, a staff sergeant in the Air Force Reserve, said he joined in the civil disobedience even though he knew that attention to his being gay might lead to his expulsion from the military.

“I’m out in every aspect of my life,” McCarthy said. “I can’t sweep (sexual orientation) under the carpet and not bring it up.”

Ricki Iacocca, 32, of Garden Grove said he was kicked out of the Air Force after 4 1/2 years when his superiors discovered that he is gay. Several years later, he lost a job as a clerk for an Orange County air-conditioning company for the same reason, he said.