Gay Activists Get Ready for March on Washington : Demonstration: Between 500 and 1,000 from the county will travel to participate in the rights event Sunday, organizers say.

The headquarters of the group coordinating Orange County’s participation in this weekend’s gay rights march on Washington has been abuzz all week.

Scores of volunteers have spent their days and nights stuffing hundreds of envelopes and responding to queries. And every day, people have been picking up stacks of T-shirts bearing a state map with Orange County marked by a bright depiction of an orange. The slogan beneath: Orange County: March on Washington, 1993.

The site of this beehive is the offices of the Elections Committee County of Orange, known as ECCO. It is the gay and lesbian political action committee organizing Orange County participation in the rights march.

National organizers say they hope to attract more than a million participants from around the country to demonstrate for legal protections against discrimination and an end to the ban on homosexuals in the military. Such a massive turnout would make the event the largest demonstration of any kind in Washington history.

“I think the world is ready,” said Libby Cowan, ECCO march coordinator. “I think the American people are tired of hate, tired of intolerance, tired of the religious right’s harassment and haranguing of homosexuals. I think our gathering will send the message again that we are just like everybody else: We work with you, live with you and actively interact with you on a daily basis.”

Local gay activists estimate that between 500 and 1,000 Orange County residents will fly the 3,000 miles to participate in Sunday’s march.

“We will be marching in the California contingent,” Cowan said. “We have T-shirts and placards, and word is out that all of Orange County should meet and we’ll all march together. We want to show our colors.”

Some organizers estimate that as many as 200,000 Californians will participate in the march.

Most of the ECCO delegation has already flown to Washington aboard two flights booked by the organization. The bulk of the delegation is staying at the same hotel--the Marriott Dulles in Chantilly, Va.--where, among other things, members hosted a reception Friday evening and will sponsor a breakfast Sunday morning.

Local activists say a large Orange County turnout is important in two respects. First, it would mark a major milestone for a gay community that, in the past, has been less vocal and less organized than those in some other areas. And second, it would send a signal to congressional leaders that, even in a traditionally conservative area such as Orange County, there is considerable support for gay rights.

“What it says is that Orange County has a significant gay and lesbian population and that we represent a cross-section of diversity in the county politically, economically and culturally,” Cowan said. “We want the world to know that.”

Cowan described participants as keyed up about the event. “People are absolutely bouncing-off-the-walls excited,” she said. “It’s great; we’re going to have a wonderful time.”

Part of the excitement, organizers said, is evident in the involvement of county residents in this year’s march as contrasted with the last march, in 1987, which about 60 county residents attended.

Some of the difference, they said, is the result of better and more organizing: In addition to sending out hundreds of mailers, making phone calls and generating publicity, Orange County activists held their own pre-march march in Santa Ana last Saturday, which drew about 150 people.

But a far more significant change, they said, is in the national climate, brought about, among other things, by the election of Bill Clinton and the progress made by the gay rights movement in general.

“It’s like a doorway has creaked open with the election of Clinton,” said Bill LaPointe, publisher of the Orange County Blade, a monthly gay-oriented news magazine that has been promoting the march for a year.

By mentioning gays and lesbians in his speeches and including them in his discussions of national issues, LaPointe said, the President “has given us a breath of fresh air in that . . . we might actually be able to achieve, in our lifetimes, equal protection under the law. It’s a fantasy that many of us never dreamed could happen.”

Thus, although the last march was primarily a protest, local organizers said, this one has evolved into a show of support for Clinton, especially for efforts to repeal the ban on gays in the military and to put gay issues on the national agenda.

“I expect the Washington march to signal the official beginning of the end of discrimination for all Americans,” said Bo Folsom, editor of the Blade and president of Orange County Cultural Pride, the organization that puts on the county’s annual gay pride parade.

Although gays and lesbians are the last group against which many Americans consider it acceptable to discriminate, he said, treating people with dignity forms the basis of every religion, every morality and every ethical precept upon which society is based.

“I think the march is going to take awareness to that next notch and basically signal the turning point for gay and lesbian rights,” Folsom said. MAIN STORY: A18