Emerging Gays Find Fear and Rejoicing in Nevada : Culture: Their growing social and political clout and a resultant backlash illuminate the state’s psychic split.

History was made here one Sunday in March, when Gov. Bob Miller, resplendent in a stars-and-stripes leather jacket, took to the podium at a dark little bar and got a standing ovation from the raucous crowd.

“I never thought I’d see the day when I’d see a Nevada governor in a gay bar,” recounted Eddie Anderson, master of ceremonies for the rally. The event also drew Las Vegas Mayor Jan Jones--who is challenging Miller in the governor’s race--and a host of other political luminaries in this self-proclaimed “frontier state” and bastion of western independence.

But it was a bittersweet moment for the growing number of lesbians and gay men in Nevada--proof of newly minted clout, evidence of continuing vulnerability.

Just months after the Legislature repealed the state’s 82-year-old anti-sodomy law, conservative activists launched a petition drive to make it legal to discriminate against gay men and lesbians. The rally was called in opposition to the initiative--a carpetbagging measure written by Lon Mabon, the architect of similar legislation throughout the Pacific Northwest.

As Mabon and his followers are the first to admit, this is a watershed year for gays in the Silver State. They are learning to flex their political and social muscle; in so doing, they are bringing Nevada face to face with its contrary personalities.

On the one hand, Nevada has long embraced behavior that no other state would allow; on the other, it blushes fast and easy. “It is a dual personality here,” says Ward Bushee, executive editor of the Reno Gazette-Journal.

It is the live-and-let-live side of this statewide schizophrenia that helps to explain why the firsts for gays and lesbians are tumbling in almost too fast to count:

* This year has brought Nevada its first openly gay candidate for any public office. Jack Levin, 31, is running for Clark County school trustee. In 1990, he ran for Assembly and lost in a close Republican primary. “When I ran (before), I was gay,” Levin said. “But I never came out. My positions have never changed. . . . A lot of ultra-right-wing people supported me then. They’re not now.”

* In Washoe County, home to Reno, the “Biggest Little City in the World,” people with HIV were allowed in the classroom to talk about the disease for the first time this school year in a controversial program called Frontline.

* In October, the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada opened in Las Vegas, the first such facility in the state. It offers a library, a speakers bureau, counseling for families of gay teen-agers, clubs for newcomers and seniors, and referrals for roommates, jobs and legal assistance.

* Bushee told a group of gay activists this spring that if they would help form guidelines for the practice, his paper would publish same-sex unions on the wedding pages. Fewer than a dozen mainstream newspapers in the nation include such notices.

* For the first time, gay voters are a presence in a major statewide election. Politically active gays and lesbians raised $5,000 for Jones in January in the first gay-sponsored benefit for a Nevada candidate. Since then, the gay community has held several fund-raisers on behalf of state legislators. “We are all fighting over them in the governor’s race,” says Jones, who faces Miller in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in September.

However--and this is a big however--being courted and being accepted are two vastly different things. For every first celebrated in Nevada, there is a caveat. For every step forward, at least one step back:

* Nevada has the ninth-highest AIDS rate in the country and has been in the top 10 since 1987. It is in the bottom 10 for state spending on the disease. “The only state support we get is indirectly through Medicaid,” says Dr. Jerry Cade, a Las Vegas physician who treats AIDS patients. “The rural counties are incredibly reluctant to help those big ‘sin cities,’ Reno and Las Vegas, with their problems.”

* Although HIV-infected patients in the Frontline program can tell Washoe County students about life with the disease, they are not allowed to talk about their sexual orientation. “If (speakers) were asked point-blank if they were gay, they may say yes or no but that would be it,” said Jan Donnelly, health education curriculum specialist for the Washoe County School District.

* When the Gay and Lesbian Student Union at the University of Nevada, Reno, started a youth outreach program a year ago, “we agreed not to talk about sex,” says Leslie Fiske, one of the program’s founders. The self-imposed prohibition was partly to avoid conflict with the university and partly in response to the anti-sodomy law, which was still in place. Nevada is “still conservative in a lot of ways, still redneck,” Fiske says.

In Virginia City, the saga of Russ Collingwood underscores Nevada’s split personality. At least five businesses in this tiny Wild West tourist destination are owned by gays or lesbians. “This is the differentest town in the world,” says one Chamber of Commerce board member. “Everyone’s different.”

The population of fewer than 1,000 is “a combination of a few miners and a lot of aging hippies who moved here after the ‘60s,” says Martin Lane, co-publisher of the Comstock Chronicle. “You have a lot of people who came here to be left alone.”

And for the most part, they are. But in January, when Collingwood, 25, announced to the Chamber of Commerce board--of which he was a member--that he was planning a sex-change operation, he ended up on the front page of the Chronicle and ultimately felt it necessary to leave the board.

*

For Collingwood, who now is known as Paige Sinclaire, life as an openly gay man in Virginia City was fine; life as a transsexual means learning to deal with whispers and odd looks, misunderstanding and cold shoulders. Virginia City is not the best place, he admits, for a man to learn the ways of womanhood.

Although he was not asked to leave the chamber board, Collingwood said he felt a not-so-subtle push out the door. “I don’t believe there’s been anyone like me in this town before,” he says.

Chances are, Collingwood is right. Nevada is home to only 1.4 million residents scattered unevenly throughout 110,000 square miles--or about half the population of Orange County in nearly 150 times the area. Its North and South are more drastically divided by attitude and geography than even those of California. The state is bisected by Interstate 50, a.k.a. “The Loneliest Road in America.” Almost nothing exists by way of civilization connecting the Las Vegas area to the south and the Reno/Sparks/Carson City area farther north.

Prostitution is legal in most of the so-called “cow counties” or rural areas of the state, although it is against the law in urban Clark and Washoe counties. You can play the slot machines in the supermarket, video store or casino, buy a drink 24 hours a day. It is still only a misdemeanor to sell a gun to a child, although that could change.

“This is a frontier state,” said Miller in early March, as he kicked off his reelection bid with a Reno speech that suggested tougher penalties for those who sell guns to children under 18.

Professional boxing and quickie divorce found their first acceptance here in the early 1900s. Mary Pickford came to Nevada in 1920 for the divorce that enabled her to marry Douglas Fairbanks; a long parade of celebrity splits ensued, as the state dropped its waiting period from six months to three months to six weeks, and the moneyed set poured into Reno for sympathetic court hearings, dude ranch vacations and new leases on life.

To Robert Laxalt, novelist and Nevada historian, the state’s psychic split provides little mystery. Though not conversant with the anti-gay petition drive, Laxalt contends that the state’s early embrace of prizefighting, easy divorce laws, gambling and prostitution were born of economics.

“The millionaires who sacked the Comstock Lode around Virginia City packed up their moneybags and moved on to greener pastures, and they left a Nevada that was dead broke,” he says. “That’s why the state enacted liberal laws: to entice tourists here.”

To this day, Nevada residents boast of a western independence, a live-and-let-live attitude that embraces the Liberace Museum and the Boy-Lesque variety show.

“Both ends of the state are much more liberally inclined than they used to be,” says Rollan Melton, longtime columnist at the Reno Gazette-Journal. “Because of the influx of Southern Californians, there is a more liberal feeling. We’re joining the latter part of the 20th Century recently. We were very redneck, very bullheaded, and very conservative.”

Although Nevada is in the bottom 10 of states in population, it is the fastest growing in the nation. Three new hotel-casinos opened in Las Vegas last winter, bringing the city 15,000 new jobs. In 1993, the state averaged about 6,000 new residents per month.

And as the population on the whole grows, so does the gay community. In a recent edition of the bimonthly Las Vegas/Reno Bugle, nearly 10% of the “Manfinder Personals” were from new gay residents, men who described themselves as “New 2 Vegas” and “just moved here from S.F.,” “New Kid in Town” and “moving from SF to Vegas.”

This spring brought the state’s first Stonewall Democratic Club, based in Reno, for gay men and lesbians. Nevada already had a Log Cabin Republican Club for gays. And the numbers of celebrants at Las Vegas’ annual Gay Pride festival grew from about 100 in the 1980s to 2,200 in 1993. “For Las Vegas, that’s amazing,” says Rob Schlegel, publisher of the Bugle and a former festival chairman.

The influx of new Nevadans, both straight and gay, is in part responsible for the state’s changing views and the landmark repeal of the anti-sodomy law last June. “What I think has happened over the years is that we have people from Los Angeles and Chicago and New York, really liberal people, moving here for the first time,” said Judy Corbisiero, a longtime activist and co-director of Nevadans for Constitutional Equality, which fought for repeal of the anti-sodomy law.

Until the late 1970s, the “crimes against nature” law was so vague that it did not define the acts it prohibited for homosexuals and heterosexuals alike, said state Sen. Lori Lipman Brown (D-Las Vegas), architect of the law’s repeal. In 1977, the state changed the law to enumerate the outlawed acts; at the same time, it made them illegal only for partners of the same sex.

Although the law was repealed by large margins in both houses of the Nevada Legislature, lawmakers said that constituent calls ran largely in favor of keeping the controversial statute on the books.

“For every 10 phone calls or letters that we received in my office from my district, one person was for the repeal and nine were against it,” said Assemblyman John Bonaventura (D-Las Vegas). Bonaventura, who displayed a “No Rights for Sodomites” bumper sticker on his desk during heated debate and testimony over the law, voted against repeal.

It is just such opposition that the Nevada Citizens Alliance has hoped to tap with its drive to place the Minority Status and Child Protection Act on the ballot. In part, the proposed amendment to the state Constitution says that “objection to homosexuality based upon one’s convictions is a liberty and right of conscience and shall not be considered discrimination relating to civil rights.”

Translation: Gay men and lesbians could not be foster parents, nor could they win custody of their children if the other parent in the dispute is heterosexual. Works by Oscar Wilde could be allowed in public libraries, but “Heather Has Two Mommies” could not.

*

Homosexuality could be acknowledged in public school health or social studies classes but not in a way that would “elevate homosexuality to a neutral or normal position in a child’s eyes,” Mabon said.

Mabon says he has received hundreds of calls from Nevadans asking for help in countering the growth of the state’s gay community. He has come here a year earlier than planned because, “from our standpoint, it is better to fight the battle sooner than later.”

Similar initiatives were voted on in November, 1992, in Oregon and Colorado. The Oregon measure was defeated. The Colorado initiative was approved by voters but is being challenged in court. Mabon’s group is continuing its efforts in Oregon, in addition to pushing initiatives in Washington, Idaho and Nevada.

The Nevada initiative campaign is being run out of makeshift offices in Daisy Stanley’s Reno apartment.

She got involved after calling her daughter, Kathy Phelps, in a panic in January when the anti-sodomy law was repealed. She faxed Phelps a copy of an article from the Reno Gazette-Journal. The headline: “Nevada Gays Building New Political Power.”

Phelps lives in Eugene, Ore., and works for Mabon. She shared the news with him. For Mabon, that was the last straw.

“When they saw that article, they said they gotta do what they gotta do, even if there isn’t the money and all the rest,” Stanley says.

A few weeks later, Mabon flew to Carson City, where the group filed to start the petition drive. He has visited the state several times since to stump for the initiative in the state’s conservative circles.

The Nevada Citizens Alliance needs just over 51,000 valid signatures by Tuesday to put the proposed initiative on the November ballot. As the group heads into its last weekend of signature gathering, its chances have dimmed some. Although alliance officials would not estimate the number of signatures that they have gathered, opponents believe that only about 15,000 have been garnered to date.

“It’s not out of the question that the signatures will pour in in this last week,” Mabon said. “If they do not collect the required number, they’re going to refile. Then they’ll have enough time, two years, and will get on the ballot.”

Janine Hansen, president of the Nevada Family Eagle Forum and initiative proponent, views its chances as limited. Hansen too felt the repeal of the anti-sodomy law as a body blow to her cause; her organization has mailed out thousands of petitions to try to reverse what she sees as the march of the “homosexual agenda.”

“We don’t want to hold homosexuality up as a standard for our children,” said Hansen, who refers to such an orientation as a “destructive, anti-family deathstyle.”

“I want my children to know it’s wrong and it’s unnatural,” she said.

Still, the petition drive has lacked members, money and time, vital resources necessary for any sort of political work--especially for lonely work such as hers. “But I’ve never underestimated the power of the people,” Hansen said. “I believe that it will mushroom, and there is a possibility, an opportunity, for success.”

Reno activist Eddie Anderson is not so sure. He personally finds reason for optimism in the gay community’s recent strides forward and the stumbling performance of the Nevada citizens alliance. “While the conditions have not changed for gays and lesbians, the attitudes toward them have.”