In 1977, with singer Anita Bryant leading a crusade against gay rights across the country, a small group of gay men met in Los Angeles to form the first political action committee advancing the cause of gays and lesbians in the United States. MECLA, the Municipal Elections Committee of Los Angeles, had modest goals: its members simply wanted to live their lives free of discrimination. At first, they had to beg candidates to take their money.

After helping turn the tide against the Briggs Initiative, a 1978 measure that would have barred gays and lesbians from teaching in California’s public schools, the organization saw its fortunes turn. Seemingly overnight, candidates for local, state and national office clamored for MECLA’s blessing — and its money.

I covered MECLA as a reporter for Pacifica radio station KPFK in the early 1980s, attending and recording many of its breakfast and dinner meetings at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, the Century Plaza Hotel and the Hollywood Palladium.

The group hosted political heavyweights of the time such as presidential candidate Gary Hart, vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, California Gov. Jerry Brown, U.S. Sen. Pete Wilson and former Rep. Bella Abzug, among others.

Checkbook Activism

MECLA drew a fair amount of criticism from friends and foes. Some LGBTQ activists lamented that its brand of “checkbook activism” was easily exploited by politicians who took MECLA’s money but didn’t always support its causes. On top of that, its members were elitist and overwhelmingly male and white. (To protest the group’s classism, I wore blue jeans to its 1985 fundraising dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel.)

As I’ve reported in a previous blog post, MECLA sided with conservatives on the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors in 1985 and called for the voluntary closure of gay bathhouses. The issue split the LGBTQ community but boosted MECLA’s reputation as politically pragmatic.

Listen to my podcast feature on MECLA which includes many of the people and issues that defined the culture wars of the 1970s and 1980s.

Listen/Share

A Slow Death

Unfortunately, MECLA’s efforts to secure rights for gays and lesbians ended far too soon. With its ranks decimated by the AIDS epidemic, the group faced a leadership void and financial problems in the early 1990s. It suffered a slow death, finally folding in 1992.

But in its 15-year existence, MECLA did what no other LGBTQ organization had done before: it earned the respect of America’s political establishment as a “special” special interest group with political clout and generous financial resources. Its rise — and fall— is a fascinating story of gay power and politics in the Reagan era.