By Jeff Kunerth
Sentinel Staff Writer

April 14, 2002

Once a month, domestic partners Wilbur Parrott and Bob Kingston invite about 30 gay and lesbian friends over to watch comedies, musicals and film classics.

For movie-night newcomers, they distinguish their south Orange County house from all the beige-colored lookalikes on the block with a pansy-patterned flag near the front door.

That flag is subtle enough not to draw attention. But the rainbow-colored gay-pride flag that they used to fly every day in Provincetown, Mass., stays tucked away.

"It can be offensive to some, and I want to fit into the neighborhood," said Kingston, 60, who has served as homeowners' association president, of the gay pride flag. "I would compare it to putting a Confederate flag out."

To be gay in Central Florida is to live a delicate balance: fitting in without denying who you are. It's OK to be gay -- but not too gay.

"There is still an atmosphere of 'Don't get in my face with it,' " said Rich Gause, 44, a librarian at the University of Central Florida. "I don't walk around Lake Eola holding hands with my partner."

For much of the gay population, Orlando is the land of live-and-let-live -- neither overtly hostile nor overly friendly. It's a place where tolerance is based largely on gays being benign and inoffensive.

So when members of the gay community push for an anti-discrimination ordinance in Orlando that would give gays, lesbians and bisexuals the same employment and housing protections as women, racial minorities and the disabled, they risk violating that Don't Stick Out doctrine of gay life in Central Florida.

A hearing on the ordinance is scheduled for Tuesday before Orlando's Human Relations Board.

The ordinance is a calculated risk to seek symbolic equality in conservative Central Florida, and it could provoke the kind of anti-gay backlash Orlando hasn't seen since it allowed gay-pride flags to fly from city light posts in 1998.

"The risk is confirming the fear that discrimination based on sexual orientation would be officially sanctioned within the city limits," said Tom Dyer, publisher of Watermark, a gay publication. "If the votes aren't there, then gays and lesbians will know they live in a city where the governmental body does not fully embrace them."

But even failure is better than not trying at all, Dyer said: "If the condition of acceptance is we must be invisible, that's not acceptance at all."

Growing influence

The push for a gay-rights ordinance may come with risks, but it also reflects the economic clout, political influence and large numbers of gays in Central Florida.

The gay community's economic impact on Orlando is found in the revitalization of downtown neighborhoods, the creation of the gay "ViMi" business district along Virginia and Mills avenues, and the $100 million spent by visitors who attend Gay Days at area attractions, according to the event's sponsors.

Its political influence is evident in the election of Patty Sheehan, a lesbian, to the Orlando City Council and the courting of gay voters by City Council candidates.

By the rule-of-thumb estimate that 10 percent of the population is homosexual, there are about 160,000 gays and lesbians in the metro area of Orange, Seminole, Osceola and Lake counties. And in the only government tally of gays, 9,171 couples in Central Florida voluntarily identified themselves as same-sex partners in the 2000 census.

Although concentrated in downtown Orlando neighborhoods, same-sex couples are scattered throughout Central Florida's cities, towns and suburbs.

Every month, gays and lesbians from DeBary, DeLand, Deltona, Eustis, Longwood, Sanford and Ormond Beach get together for dinner at different Central Florida restaurants. The group, with a mailing list of 300, calls itself Over The River because everybody comes from both sides of the St. Johns River.

For many, it's the only gay social group between Daytona Beach and Orlando.

"It's their lifeline to the gay community. We try to provide a safe haven in a public place," said one of the group's organizers, who requested anonymity because of fears of reprisals from gay-bashers.

Gays outside Orlando's downtown "Gay Town" district often feel threatened and endangered, she said. "People in the ViMi district live in a little cocoon. There's the gay community center, gay restaurants and the gift store. That's not the norm."

Parallel worlds

Gays throughout Central Florida live in parallel worlds. One is the world inside the clubs, church walls, private homes, social activities and support-group surroundings where they feel safe and uninhibited.

They have formed groups that get together to watch movies, dine, play softball, bowl, sing, dance, roller skate, discuss politics and worship.

For Bob Bella and Ross Gentry, a weekly gay ballroom-dancing class provides an opportunity to learn to salsa together. Before, when they took lessons aimed at straight couples, they danced with women instead of each other. As a consequence, both learned to lead, but neither knew how to follow.

"When I heard about this, it was like a dream come true," said Bella, 57.

Along with the bars and nightclubs, gay groups and activities provide sanctuaries of acceptance for homosexuals who often think they must conceal their sexual orientation from neighbors, co-workers, employers and landlords.

Outside those havens, it's another world -- one of caution, vulnerability and fear.

Even those who are "out" to friends, neighbors and family members sometimes second-guess whether they should identify themselves to the larger community. Many curtail their activities in the gay community for fear of being seen or photographed.

The Joy Metropolitan Community Church, whose membership is 90 percent gay, does not publish a church directory -- in an effort to protect the identities of its members. Few cars in the church parking lot bear any gay-identifying bumper stickers.

Living in those two separate worlds often starts at home, where gays first experience scorn and ostracism. For Sarah Bapst, it began the day she told her mother she was a lesbian.

"She said, 'I love you, and you'll burn in hell,' " said Bapst, 31, a physical-therapy manager. "I just felt very alone. My mother was ashamed of me. From that point on, I realized you have your family of choice -- and you have your biological family."

Many Orlando-area residents tolerate gays as long as they remain inoffensive and invisible. Jerry Ross, a 78-year-old former rancher and citrus grower, considers a gay bumper sticker a blatant act of homosexuals flaunting their sexuality -- same as kissing, hugging and hand-holding.

"When I see them kissing or caressing each other in public, it makes me nauseous," Ross said.

Others support gay equality, but not homosexuality itself.

"I'm a Christian, so I don't agree with what they are doing, but I love them as individuals -- hate the sin, but love the sinner," said Sheldon Walker, a 27-year-old YMCA worker who backs the anti-discrimination ordinance for gays.

Although instances of violence against gays are rare in Orlando, fears of ostracism, scorn and prejudice -- real or imagined -- do cause gays and lesbians to modify their behavior. There are neighborhoods they prefer and places they avoid. They know which restaurants are gay-friendly and which are not.

"I think gays are more likely to set their own limits by not wanting others to be uncomfortable," said Joel Strack, 42, a longtime gay activist.

And in fact, many gays find Orlando a good place to be. George Lytle said he has found Orlando to be far more accepting than his native Maine or Polk County, where he worked before moving to Orlando.

When Lytle and his partner reserved their tuxedos and registered at Target and Linens 'N Things for their Holy Union ceremony -- the gay equivalent of a wedding -- nobody objected that the couple consisted of two men.

"People here are more tolerant and accepting than any place I've ever been," said Lytle, 37, who volunteered to list himself as the bride. "It's such a great feeling."

Disunity in the community

For some gays, acceptance by the larger community is not as big a concern as the disunity within the gay community itself. A common complaint of Orlando-area gays and lesbians is that the gay community here is less unified than gay populations in other cities.

"I just don't see us as being a very cohesive community," said Lee Moody, a 36-year-old computer programmer who helped start Orlando's Gay Lesbian Bisexual Community Center of Central Florida.

Organizations exist for lesbian black women, gay Asians, gay teenagers, gay alcoholics and jolly overweight gay men who call their group Girth & Mirth. Yet no single group or organization seems capable of galvanizing the community's splintered subcultures -- whether it's for gay-pride parades, support for the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Community Center or for Orlando's anti-discrimination ordinance.

"It's complacent and impatient at the same time," Dyer said. "Everybody wants something to happen -- and they want somebody else to do it."

The community center, founded in 1987, envisions itself as the center of the gay community, a one-stop information-and-referral service that also serves as a safe-haven home for gay and lesbian support groups.

"It is still the most important institution in our community," said Chris Alexander-Manley, 44, a former executive director of the center. "The amount of people we reach, the number of people we help, has only grown every year."

The community center is credited with spawning the gay-pride parade, the Orlando Gay Chorus and the Metropolitan Business Association -- all of which are now independent organizations.

But the center has struggled with financial support and direction in recent years, even as the gay community has grown. The center is without an executive director and is still recovering from an embezzlement scandal five years ago.

Even worse, some say the center is simply irrelevant to the lives of many Orlando-area gays and lesbians.

"Gay community centers are leftovers from the 1980s, when there was a need for those centers," said Craig Friend, 40, assistant professor of history at UCF. "But the gay community has become so mainstream the center's purpose is no longer viable."

Similarly, the Central Florida Pride Parade, which started in 1991 with 500 gays and lesbians carrying flags and holding hands around Lake Eola, has lost support.

For the past few years, it has been a one-woman show kept afloat by Debbie Fritts, a former vice president of the gay community center. Part of the parade's problem, Fritts said, is that the gay community in Orlando is fractured into small, often-competing groups.

"There are a lot of us here, but nobody comes out," said Fritts, 48, a finance officer. "We want to see everybody coming together -- make it one big group and not a ton of tiny groups."

At a recent organizational meeting for the parade, attended by eight people, Fritts said she hoped to boost the parade's profile with greater participation, more bands and better floats. The parade, she said, should reflect the range within the gay community -- not just the extremes.

"I'm sorry, but a float is not a drag queen in the back of a convertible," she told the parade's organizers.

Much of the separation that divides the gay community originates from the bars that cater to specific gay subcultures. "Bears" -- hairy-chested men who favor denim and leather -- have their bars. "Twinks" -- young men -- have theirs. The two seldom mix. Lesbians have their own bar that does not admit men.

While heterosexuals also have specialized bars -- cowboy bars, reggae bars, blues bars -- bars and clubs have always played a special role in the gay and lesbian community.

Going back to 19th-century America, gay bars have provided privacy and freedom to homosexuals who were ostracized, threatened, beaten and killed by those who viewed them as perverted, wicked and sinful. Just as the churches provided blacks with safe places to congregate during the days of segregation, bars assumed the same significance to gays.

In fact, some gays refer to Saturday night at the bars as "going to church." Then, the next morning, many attend services at Orlando's Joy Metropolitan Community Church.

The church is one of 350 nationwide spawned by a ministry that began in the gay bars. The Rev. Troy Perry started the church in 1968 in California by recruiting gays who had been kicked out of mainstream churches.

In her sermons, Joy MCC's the Rev.Carol Trissell emphasizes that being gay or lesbian is only one facet of a person's life.

"We are complex human beings with many parts to us. We don't want to be known as Bob -- gay. Or Jane -- gay-lesbian," she preached at a recent service. "We are on a journey to wholeness, to integrate all the different parts of who we are together to reflect the God who created us."

Jeff Kunerth can be reached at jkunerth@orlandosentinel.com or 407-420-5392.