By Mark Schlueb
Sentinel Staff Writer

April 16, 2002

When Michael Slaymaker left Des Moines, Iowa, and moved to Orlando in 1995, he expected to find an urban, progressive city with a prominent gay community.

Boy, was he surprised. Slaymaker's former home in the Midwest made Orlando look downright backward.

"It was like stepping back in time when it came to gay issues," said Slaymaker, a fund-raiser for a nonprofit agency in Fern Park.

In Des Moines, there was an active gay center that sent speakers to address mainstream groups. Many businesses had gay employee alliances. Gay and lesbian teachers had their own organization, and there were even scholarship programs for gay high-school students.

In Orlando, most gay organizations were focused only on socializing, and even they were largely unknown to the straight community.

Greater Orlando has a sizable gay and lesbian population, theme parks that employ large numbers of gay workers, and an annual "Gay Days" event that draws tens of thousands of homosexuals from across the nation and around the world. But when it comes to pushing for social change, local activists concede that Orlando's gay community is largely invisible.

Gays in Central Florida are less likely to be active in political causes than gays in other communities such as Tampa, Fort Lauderdale and Atlanta, they acknowledge. Even smaller cities like Gainesville have gay communities that are more visible and more involved in local politics.

But that could change, now that local gays are working to convince Orlando leaders to prohibit private-sector workplace and housing discrimination against gays. The measure could signal a coming of age for Orlando's gay activists, Slaymaker said.

Still, there's a lot to overcome.

Like Central Florida as a whole, Orlando's gay community has in some ways been hurt by the region's tourism economy. Many gays in Orlando are well-paid professionals, but there are also many who are low-paid theme-park workers -- not the type who gravitate to political causes.

"Most of the people who live here are on minimum wage, or earn less than $10 an hour," Slaymaker said. "Those aren't the people who have the time and resources to go out and work for change."

And overall, Central Florida just isn't a hotbed of political activity -- gay or straight. Like mainstream Central Florida, many local gays are transient; they move to Orlando for a year or two and then move on.

It doesn't leave much time to sink roots.

"There is more activism in a community that is deep-rooted. It's in their interest to change things," said Joel Strack, who helped start the annual Central Florida Pride Parade. "This is such a transient community. People don't see that greater need for involvement in this area because so many people will be moving on in three years, five years."

Issues get little attention

Change is slow to come when there's no one to push for it.

One of the best examples is the question of whether to extend workplace benefits to employees' unmarried, same-sex partners. A growing number of companies -- including the parent company of the Orlando Sentinel -- do just that. In fact, 58 percent of companies listed on last year's Fortune 500 list provide such benefits.

But because most smaller businesses, including those in Central Florida, haven't followed suit, pushing to change individual company benefits policies has become a key goal for gay activists across the country.

In Orlando, the issue gets little attention.

That may be because two of the region's biggest employers of gays and lesbians -- Walt Disney World and Universal Orlando -- already provide health care and other benefits to their workers' same-sex partners. Why should they raise a ruckus on behalf of others who aren't so lucky?

"If you work at one of the theme parks, it's a relatively supportive atmosphere. You feel comfortable being out, and therefore you don't feel a need to be active," said Jack Lord, a downtown attorney.

Other issues that have gained national attention, including gay marriage and gay adoption, are rarely brought up in Orlando. Local activists don't think they can have much impact on legislation in Tallahassee and Washington, D.C.

Even local government officials said they don't often hear from gay leaders.

"Frankly, we haven't had any input from the gay community," Orange County Chairman Rich Crotty said. "We are open to input from all segments of the community, but they just haven't been very aggressive."

Many gays here, even those who have shared their sexual orientation with friends and family, tend to be low-key. Though residents of Orlando seem to be tolerant of gays, some gays said that's true only as long as they don't flaunt their lifestyle in public.

And tolerance isn't universal in Central Florida.

"If you go out 30 miles from Orlando, you're dealing with a whole different ball of wax," said Debbie Simmons, president of the Metropolitan Business Association, a gay and gay-friendly merchants' group.

Election a turning point

Gay leaders in Central Florida said the time never seemed right to risk cracking the region's veneer of tolerance by bringing their cause out of the shadows.

That began to change two years ago, when local gay activist Patty Sheehan launched a successful campaign for Orlando City Council.

Sheehan got her start in politics in 1993, when a group headed by conservative activist David Caton proposed a state constitutional amendment to bar gay-rights legislation in Florida and its cities and counties.

The Florida Supreme Court threw out the proposal on technical grounds. That was a good thing, Sheehan said, because the gay opposition was disorganized and hobbled by infighting.

In Gainesville, lesbian activists and gay men argued about setting their agenda. Activists in South Florida had different ideas than those in Central and North Florida.

Even then, when gay-rights issues were drawing widespread media attention, Sheehan's activism often evoked a negative reaction from fellow gays in Central Florida: "They would say, 'Oh, you're political.' Being political wasn't seen as being cool."

Sheehan ran for a seat on the Orlando City Council in 1996 and lost after her sexual orientation became a campaign issue.

But by 2000, Sheehan's campaign had gained support from straight residents as well as gays, and local activists decided the time was ripe to get more aggressive on gay-rights issues.

First, the Metropolitan Business Association asked other City Council candidates -- including Mayor Glenda Hood -- to support a new policy of nondiscrimination against gay, lesbian and bisexual city employees. The policy was quietly adopted by the city a few months after the election.

The nondiscrimination issue might have ended with only city employees, but Sheehan's victory at the polls gave rise to more activism.

"Patty Sheehan being elected made the whole [gay] community say, 'Maybe now is the time,' " Slaymaker said.

A week after Sheehan was elected, a handful of local gays, led by Slaymaker, quietly formed Orlando's Anti-Discrimination Ordinance Committee. The group's goal is to convince Hood and the City Council to prohibit discrimination against gays -- not just city employees, but in the private sector as well.

The group may be close to accomplishing its goal: The city's Human Relations Board will hold a public hearing at City Hall at 6 p.m. today on the proposal, which would bar discrimination in the workplace, in housing and in public places such as restaurants and hotels.

Progress remains slow

But progress has been slow.

Hood still hasn't taken a position on the issue, which heated up during City Council races just two weeks ago. Incumbent Don Ammerman accused challenger Phil Diamond of being a liberal Democrat who favors "special rights" for gays, and Diamond accused Ammerman of telling gays one thing and his conservative constituents another. Diamond won the election.

And even though Sheehan's election helped to spur an increase in activism, some members of the group have feuded privately with her.

In January, someone the group describes as a "rogue" former member faxed a letter to the media that slammed Sheehan and Hood. Sheehan said some members felt she wasn't doing enough to champion the issue from inside City Hall.

"Sometimes, like other minority groups, we tend to [discredit] our leaders," Sheehan said.

The newfound upswing in activism has been confined to a small group of those leaders, who acknowledge that most local gays are apt to get involved only when riled.

That happened in 1998, when they defended their right to fly gay-pride flags downtown. It happened again last year, when they rallied in support of gay teens who visited state Rep. Allen Trovillion's office, only to be told their "lifestyle" would prevent them from entering heaven.

But that sort of visible activism is rare.

"When you feel threatened, that's when you're going to get involved," Simmons said. "Until then, you're going to go home to your life."

That complacency has left a social and political void for many local gays. The gay community is so low-key here that it can seem almost invisible even to other gays, especially if they don't live or work in downtown's ViMi district.

Ron Hardbower, a retired AT&T employee, said he and his partner of 10 years may move to Fort Lauderdale, where the gay community is more cohesive.

"There doesn't seem to be any community," said Hardbower, who lives in a quiet neighborhood in south Orange County. "We feel like an old, straight married couple here."

Jeff Kunerth of the Sentinel staff contributed to this report. Mark Schlueb can be reached at 407-420-5417 or mschlueb@orlandosentinel.com.