California: Gay Mecca No. 1

The remote and all but empty (pop. 430) county of Alpine, Calif., is a pristine wonderland of majestic peaks, verdant pine forests, and crystalline lakes nestled high in the rugged Sierra Nevada. From their isolation its residents have long gazed in amusement at doings of the urbanites below. Tough mountaineers, woodsmen and fishermen all, they have preserved the pioneer purity of their independent existence. Now that existence stands threatened, and by as unlikely a force as could be imagined—the militant homosexuals of the Gay Liberation Front.

On Jan. 1, a caravan of at least 250 G.L.F. members and sympathizers will set out to create a “Gay Mecca” in Alpine County. Under a recent state Supreme Court decision eliminating California’s one year residency requirement for voters, they will be eligible to go to the polls in Alpine 90 days after they register. Then they will begin the process of recalling all elected officials, replacing them with homosexuals, and establishing “a national refuge for persecuted homosexuals.”

The idea was conceived at a G.L.F. symposium last January in Berkeley. Reconnaissance parties of homosexuals disguised as fishermen and tourists were quickly dispatched to Alpine, and returned pronouncing it ripe for electoral conquest. The G.L.F. began stockpiling food, negotiating to buy land in Alpine, and signing up recruits for the exodus—nearly 500 have enlisted so far. In an article in the Los Angeles Free Press, G.L.F. Leader Don Jackson wrote glowingly of “a gay civil service, gay housing erected with funds furnished by the state and federal governments, and the world’s first museum of gay arts, sciences and history.”

Gay Way. The residents of Alpine County are not amused, and so far are in a quandary about how to repel the onslaught. Last week they awoke to find their street signs altered by youthful pranksters to accommodate the prospective new citizens. One highway sign warned: “Watch for deer—hit a queer.” The main thoroughfare of Markleeville, the county seat, was marked “Gay Way,” and the tavern dubbed “Fairyland Bar.”

Many natives believe the gay invaders will be defeated by the subfreezing temperatures and the lack of jobs. Nonetheless, a delegation of Alpine’s county board of supervisors journeyed to Sacramento to meet with Governor Ronald Reagan’s Assistant Legal Affairs Secretary Richard Turner. They came away despondent and emptyhanded; Turner advised them that there was nothing they could do to stem the gay tide as long as the G.L.F. complied with the law.

The message was not new to the G.L.F. As Don Kilhefner, a G.L.F. local organizer in Los Angeles, had earlier said: “We are simply following the advice of President Nixon and Spiro Agnew to work within the electoral process.”