Gay activists boycotting backers of Prop. 8

LOS ANGELES — Soon after California's passage of a initiative banning same-sex marriage last month, dozens of gay activists descended on the El Coyote restaurant with signs and placards. They chanted "Shame on you," cussed at patrons and began a boycott of the cafe.

The restaurant's crime: A daughter of the owner donated $100 to support Proposition 8, the initiative against gay marriage approved by voters. Gay activists have refused to lift the boycott — which restaurant managers say has slashed revenues by 30 percent — even after some El Coyote employees raised $500 to help repeal the new ban.

The boycotters have demanded that the owner's daughter, El Coyote manager Marjorie Christoffersen, pony up $100 to help repeal Prop 8. She tearfully declined, citing her LDS faith, during a raucous meeting with activists. "You are not my friend if you take my civil rights," one activist shouted before she fled the room.

In the first days after California voters reinstated the ban on Nov. 4, activists vented much of their anger in protests at LDS and other churches that had advocated Prop 8. But they soon shifted to a new tack: compiling Internet blacklists of businesses like El Coyote, where top officials or one or more employees were found from public disclosures to have donated to the "Yes on 8" campaign.

The idea is to use gay-spending power to punish businesses the activists say discriminate against gays' right to get married. Among the dozens of businesses now being targeted for boycotts are hotels, fast-food chains and dental offices.

So far, the boycott campaign has claimed at least two high-profile casualties: Scott Eckern, artistic director of the California Musical Theatre in Sacramento, and Richard Raddon, president of the Los Angeles Film Festival. Both men resigned after their private donations to Yes on 8 were revealed and activists threatened boycotts unless they quit.

Eckern and Raddon were members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose members accounted for much of the $40 million in contributions raised by the Yes on 8 campaign. "The main finger we are pointing is at the Mormon Church," says Vic Gerami, a leading gay activist in West Hollywood, Calif.

Some gay-rights advocates say they don't agree with the boycotts. "We need to get it together. I mean, gang, we lost," Dana Miller, a gay television producer from Los Angeles, wrote in a Nov. 24 column in the gay magazine In Los Angeles.