Conference Brings Gay Power Struggle to Fore

A power struggle in Ventura County’s gay and lesbian community has surfaced over a new activist group’s plans to hold a countywide conference today on a range of gay issues.

The series of workshops and speakers, called “The Gathering,” was attacked by the director of Ventura County’s oldest gay facility, the Resource Center in Camarillo, as an effort to undermine her position as a spokeswoman for the county’s gay community.

Claire Connelly, director of the center, said in a press release that she was barred from the conference by leaders of a new group called the Lesbian and Gay Alliance, which is sponsoring the event.

Connelly, who has been criticized by some gay leaders for comments deemed insulting to homosexual men, said she feels slighted by the group because she has spoken out for gay rights and AIDS issues throughout the county--even in the past when no one from the gay community would accompany her, fearing the consequences of exposure.

Members of the alliance, a group of activists formed in August, said they never banned Connelly from the conference, although they have no desire to work with her.

Tensions among gay leaders in Ventura County have been growing since 1987 when the first objections were raised over Connelly’s direction of the center, said alliance member Edie Brown, also executive director of AIDS Care, a county support group.

The Resource Center evolved out of an early 1980s telephone referral service for gays and lesbians. The agency, which opened an office in Camarillo in 1990, has since provided meeting space for different gay groups.

But members of the alliance are critical of Connelly for comments she has made in recent years linking gay male promiscuity to the spread of acquired immune deficiency syndrome. They say Connelly has misused her status as the Camarillo center’s leader. The group wants to establish a rival center in Ventura.

“For a long time, we tried not to air our differences publicly,” Brown said. “It has gotten to the point where some of us feel we can’t keep quiet anymore.”

Members of the alliance have called Connelly a “power-hungry bully” who is unwilling to share leadership with others. Connelly called the alliance a clique of boisterous leaders misrepresenting themselves as the “new guard” of the gay community.

Connelly said the alliance is dividing, rather than uniting, gays in the county. In her eyes, the group’s sole agenda is to ruin the center and her reputation. Members of the alliance deny those charges.

Past efforts to reconcile the two groups’ differences have failed.

Torie Osborn, former director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, said she has heard only good things about the center and Connelly’s leadership.

“I have watched this (fighting among gay groups) over and over again,” said Osborn, 42, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington.

“Reputations get destroyed,” Osborn said. “We need to be dealing with principle and institutions and not cat fights and personality conflicts. There has to be room for more than one leader. You don’t have to knock down the long-timer for the new person to succeed.”

But Connelly, 57, said she will not falter.

“I have been in politics for 35 years,” she said. “I was part of the anti-McCarthyist movement, the (1960s) anti-war movement, the black civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement and the gay movement.

“I thrive on it. I’m German,” she said. “I’ll fight to the last drop of blood.”

Sal Fuentes, a member of the alliance who was on the Resource Center’s board of directors until last fall, said he left the center because of Connelly’s abrasive and inconsistent tactics.

“She’s trying to keep people from being leaders so she can be the only one,” Fuentes, 31, said. “She hasn’t included (alliance members on her board).”

Connelly said she has never excluded anyone from the center, though she said she was not surprised that some people are angry with her. She subscribes to beliefs which she said have hit tender nerves in some members of the local gay community.

“At the center I do stress abstinence . . . and monogamy,” Connelly said. She said she also promotes safe sex whether it is in or outside a monogamous relationship.

“I do tell the truth and that doesn’t sit well with some people,” Connelly said. “Men, both homosexual and heterosexual, are more recreational about sex. You see that at the bars and bath houses. It’s dangerous.”

Some alliance members, she said, “would like this to be a sex club.”

It is that kind of statement, said Brown of AIDS Care, that has driven a wedge between the community.

“The center is supposed to be a rallying point,” Brown, 57, said. “Instead of being inclusive, Claire’s been divisive.”

The Resource Center’s vice president, Ralph Tibari, however, said he has only seen good results from Connelly’s work. The allegations against her have also come up at board meetings.

“But you can’t vote somebody off on hearsay,” Tibari said. “No one has given the board a shred of evidence to prove that Claire has done anything wrong.”

Today’s conference will be at the Bill Esty Center in Camarillo. Conference topics will range from civil rights to homophobia and communication between gay men and lesbians. Scheduled speakers include Bob Gentry, former mayor of Laguna Beach; Tom Nolan, a San Mateo County supervisor; Jeff Horton, a member of the Los Angeles Unified School Board, and Ojai psychologist Robyn Posin.

FYI

For more information, call 981-9912 or 650-9809. Registration for the conference is $50 at the door. It includes a meal and a dance after the workshops.