Gays, Lesbians and Police All Gather in Peace at UCI Festival : Celebration: Opening day of weekend event wins praise from law enforcement. None of the controversy or violence of its 1989 debut occurs this time.

IRVINE —  The third annual Orange County Gay and Lesbian Pride Celebration opened at UC Irvine on Saturday with music, dancing, cultural awareness displays--and for the first time informational booths representing several police departments and the California Highway Patrol.

An estimated 2,500 people attended the first of two days of festivities at UCI’s Aldrich Park. The celebration will culminate today with a noon parade scheduled to proceed along Campus Ring Road.

Saturday’s events were without the controversy and violence that erupted at the county’s first gay pride celebration, in 1989, when police were called in to quell a disturbance between gay activists and fundamentalist Christians who had gathered to protest the festival. That year, about a half a dozen people were arrested.

This year, an area that had been cordoned off on a hilly slope overlooking the festival entrance remained empty of demonstrators, although earlier a Long Beach-based church group had told police it would protest the weekend festival.

Instead, UCI police handed out pamphlets detailing freedom of speech rights and remarked on the efficiency of the festival organizers.

“This is one of the most coordinated and responsible groups we’ve worked with,” said UCI Assistant Police Chief Dennis Powers. “Everything went smoothly last year and we were expecting the same this time around.”

Also this time around, most of the police officers visible at the festival were among the participants.

Uniformed off-duty officers from Cypress, Garden Grove, Laguna Beach, Buena Park, Placentia and the UC Irvine departments were represented and officers from the Seal Beach Police Department, who wore civilian clothes, were allowed to hand out informational material.

None of the departments were actively recruiting because most are under hiring freezes brought about by budget cuts, officers said. A few departments, such as Costa Mesa and Fullerton, cited budget constraints and declined requests to provide even a minimal presence.

But organizers were clearly pleased at the officers’ attendance, which attracted only scattered interest from festival-goers.

“We got a tremendously positive response from the majority of departments,” said Scott Liles, a board member of Orange County Cultural Pride, the festival’s sponsor.

“Their presence here serves a dual purpose, developing a closer understanding between the officers and the community and addressing the fact that there are gay and lesbian officers. It really gives them an opportunity to develop an improved image of law enforcement.”

Liles said the perception that police are intolerant of homosexuals was exacerbated when Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl F. Gates decided to ban off-duty officers from wearing uniforms at a recruitment booth during a recent street fair in a neighborhood populated by gays.

However, officers at the Orange County celebration downplayed the Los Angeles controversy.

“People ask why we’re here, but we don’t have a reason not to be here,” said Kathy Tautkas, a Cypress Police Department personnel and training officer. “This is treated like any other festival or public event.”

“It became a sensitive subject, but it has been our practice to recruit people from all walks of life,” said Capt. Dave Abrecht of the Garden Grove Police Department. “Our chief’s position is that we have such a culturally diverse population that we must treat all with dignity and respect.”

Elsewhere, the festival resembled a giant neighborhood picnic or country fair. There were corn dogs, a tattoo booth, clog dancing lessons, gay and lesbian psychologists, the conservative Orange County Log Cabin Club, the liberal Eleanor Roosevelt Democratic Club, vendors touting women’s vacation tours, what is billed as the first condominium time-share exclusively for gay and lesbians (located in Palm Springs), and even kitchen cabinets.

One popular booth was the Barbie and Ken Toss, where, for a buck, participants had three chances to toss Ken or Barbie dolls through a tattered building face dubbed the Barbie House Condemned Building.

But there were also demonstrations of the more serious issues facing gays and lesbians in Orange County.

At one booth, festival-goers were urged to sign petitions in favor of an Assembly bill that would add sexual orientation to the list of protected categories in the California Fair Employment and Housing Act. No legislators from Orange County have endorsed the bill, organizers said.

And many participants conceded that the county remains inhospitable to gays and lesbians.

“This is wonderful, but I wish we could have more exposure and could take our parade out on the street instead of have it confined to the campus, but we have to take baby steps” said Eleanor Cyr, a member of the support group, Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

Cyr, an 11-year El Toro resident whose twin sons are gay, said that although no animosity has been directed at her family, many other parents in the group have suffered harassment.

“The president of the group has gotten hate calls and one of the parents had his house broken into, and there have been other incidents. But we have lost no friends since we came out,” Cyr said.

And she said support for the group has been growing.

“We get at least 20 new members who come through the group every month,” she said. “We feel our children ought to have a chance and the public must be educated that we shouldn’t be afraid when someone is different.”