Troubled Waters at Gay Oasis

The very soul of this desert oasis was said to be at stake.

This spring brought allegations that the mayor had turned on Palm Springs’ well-heeled, fun-loving gay community. In his handpicked City Council candidate, some gay activists saw the makings of a political coup that would let religious fundamentalists turn Palm Springs into a very staid, and very straight, town.

The divisive election that ensued is over, and the coup, if there ever was one, was a flop. Most here, including many gay leaders, agree that dire warnings of Palm Springs plunging back into the 1950s were as fleeting as the dust devils that swirl, then vanish, over the Coachella Valley floor.

But charges of gay-bashing are easier raised than dismissed here. Now Palm Springs is left with a nasty little image problem, arguably of the gay community’s own making.

Some gay business organizations are quietly meeting to discuss whether they should embark on a public relations campaign to ensure that Palm Springs does not lose its status as an international gay tourism mecca. The city’s Human Rights Commission is preparing to hold a community forum. And Mayor William G. Kleindienst has agreed to sit for an interview with a prominent gay magazine in an effort to smooth the waters.

Even as the City Council rose as one from the dais last month, hands clasped and raised high in a show of unity, it was clear that the wounds will be slow to heal.

“I hear that people at Australian Mardi Gras parties are talking about how Palm Springs is anti-gay,” said Denise Goolsby, a lesbian and chairwoman of the Human Rights Commission. “This really didn’t have to happen. It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. It took on a life of its own.”

Gays make up, by some estimates, a third of Palm Springs’ population of about 43,000. The city is close to the nation’s first gay retirement community. Gay veterans have their own memorial, and the Palm Springs area--really a cluster of small towns--is home to 30 resorts that cater to gays and lesbians and a new housing development where gay couples recently moved into 84 of 90 homes.

All those gains gave activists a sense that they had become a part of the establishment. And yet, some began to feel threatened last fall.

Two of five City Council seats were open, and after the November election, Mayor Kleindienst convened an otherwise unremarkable meeting to swear in the winners. But then City Council member Jim Jones suddenly resigned, citing health problems, the council was left with an unexpected opening.

Councilman Ron Oden, who is openly gay, immediately proposed giving the seat to the woman who had captured the third-highest vote tally in the election. That was tradition in Palm Springs, said Oden, who was first appointed to the City Council seven years ago in similar fashion.

The woman, Deyna Hodges, had previously served 12 years on the City Council and was seen as a friend of the gay community. She had been a key backer of the successful drive to secure domestic partner benefits for city employees.

But the mayor, who did not return repeated calls requesting comment for this story, said it would be unfair to simply appoint Hodges to the seat. Instead, he said he would back local accountant Michael McCulloch, forcing a special election this spring, pitting Hodges against McCulloch.

Speculation began percolating that Kleindienst was trying to gain a council majority for a more conservative vision of Palm Springs. He already had one ardent supporter on the five-member City Council in architect Chris Mills.

As the special election approached this spring, gay leaders were busy preparing for the annual White Party, a so-called circuit party that has drawn an estimated 30,000 gays from across the world. This year, it happened to coincide with the Dinah Shore event, nominally attached to a women’s professional golf tournament and considered something of a lesbian companion to the White Party.

When Kleindienst declined to sign proclamations welcoming the parties, the floodgates opened.

“The telephone game began. The whispers. And then it got bigger and bigger,” said Goolsby, the longtime owner of the Bee Charmer Inn, a women’s hotel, before she sold it recently.

“All of a sudden, ‘the White Party is not coming back to Palm Springs’ and ‘the mayor is anti-gay.’ All of a sudden, it’s a ‘right-wing conspiracy.’”

Gay activists noted that the mayor attends Desert Chapel, a local church associated with the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel. According to the Foursquare Gospel’s Web site, the organization is opposed to abortion rights and the teaching of evolution and is opposed to homosexuality.

The ties of the purported new majority of the City Council to the Desert Chapel (whose pastor, Fred Donaldson, did not return phone calls seeking comment) did not end there.

Mills, seen as the mayor’s right-hand man, worked on the architecture of the chapel’s sanctuary and coached a junior high girl’s basketball team there.

The mayor’s wife, Kathy Kleindienst, owner of a successful Palm Springs escrow company, is a more avid member of the church, the mayor has said.

Snooping around her office, the mayor’s critics discovered publications with articles seen as offensive to Jews and supporting the contention that gays can transition into heterosexuals by embracing Jesus Christ.

Kathy Kleindienst said in an interview that the magazines were primarily copies of Decision, published by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Assn. One recent issue contained an article by a woman who said her homosexuality was healed 10 years ago.

“I have lots of magazines in the lobby,” she said. “People can pick up whichever magazine they want.”

Asked to weigh in on the brouhaha over the election, Kathy Kleindienst said she does not discuss civic affairs in public, adding: “I’m simply the spouse.”

But keeping such magazines “was a bad business move and a bad political move,” said Charlie Sharples, a retired hotel owner, and president of the Desert Business Assn., a gay chamber of commerce.

Meanwhile, Kleindienst has made no secret of the fact that he may eventually run for Congress or some higher office. Was he trying to appeal to the Republican right, a strong force in the area’s politics? After all, many old-timers prefer not the Palm Springs of raves and gay conclaves but the Palm Springs of Lucille Ball, honored with a downtown statue, and of Francis Albert Sinatra, as the small gravestone reads in nearby Cathedral City. After all, Republicans still outnumber Democrats in the Coachella Valley.

One gay Web site predicted that “If Deyna Hodges does not win ... Palm Springs will be ruled by gay-bashers.” By the time the election rolled around, Hodges’ supporters were claiming outright that Kleindienst was a homophobe, which he fervently denied.

In April, Hodges won in a landslide, capturing more than two-thirds of the vote.

But after the victory came the hangover.

Upon reflection, maybe the mayor had a point about the White Party. He had said his beef was based on its troublesome history with drug abuse, not a hidden agenda about gays.

Though this year’s party was a more law-abiding affair, police reported more than a dozen overdoses last year, and tales were rampant of ecstasy and other drugs flowing at all-night bacchanals.

“I believe that there is a drug problem, and it is very specific to the White Party,” said Jack Schloeder president of Greater Palm Springs Pride, which runs the town’s annual gay pride festival.

Hodges’ supporters were also overlooking the mayor’s record, said Tom Swann, a Rancho Mirage resident and the co-chairman of Gay Liberation for the 21st Century.

Swann recalled that many veterans’ organizations aligned against his gay veterans group when it applied three years ago to march in the Palm Springs Veterans Day parade. Kleindienst “made the decision to support us, and he probably lost a couple of votes for it,” Swann said. “Now the gay veterans are in the parade every year. That took some courage.”

The fear now is that Palm Springs’ lucrative gay tourism industry is at risk.

Gay parties bring thousands of visitors to town, many of them affluent professionals. If gays at Australian Mardi Gras parties are convinced Palm Springs has become anti-gay, the word is clearly getting out.

“This is not a real positive image for Palm Springs,” Hodges said.

The city’s reputation as “an open, accepting community has been tarnished to some degree,” Oden said.

Some gay organizations scheduled meetings to discuss whether they should embark on a campaign to remind the gay community that it’s still OK to visit.

Other gay business leaders, reflecting the deep division within their community, recently traded angry e-mails over whether to boycott a weekend event at the mayor’s house.

“I am ashamed to belong to a community that has so quickly forgotten what it is to be singled out and discriminated [against] themselves,” wrote Charlie Robles, a hotelier.

Sharples, the president of the Desert Business Assn. and one of those who still insists the mayor erred, responded in an e-mail that he fears Palm Springs will go the way of Key West--which has shouldered what some have described as a gay exodus because of perceptions that it had become less tolerant.

Already, many White Party events reported lower attendance this year, after the mayor’s criticism of drug use. Attendance at the Tea Dance, one of the main events, fell by nearly 3,000 people, organizers said.

“Reports from around the world say that Palm Springs is now not gay friendly,” Sharples wrote in an e-mail this month to gay leaders who had criticized his hard-line stance. “That damage is difficult to repair.”

In an apparent attempt to clear the air, Kleindienst has agreed to an interview with the Bottom Line, a gay magazine distributed throughout the Coachella Valley. It’s all damage control--from a conflict many believe never should have occurred in the first place.

Gay leaders say it’s too early to tell whether the impact on gay tourism will be real. In the end, most hold out hope that Palm Springs will wind up like it has been for years--diverse, quirky and carefree.

“Through thick and thin, [Palm Springs] returns to this fairy tale village,” said Michael Andrunas, founder of Out on Film, the company that runs the Palm Springs Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. “Things just got a little out of hand this time.”