Rep. Dornan’s Encounter With Gays

Your coverage of Rep. Robert K. Dornan’s encounter with the Orange County Visibility League (Sept. 19) was superb. It highlights the incredible variation in news coverage of the Orange County gay and lesbian community. We are a very diverse group. Twenty-five protesting gays and lesbians made headline news Sept. 18.

On Sept. 17, 700 Orange County gays and lesbians attended a $125 black-tie political fund-raiser, the Elections Committee of the County of Orange’s fifth-annual dinner. We heard Republican Congressman John Miller chastise his party for not being more open to our community and encourage those of us gay and lesbian Republicans to continue educating the GOP.

We heard Democratic Congresswoman Pat Schroeder praise our community for our show of pride and political skills. We had greetings from both the Bush and Dukakis presidential campaigns. We assume all of this was too traditional Orange County to be considered newsworthy, as your paper chose not to cover the event.

The elections committee is proud to be the only gay, lesbian and feminist political action committee in Orange County. We will continue to work at educating candidates and elected officials.

We believe we’ve made good progress in Orange County the old-fashioned way--quiet diplomacy. We wanted the public to know that most of Orange County gays and lesbians aren’t too different from our non-gay counterparts.

DREW J. BARRAS

Co-Chair,

Elections Committee of the

County of Orange

Santa Ana