Gay Rights Activists Keep Heat on Wilson : Protests: At least 36 are arrested at noisy demonstration in Woodland Hills. Governor and state Sen. Ed Davis are the targets of the attacks.

Hundreds of gay rights activists demonstrated outside a fund-raising appearance by Gov. Pete Wilson in Woodland Hills on Friday night, and at least 36 people were arrested for allegedly blocking traffic and demonstrating in the hotel.

Wilson was the featured speaker at a $250-a-plate dinner at the Marriott Warner Center hotel marking the 75th birthday of state Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita), who was making his first public appearance since cancer surgery last month.

The demonstrators--who protested Wilson’s veto of a gay rights bill and an AIDS bill introduced by Davis--were estimated to number about 250 by police and about 500 by organizers.

Mindful of a continuing series of anti-Wilson protests by gay rights groups, more than 180 police officers, on foot and horseback, awaited the demonstrators.

Shortly before the dinner was to begin, 14 protesters--who had rented rooms in the hotel earlier--burst down a corridor leading to the first-floor ballroom and lay down near the entrance, blocking the dinner registration desk.

As police in riot gear surrounded them, the demonstrators chanted “AIDS phobia, homophobia, genocide” and yelled obscenities. Guests in evening clothes sipped drinks about 30 feet away as police rolled the protesters on their stomachs, bound their wrists and led them off.

Most went quietly but several struggled and had to be subdued.

After the dinner began, five men and women, dressed in evening clothes, were arrested at the entrance to the ballroom as they began chanting slogans.

About 20 persons were arrested for blocking traffic, but three were released without charges filed. Ten men who kissed and simulated sex acts on Oxnard Street--chanting “Ed Davis is a slime, HIV is not a crime”--were taken to the Van Nuys station jail.

They were arrested without resistance by officers wearing rubber gloves, which a police spokesman said was “common practice for officer safety.” The demonstrators called the gloves “HIV hysteria.”

Davis has introduced legislation that would make it a felony for anyone who knowingly has the human immunodeficiency virus to engage in unprotected sex, and would impose a possible life prison sentence on those who intentionally gave another person the disease.

The demonstrators--a mix of blacks, Latinos and whites, men and women, homosexuals and heterosexuals--carried signs with slogans such as: “Stop GOP Death Squads.”

Some demonstrators wore white theatrical makeup or black sweat shirts with the symbol of the gay rights movement, a pink triangle, and the slogan “Silence = Death.” One carried a large American flag with a pink triangle sewn over the field of stars.

Demonstrators screamed “Shame! Shame!” at carloads of dinner guests arriving at the hotel. Some wore mock police uniforms and shouted “Sieg Heil!” into police officers’ faces, calling them “Nazi pigs.”

“It’s just another day in the city,” quipped Officer Mike Bissett.

Two events transformed the significance of the birthday party since it was planned months ago.

On Sept. 29, Wilson vetoed a bill banning job discrimination against homosexuals, setting off a string of protests by gay activists, who have vowed to hound the governor’s appearances.

In addition, Davis underwent surgery Oct. 21 to remove 20% of a cancerous right lung. Two clusters of malignant cells were discovered during an annual physical exam, aides said.

A former Los Angeles police chief and gubernatorial candidate in 1978, Davis has served in the Senate since 1980, representing a sprawling district that covers much of Ventura County, the Santa Clarita Valley and northwestern San Fernando Valley.

Even as protesters marched and blew whistles outside, a tuxedo-clad Davis was greeting supporters in the hotel’s presidential suite. “I feel great--for three weeks and four days after surgery,” he said.

Davis seemed unperturbed by the demonstration. He said his bill, which was one of its targets, “doesn’t have a prayer of passing the Assembly . . . because the gays in San Francisco don’t like it” and “they can control the Assembly.”

However, he said, with the publicity from the demonstration, “this now becomes an extraordinarily important bill” and he may try to convert it to a state initiative.