Closet Is Opening Wider for Gays in Antelope Valley

Gay activism has come late to the Antelope Valley, understandably.

This is the home of the church that produced “The Gay Agenda,” the virulently anti-gay videotape that made national news earlier this year when thousands of copies flooded Washington.

Before the tape went national during the debate over gays in the military, it was shown at city council meetings in Lancaster and Palmdale. Both city councils approved resolutions urging rejection of state gay-rights legislation.

In Lancaster, a proposed 1991 hate-crimes ordinance caused such a fervor among local fundamentalist clergy--because it included protection for homosexuals--that the matter was dropped before coming to a vote.

“It’s culture shock if you come up here from Los Angeles,” said Michele Vencill, 30, who moved with her partner from West Los Angeles to Lancaster last year for the reason most people migrated to the area--affordable homes.

There is only one gay bar in the Antelope Valley, which has a population of 250,000, and you have to know just where it is to find it--there is neither a sign nor a door facing the street.

The only other place gay men and lesbians regularly gather is the local chapter of the Metropolitan Community Church, which ministers mostly to homosexuals. The Antelope Valley chapter is located in a rented, threadbare office space in a Lancaster strip mall.

“In L.A., you get used to the truly bizarre, so being gay is a very minor thing, kind of ordinary,” Vencill said. “Up here, it’s all families. The gay people are mostly closeted.”

But earlier this year, a group of gay men and lesbians in the valley decided it was time their voices were heard.

They founded the first actively political gay organization in the area, the Antelope Valley Gay and Lesbian Alliance. They planned to speak out at city council meetings, back gay-friendly candidates and mount letter-writing campaigns against what they saw as homophobia in local government, schools and on the job.

Alliance members put up flyers in the bar, urging other gays and lesbians to “Get Empowered. Get Involved!” They spoke out at church services and at the handful of gay support groups that quietly meet in the area.

But when the group met recently to ratify the alliance’s charter, just 11 people showed up.

“The worst homophobia we have to deal with up here,” said Todd Penland, 30, president of the alliance, “is within the gay community itself.”

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The scene at the gay bar--the Back Door--on a recent Saturday night bore scant resemblance to the orgiastic, exotic goings-on depicted in “The Gay Agenda.”

It was a sedate crowd of about 80 men and women in the windowless bar, located near a pawn shop, wedding chapel and pet store on a commercial street in Lancaster.

A few couples danced on the small dance floor, a small group gathered around the pool table to watch the game in progress, and others huddled in small groups to talk.

The attire ranged from jeans and T-shirts to casual sports clothes. The only unusual clothing item was a fur hat sported by a quiet middle-aged man who regulars in the bar didn’t recognize.

The Back Door is a spare, generic neighborhood bar without architectural flourishes--not nearly so well-appointed or warmly lit as the pub depicted in “Cheers,” but not quite threadbare enough to be classified as seedy, either. The only decoration on the walls are the drawings and photographs of hunky men.

“This is about all we have up here,” said Michael, a gay man who migrated to the valley from Burbank three years ago. “But that’s OK. In L.A., we went out to bars, but you couldn’t make any friends there. It was so loud, you couldn’t even talk to anyone.

“Up here, you’re more likely to do things with friends, to meet them here.”

Paul, who works at a local restaurant, hardly thought this an advantage. “It’s always the same people, the same music,” he said with resignation. “You get no variety.”

On the other hand, Sean, who works in a local medical facility, likes the fact that the bar was not full of people obsessing about their looks, as he believes is often the case at L.A. spots.

“There is no attitude up here,” he said. “Everyone is friendly.”

No matter what their feelings about gay life in Lancaster, these three men had one attribute in common. Outside of the bar and their gay friends, all were adamantly closeted.

“No way!” said Sean, shocked at the notion he would tell fellow workers and neighbors he is gay. “I just can’t see any reason for it.”

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Psychologist Robert Harris, who is on the faculty at Antelope Valley College, sees a number of gay people in his private practice. “When you live in an area where you feel you have to be secretive about your life,” he said, “you are always feeling a kind of pervasive anxiety. There is a feeling in your life of impending disaster.”

Riva Hull, 32, who is Vencill’s partner, agreed. “It’s like you are living in fear all the time. I would say to my lover, who is more open, ‘Be careful what you say outside the house. We don’t want crosses burning on the front lawn.’ ”

But Hull is indicative of a change in attitudes, of late, by many in the local gay community. She is becoming more open about her sexual orientation.

“I told some people at work and they did not fall over dead,” she said. “It gave me encouragement that if something is going to change for me, I will have to do it myself.”

That gay people even gather together in public in the Antelope Valley is a major change from 10 years ago when Dee Dicey first arrived. She had been long been active in the lesbian community in Los Angeles and was one of the first staff members at the Lesbian News, now a national monthly magazine. She moved from Topanga to Palmdale to buy a home.

“Gay people who think there is not much going on here now should have seen it then,” said Dicey, now 66. “I knew a couple of fellows because they moved up here the same time as me, but that was about it. Everyone was so isolated. There was no church, no bar, no organizations.”

The bar came first. It was opened in 1984 by William Paul, who arrived in the valley in 1981 from Los Angeles. “I was sort of retired,” he said, “but some people convinced me that because there was no gay bar in the area, it could be a gold mine.”

Paul went to the local Los Angeles County Sheriff’s station to inform authorities of his plans. “I told them it would be a gay bar and asked what they expected of me. They said, ‘We want you to run a clean place, and we will keep the peace.’

“I made sure to keep out drugs and things like that, and they have been very cooperative.”

Paul said that in the years he has had the bar, it has been subjected to just a few incidents of harassment, mostly name-calling by teen-agers passing by. “On one occasion, one of them had a baseball bat and was threatening people,” Paul said. “The police came and arrested him.”

Paul was a charter member in the first gay interest organization in the area, the High Desert Community Interest Assn. It quietly sponsored lecture programs and other events, including an AIDS seminar at the bar. The group disbanded in 1989, turning its assets over to a new organization, the G & L Connection, which primarily sponsored a hot line to handle emergency calls from gay men and lesbians in the area. G & L now also sponsors several support groups that meet regularly. Its charter forbids it getting involved in political matters.

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The MCC church was first organized about six years ago in Palmdale, where it met in a Unity church before moving to the office space in Lancaster. It’s anything but plush--the carpet is shabby and some of the plaster has worn away from the walls. The congregation--numbering 40 at a recent Sunday service--sits in folding chairs.

There is no choir, but at one point in the service pastor Christen Chew pulled a portable karaoke machine from behind the pulpit and sang part of her sermon.

The pastor before Chew was a layman, Alan Robertson. Robertson was working as deputy city clerk in Lancaster in 1991 when the City Council passed the resolution urging the rejection of gay-rights legislation.

Before a stunned council and audience, he announced that he was gay and quit his job on the spot. Later, referring to the council, he said: “I can’t support their bigotry.”

“Alan inspired a lot of us,” said Penland, the organizer of local gay alliance. “Before I knew him very well, I was one of those silent gay people who wanted to just live my life and let everyone else do the work.”

Robertson died of complications from AIDS at Christmastime last year.

Penland began to organize the alliance soon thereafter. For him, coming out was not an issue. “My family has been incredibly supportive,” said Penland, who moved to the Antelope Valley in 1988 in part to be near his parents. “My dad outs me all the time. Whenever someone asks him about his kids, he talks about his gay son.”

Penland is not open about his sexual orientation in all situations, however. He is in the process of starting a business venture with partners. “I don’t want to name it because I don’t think it’s fair to the other partners to have my political work be identified with the business,” he said. “We talked about it, and that’s what they prefer.”

Only one person interviewed for this article said he believed he had been the victim of serious harassment in the Antelope Valley because of his sexual orientation. After his name and number were recently listed in a G & L newsletter, he received numerous threatening calls.

But most of the openly gay people in the Antelope Valley said they have experienced no problems with the community at large.

“The people we have met have been very nice. The next-door neighbors when we arrived were conservative Christians, and when they asked what church we belonged to, I told them the MCC. You could see in their faces that they knew it was the gay church. But then they said, ‘Great,’ and from then on it was clear they treated us as a couple.”

“The important thing is for people to know us as people,” said Martin Taylor, who lives in Lancaster with his partner, Jim Kyes. “Then it’s harder for them to hate us.”

Taylor and Kyes, who regularly attend the church, often wear red AIDS awareness ribbons when they are running errands around town.

“One time some guy yelled something at us, and I guess it was ‘faggots,’ but mostly people go out of their way to be nice and courteous,” Taylor said.

“At the grocery store recently we saw this woman who had seen us there before,” Kyes said. “As we went through the check-out line she said, ‘Why don’t you two guys just get married?’

“And I said, ‘To tell you the truth, we are planning on getting married next month.’

“She then turned to me and said, ‘Well, I guess it will make an honest man of you.’ ”