A Different Drumbeat in Laguna Beach

It’s not like they’re unaccustomed to being different. Once you’ve been called a Lagunatic, you get a thick skin. Or you laugh it off. In fact, most of the time over the years, they’ve worn their perceived uniqueness like a badge of honor. Or maybe a colorful arm patch.

So the good residents of Laguna Beach probably won’t lose much sleep at being so far out of the Orange County mainstream--at least on the narrow issue of Proposition 22 that won in a landslide last week.

“We’ve always been a little different,” says former City Councilman Wayne Baglin. “We’re probably the most liberal of all the cities in Orange County.”

Still, it makes you wonder. Liberal versus conservative is just politics. But to be so far removed from all of your neighbors on such a central social issue--the definition of marriage--evokes the image of the stranger in a strange land.

It’s one thing to differ with your neighbors on bond issues or presidential candidates, but what about issues that go to the very core of what you consider the human experience?

Proposition 22, which says that California will recognize only marriages between a man and a woman, passed with a 69% majority in Orange County. Thirty-two Orange County cities and its unincorporated areas all favored the proposition, with support ranging from 62% to 76%. Twenty-one cities gave it at least 70% support.

That is one county basically speaking with a remarkably consistent voice.

There was a single demurrer.

Laguna Beach rejected Proposition 22 by a 57%-43% margin.

That means the city’s endorsement of heterosexual-only marriages barely came within 20 percentage points of any other city’s view of what marriage should be.

Does it matter? Is that kind of a disparity unimportant or does it serve to isolate Laguna Beach from its fellow Orange Countians?

“In our day-to-day contact with other cities,” Baglin says, “as individuals and as a city, we’re able to focus on our common interests and work together.”

A Realtor, Baglin concedes that past Laguna Beach leaders almost reveled in their sense of living in a “separate state.”

More recently, he says, the city has tried to blend.

Baglin is married and the father of two children but voted against Proposition 22 because he considered it divisive. “I truly believed the vote would be close and I really hoped the ‘no’ side would prevail, because I felt this was a wedge-type issue. . . .”

The proposition’s language referred only to the definition of marriage, but Baglin says he construed Proposition 22’s passage as an anti-gay vote.

“What’s frustrating is when we know so many [gay] couples here in town who have been together for 35, 40 years,” he says. “I was with people who celebrated such an anniversary just a week ago. I think there’s a misconception that there’s extreme promiscuity in the gay community. What we’re seeing in Laguna is a commitment between gays exactly similar to what we see with heterosexuals. We’re looking for them to have some way to formalize this commitment, so they not only get the privileges [of marriage] but also the obligations.”

Bill LaPointe lives in Laguna Beach and is the publisher of the Orange County Blade, a magazine devoted to gay issues. For the very reason that Proposition 22 dealt only with marriage, LaPointe, 60, says gay activists and their political supporters shouldn’t have danced around it. Instead, he says, they should have tackled the issue head-on.

“I had no preconception that the vote would come out any different than it did,” he says, “because we were talking about marriage. A major, major issue.”

But that created an opportunity for gay-marriage supporters to at least start talking publicly about it, he says. To his disappointment, he says, the anti-Proposition 22 campaign concentrated on speculative fears that its passage would lead to take-aways of gay rights in the future.

And because the pro-22 ad campaign focused on marriage, it undercut the opposition’s strategy, said LaPointe, who is gay.

The least of his concerns, LaPointe suggests, is whether Laguna Beach’s psyche will suffer from being so out-of-step with its sister cities. And no, he doesn’t feel isolated. “All my neighbors--I’ve got non-gays all around me--they love the hell out of me,” he jokes.

They treat him with respect and openness, and his homosexuality doesn’t factor into their day-do-day dealings with him. What they do at the polls doesn’t reflect how he’s treated personally, he says.

But in an afterthought that only strangers in a strange land could utter, LaPointe adds:

“Although it would if I wanted to get married.”

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by calling (714) 966-7821 or by writing to him at The Times’ Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or by e-mail to dana.parsons@latimes.com.