Flag Finally Flies, and So Do Charges of Partisan Politics : West Hollywood: Members of a veterans group say they were excluded from a flagpole dedication ceremony, which they say was turned into a gay political rally.

It was supposed to be a peaceful ceremony, a chance for West Hollywood residents to get together and express their patriotism. Instead, it exploded into a dispute pitting a group of war veterans against leaders of the gay community and the city.

Members of the Veterans and Patriotic Residents of West Hollywood claim they were left out of a recent flag-raising and flagpole dedication ceremony at City Hall, which, they say, was turned into a political rally by leaders of the gay community.

“This was a slap in the face,” said Stan Lothridge, head of the veterans group. “It should have been a ceremony to culminate the efforts of all the people who worked to get this flag up, not a platform for political views. It was a slight to veterans, regardless of their sexual preference.”

The hourlong ceremony on April 5, held on the grassy median of Santa Monica Boulevard outside City Hall, attracted more than 100 residents and city officials.

But it was a ceremony with a difference that reflected West Hollywood’s quirky liberal politics and the clout of its large gay population.

While there was some mainstream patriotic fare--a flag-raising, a singing of “The Star-Spangled Banner”--most of the talk focused on the problems homosexuals encounter in the armed services and in the community. City Council members addressed the crowd on anti-gay discrimination, as did two representatives of a national gay veterans organization called Veterans CARE, and a gay National Guardsman.

Adding some international flavor were seven newly arrived Russian immigrants, veterans of World War II, carrying a banner. One of the speakers briefly addressed them in Russian.

Lothridge, however, was excluded from the planning for the event and was not invited to speak, even though he has conducted an almost nonstop campaign during the last three years--writing letters to the local newspapers and speaking out at City Council meetings--to get the city to erect a flagpole and fly the U.S. flag outside City Hall.

Just after July 4 last year, for example, he and members of the veterans group staged a protest on the median in front of City Hall, re-enacting the famous World War II flag-raising on Iwo Jima.

Leaders of the gay community, while recognizing Lothridge’s contributions, have reacted angrily to the criticisms.

“The city finally said that it would put up a flag, but that it wasn’t going to discriminate against gay people in the process,” said Aslan Brooke, a resident who helped line up the speakers. “These people are angry because we were not only included, but also given a spotlight.”

Brooke and other gay community leaders say that it was Lothridge and other members of his veterans group who behaved badly at the ceremony by pursuing their own political agenda, distributing literature and buttons to publicize a 2-month-old recall campaign against Mayor John Heilman.

“They took a very moving moment and turned it into a carnival--and now they want credit,” said David Welch, co-chairman of the West Hollywood Lesbian and Gay Advisory Council. “We were there to acknowledge our flag and all our veterans. What they did was totally inappropriate.”

Welch and Brooke both suggested that there was an element of latent homophobia in the complaints of Lothridge and the other veterans, which Lothridge and other members of his group staunchly denied.

City officials, caught between the two factions, say they never intended to exclude anyone from the ceremony, least of all Lothridge.

A miscommunication between city staff members and residents who helped plan the event led to Lothridge and other veterans being overlooked, officials said.

Councilman Sal Guarriello noted that his office contacted members of the veterans group to personally invite them to the ceremony and sought representatives from both the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

But the bypassing of Lothridge and other veterans who had lobbied for the ceremony remains a sore point.

“They carefully invited who they wanted,” insisted Lothridge ally Bob Davis, a gay West Hollywood resident. “They turned it into a rally to publicize the views of the gay-left. They chose to forget about Stan Lothridge and other veterans who had earned the right to be up on that podium.”