Room for Change

It would be a safe guess that many people in this city don’t know that Los Angeles is home to the world’s largest gay and lesbian organization. Although the Gay & Lesbian Center has been operating here since 1971 and helps more people and offers more services than any facility of its kind anywhere, it could be dismissed as for them, that faceless, nameless group of people who are different from the majority.

Gwenn Baldwin, the nonprofit center’s new executive director, wouldn’t be at all surprised by such an attitude.

“In many ways, gays and lesbians are more different from each other than one might expect,” she says, sitting in her office on the top floor of the center’s Hollywood headquarters. Yet, she adds, all experience “a sense of being out of the mainstream. Out of the norm. Of being an outsider.”

She is an empathic, albeit unsentimental, leader who understands the alienation many gay and lesbians feel but is focused on running an organization charged with effecting cultural and political change, while providing educational, health, legal and social services. She believes that no single element of the agenda can be really effective on its own. If civil rights are gained, for example, that victory is limited if gay teenagers rejected by their families have nowhere to turn.

“A lot of centers in other cities evolved specifically out of social services, or they are there to gain political and civil rights and don’t provide direct services,” she says. “From our inception, we were about both, because we understood the importance of both sides of the equation. You can provide wonderful, high-quality services, but if you don’t change the context, you’ll always be on a treadmill. Conversely, you can provide change through political action, but if you don’t meet the immediate needs of your community, how relevant are you?”

Certain buzzwords stud Baldwin’s conversation: empowerment, relevance, diversity. The 39-year-old’s professional life has been focused on politics, where such jargon is inescapable. Her background also includes management consulting, which gave her the experience to supervise the Gay & Lesbian Center’s $28-million annual operating budget, 265 employees and 3,000 volunteers.

For some people, the job Baldwin assumed in April would be as appealing as juggling chain saws. In the course of a day, she might be giving Vice President Al Gore a tour of the center, negotiating with union leaders about contracts for health-care workers, then dining with prospective donors. She admits to being an adrenaline junkie.

“In politics, my job security was a maximum of two years,” she says. “If the congressman I was working for lost the election, I was out of a job. I liked the fact that every day was different, that there was always another crisis to deal with. I get jazzed by having to be a quick study, by having a short time frame in which to grasp and move the big picture.

“This job sort of embodies everything I’ve ever done professionally, and, on top of it, I get to do it being an ‘out’ lesbian,” Baldwin says. “I was never closeted before, but when I was working in management consulting and government relations, if I was working with a metals agency, it wasn’t like, ‘Hey, let’s talk about the price of dumping steel, and by the way, I’m a lesbian.’ It just had no relevance.

“You don’t have the opportunity very often to be involved in something that taps every piece of what you are and what you want to be and what you want to do. It’s also that in this job I’m doing something about a piece of who I am, that isn’t usually allowed to be part of the workplace. I was who I was before. I had pictures of my partner on my desk. But that isn’t the same as going to work each day and saying, ‘I’m going to do something to empower gays and lesbians more.’ This is much more activist.”

Combating homophobia is on a list of issues Baldwin wants to address. One of her most powerful tools may well prove to be the forthright, let’s-get-busy manner that disarms opponents and energizes colleagues. Lorri L. Jean, former director of the center, says, “One of the things that struck us all when we recruited Gwenn was that we could envision her as a truly inspiring leader for our community.”

Her political goals include ensuring nondiscriminatory work environments and guaranteeing domestic partners the same rights, privileges and economic benefits that married couples enjoy. The center is mobilizing to defeat an initiative sponsored by state Sen. William “Pete” Knight (R-Palmdale), which would mandate the state to recognize as valid only those marriages between a man and a woman. The center calls the measure, which will be on the March ballot, a hate bill designed to legalize discrimination.

Eric Shore, co-chair of the center’s board of directors, says, “This is a major organization with lots of things happening all the time. When we hired Gwenn, we were looking for someone with management skills who was also very plugged in to the issues. She has a wonderfully positive outlook, and even when things around her aren’t always going well, she turns them around and reminds people of the track that we’re on.”

From 1971 to 1988, the Gay & Lesbian Center was led by a series of male directors. Since 1988, three women have held the job. That history reflects the sad fact that women have assumed more power in gay and lesbian organizations as AIDS has devastated the ranks of gay men.

The L.A. center was the first local organization to offer medical care to people with HIV and AIDS. Today, its disease-related efforts focus on AIDS education and prevention, and operation of an AIDS Clinic and a youth HIV clinic. Six years ago, the center inaugurated the California AIDS Ride, a bicycle trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles that raises funds and awareness. This year, 3,000 people participated, and the ride grossed $11.2 million, to be used to support HIV and AIDS services.

“AIDS continues to impact our community tremendously,” Baldwin says. “In the past, people were, in huge numbers, dying of AIDS. They’re living with AIDS now. That presents a whole new host of challenges that we have to address, such as returning to the workplace, having to deal with finances for a longer time.”

The need for money to support medical research hasn’t disappeared either.

Some of the center’s services have become even more essential, precisely because people with AIDS are living longer. Now, a lot of money goes to providing drugs and the health care and mental health services for the people whose lives medications are prolonging.

Although gays are not the only group affected by AIDS, when the disease ripped through the homosexual community, it dragged fear and hate in its wake.

“Any time there’s a panic, you’re more likely to see broad, sweeping labeling,” Baldwin explains. “AIDS certainly gave some people a handy tool with which to beat gays and lesbians about the head. But the real enemy is fear and ignorance.”

Baldwin recognizes that her personal exposure to discrimination has been limited. She moved from Ohio, where she was born and her father was the mayor of Waite Hill, population 550, to Maine, to attend Bowdoin College. After graduation she went to Washington, D.C. Volunteering for the National Women’s Political Caucus led to a job in the office of an Ohio congressman in the early ‘80s. Political work in Colorado and Oregon followed.

She was 34 and married when she fell in love with a woman. She now lives near Hancock Park with Jean Harris, who is executive director of Basic Rights Oregon, an organization that works for political change.

“Coming out was certainly the hardest thing I’ve had to do,” she says. “I was very confident and comfortable with who I was. I was very much in love, and I had great faith that my family would not reject me. But there’s always that last question in your mind before the words leave your mouth. I did lose some friends.”

“If I had, in fact, lost my job,” she adds, “I had more resources as an adult than somebody who is 15 who is kicked out of their house, abandoned by their religion and harassed daily at school.”

Young people have been some of the greatest beneficiaries of the center’s expansion. It operates a 24-bed residential shelter and a drop-in storefront on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood that caters mostly to runaway and throwaway youths. Another education and outreach facility, on McCadden Place, is called the Village.

“There are 11 centers around the country that serve the health and social needs of gays and lesbians,” says Eileen Durkin, executive director of the Howard Brown Health Center in Chicago. “Of those, the L.A. center is, at least in terms of budget, by far the largest. Their financial resources allow them to serve a broad cross-section of the community. They do a terrific job.”

Yet the need for the center’s help never seems to diminish. California sunshine and the myth of Hollywood’s glamour continue to attract troubled teenagers.

As Baldwin thinks of the lost and abused children whom the center gives food, clothing and counseling, Baldwin doesn’t allow herself so much as a sigh.

“You can get completely paralyzed by the people who you’re not able to serve,” she says. “And yet, you have to do as much as you possibly can.”

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Mimi Avins can be reached at mimi.avins@latimes.com.