Gays, Lesbians to Protest City Event

Accusing Santa Clarita officials of hypocrisy, supporters of the area’s gay and lesbian community on Wednesday will protest a city-hosted, countywide conference on human relations.

Activists say they are angered by the City Council’s refusal to grant benefits to domestic partners of city employees, even though county workers, who provide contract services for the city, receive such benefits.

Demonstrators plan to march outside the Hyatt Valencia before the annual one-day conference of the Human Relations Mutual Assistance Consortium, an organization of 65 cities and groups that have united with Los Angeles County to improve ways to deal with hate crimes and intergroup issues.

About 100 people from throughout the county are expected at the daylong “Diversity 2001” conference, officials said.

“The diversity conference is supposed to serve as a showcase of the city, to show off what a wonderful place it is to live,” said Tom DiCioccio of Valencia, an outspoken leader of the gay community. “Yet what we really have up here is a very, very conservative, lily-white area that is permeated with prejudice, intolerance and hate.”

He noted that City Council twice last year rejected proposals to extend health benefits to domestic partners of city employees.

“They don’t want the political repercussions,” DiCioccio said. He pointed out that the Los Angeles County Fire Department, Sheriff’s Department and other county agencies--many with offices across the street from City Hall--have granted benefits for domestic partners since 1995.

Santa Clarita officials say the city is considering ways to extend benefits but that some council members are concerned with some aspects of proposals that have been considered so far.

Mayor Laurene Weste said proposals considered last year were “discriminatory” because the city’s health benefits policy, which is administered by the Public Employees Retirement System, would extend benefits only to same-sex domestic partners and not to heterosexual couples.

“I believe that all city employees should receive fair and equal treatment under the law,” Weste said in a statement. “There should not be separate rules or benefits for same-sex persons, or opposite-sex persons or people of different races or creeds or national origins.”

Los Angeles County, which administers its own program, offers benefits to same- and opposite-sex partners. More than 3,600 employers nationwide, including 98 state and local governments, offer domestic partner health benefits, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a Washington-based national gay and lesbian advocacy organization.

“We will continue to work on the issue,” said City Manager George Caravalho, adding that additional proposals will be presented again during annual discussions of labor relations issues later this year.

Caravalho said the planned demonstration is premature because the issue “has been before the city only a short time.”

But DiCioccio, a 51-year-old retired designer who is a director of the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center, said he has campaigned for partner benefits in Santa Clarita for nearly three years. He was again rebuffed, he said, when he appeared before the City Council this month asking for immediate action.

DiCioccio said he instead is “being pressured” by city officials to call off Wednesday’s protest.

“I’ve been told not to do this, that I’ll give the city a black eye and create a backlash,” DiCioccio said. “There has been unbelievable pressure from City Hall, but it is purely because of the politics up here.”

Caravalho said he had asked DiCioccio--a volunteer with the city’s Human Relations Forum, which is hosting the diversity conference--to participate in the program rather than demonstrate.

“I did tell him that we are hosts for this conference and that the reason for the conference is to build good relationships with people and that I didn’t feel, at this time anyway, that is the way to do it,” Caravalho said.

Members of the Santa Clarita Valley Democratic Alliance for Action are expected to join in the demonstration, which will be held before the 9 a.m. start of the conference.