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https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/01/09/17/8321528-6573905-image- a-6_1547055571738.jpg

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For years, Mayor John Duran has been a public avatar for West
Hollywood’s cheekily sexual culture.

From the City Council dais, he joked about wearing gold lamé
underwear and announced a public forum on anal cancer named
Booty Call to Action. But he was also accused by another
councilman of looking for sex on the dating app Grindr during
public meetings.

Even after the city paid $500,000 in 2016 to settle a sexual
harassment lawsuit brought by Duran’s former council deputy —
whom Duran hired after meeting on Grindr and having sex with him
— Duran was reelected.

For many, it seemed West Hollywood was the town that #MeToo
forgot.

But now, amid new allegations of sexual harassment against Duran
by members of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles, some West
Hollywood residents and politicians are saying enough is enough
and that times have changed. Three of the city’s five council
members have called on Duran to resign, saying he has become a
distraction.

Protesters are planning to converge on the City Council meeting
Tuesday to call for Duran’s ouster and seek action in another
scandal: the recent deaths of two gay black men in the West
Hollywood apartment of Ed Buck, a white, wealthy Democratic
donor and LGBTQ activist. For several years, Duran worked as an
attorney for Buck.

Last week, Robert Oliver resigned as vice chair of the city’s
Public Safety Commission in protest after other commissioners
declined to condemn Duran.

“It is time that the #MeToo movement comes to West Hollywood,”
he said.

Duran, 59, has refused to step down, describing himself as a
proudly sensual gay man who lived through a sexual revolution
colliding against a prudish #MeToo movement that’s too quick to
judge. Bawdiness is just part of who he’s always been, Duran
said, and he’s not going to change now.

“There’s a culture clash going on,” the mayor said. “If somebody
expresses himself or herself sexually, that doesn’t make it
harassment, per se.”

“People are thinking that anything sexual is harassment because
somebody feels it is unwelcome, but you have to open your mouth
and say, ‘No, I don’t want this.’ … Otherwise, how are any of us
able to navigate the sexual politics of 2019? I just think there
are bigger, more complex issues at play, that everyone needs to
take a timeout and slow down. It can’t be accusation equals
guilt.”

Three current or former members of the Gay Men’s Chorus have
accused Duran, the longtime board chairman, of crude sexual
comments and engaging in unwanted touching.

Chorus member Brian Phillip Nichoalds said Duran slipped his
hand inside Nichoalds’ waistband and made sexually charged
comments. Joey Firoben, a former member, said Duran made
inappropriate comments to him too.

Jason Tong, 23, who was both a singing member and part-time
employee of the chorus, said that, in October, Duran came up
behind him and put two fingers inside his waistband, near his
hips, in a changing room before a show in Glendale. Tong said he
turned around and made eye contact with Duran, who silently left
the room.

“I sort of went into a shocked state,” Tong said. “It all
happened very quickly, five seconds or so. … I went to the next
changing room over and told a couple of my friends what
happened. Only then did I realize I had been violated by
someone.”

Tong said he was upset Duran was trying to blame a generational
difference and that he “knows lots of older gay men who
definitely understand the idea of consent.”

“No matter how old you are,” he said, “it’s very easy to ask
first.”

Oliver, 29, said the accusations against Duran went beyond “gay
culture” and colorful language.

“It’s his generation that made it possible for me to be an out,
proud, liberated, married gay man today,” Oliver said. “But it’s
my generation’s responsibility to take the lessons that we have
learned collectively as a society and bring those to our LGBT
community and teach his generation.”

On Tuesday, City Council members Lindsey Horvath, Lauren Meister
and John D’Amico posted similar statements to their individual
Facebook pages calling for Duran to resign.

“Our City cannot focus on the work of the people when we have to
address new and numerous allegations of sexual misconduct,
including whether our Mayor used his title to solicit sexual
favors,” Horvath wrote.

City Atty. Mike Jenkins said state law did not allow the council
of a general-law city to remove one of its members.

Duran told The Times that he thought his colleagues violated the
state’s open-meeting law, the Ralph M. Brown Act, by
coordinating the statements, which were all posted within four
minutes of each other. Jenkins said in an email that “the
statements reflect the individual views of each council member
and are not the result of a coordinated effort.”

Councilman John Heilman is the only member who has not publicly
addressed the allegations.

Duran has been on the council since 2001 and has served four
terms as mayor, a largely ceremonial title that rotates annually.

In a Facebook statement Wednesday, Duran wrote that gay people
fought hard in the 1970s and 1980s for “the right to maintain
sexuality in the midst of plague and to come out on the other
side into marriage equality. … Am I the only gay man in town who
uses bawdy sexual humor? Or says inappropriate things? Nope.”

“So, will I resign? Those of you who know me — well know the
answer. HELL NO.”

Jeremy Goldbach, director of the Center for LGBT Health Equity
at USC, said a certain level of off-color and gallows humor was
part of life for many gay men who survived the AIDS crisis and
that one of the defining characteristics for the LGBTQ rights
movement was a willingness to push the boundaries on sexuality.

“But I don’t think the historical experiences in the LGBT
community somehow provide permission for the way somebody acts
today,” he said. “We’re in a different time now, especially when
people are in positions of power. … In those situations, it
doesn’t matter if you think something is offensive. What matters
is the experience the other person is having.”

Steve Martin, a former West Hollywood councilman who is gay,
said gay elected officials had to “follow the established rules”
because they represented everyone, not just the LGBTQ community.

“Wrapping yourself in the flag of gay sexual liberation is just
a dodge for irresponsible conduct,” Martin said. “Elected office
is a public trust; this ain’t no nightclub, this ain’t no disco,
as the song goes. Bathhouse conduct is not appropriate at City
Hall or in any professional setting.”

In October, Mike Gerle, the city’s events services coordinator,
formally complained to West Hollywood’s human resources
department about Duran. Gerle said he was working at a city-
sponsored protest at West Hollywood Park with a giant balloon
depicting President Trump as an infant when he heard Duran make
a sexually charged comment to a photographer lying on the
ground, saying he was “always on his back.”

Gerle, 53, also formally complained that Duran made
inappropriate sexual advances toward his boyfriend, Dennis
Gleason, on Grindr during a city-funded trip to a National
League of Cities event in Washington, D.C., in 2018.

In Grindr screenshots provided to The Times, Duran asked to come
to Gleason’s room. Gleason declined, saying it was “a little too
close to home” and that he worked for Los Angeles City
Councilman Joe Buscaino and was dating Gerle.

Duran wrote: “Oh my god. I didn’t realize that. Disregard!”

A few minutes later, he wrote: “[Oral sex] shouldn’t count. But
Gerle would Hate me.” A few minutes later, he asked again for a
sex act, then wrote, “Oh come on. That was slightly funny.”

Gerle, a former International Mr. Leather, said he and Gleason
had an open relationship and that his boyfriend could have sex
with whomever he wanted — but that Duran crossed a line because
he kept pursuing Gleason even after Gleason indicated he was
uninterested.

“It’s about consent. … He has this sense of entitlement that
because we’re gay, ‘I can do whatever I want with you because
that’s our culture.’ He’s decided that’s our culture. He doesn’t
understand that every gay man gets to decide what interactions
he has. You don’t get a pass.”

Gleason, 37, the policy director for Buscaino, said Duran’s
statements about a generational divide “sounds like the same
thing, to me, as ‘locker-room talk.’ ”

In a Feb. 11 letter to Gerle, the city said his complaints were
unsubstantiated and that Human Resources “recommends continuing
to limit your interaction with Mayor Duran, per your request,
without diminishing your job responsibilities or opportunities
for advancement.”

In an interview with the WeHo Times, a local news website, Duran
dismissed his accusers from the chorus. Duran said that before
Tong made a complaint, he had never heard of him.

“I looked him up on Facebook and of course, he’s a skinny Korean
kid with pimples on his cheek. … Look at this guy. It’s just not
happening. It’s not credible,” Duran told the publication.

API Equality-LA, an Asian and Pacific Islander LGBTQ rights
organization, condemned Duran’s “victim-blaming and racist
statements,” saying “Asian men have long been discriminated
against in gay communities.”

Estevan Montemayor, president of the board for Christopher
Street West, the nonprofit that produces L.A. Pride, said
Duran’s comment was “very Trumpian.”

“He has dismissed his accusers because of the way they look and
who they are. It’s the same tactic. It is deplorable,” said
Montemayor, who said he had long considered Duran a friend.

Tong said he felt like he was being body shamed but that “like
every skinny, queer person of color who happens to be relatively
young, it’s not like I haven’t been victimized like this before.”

And besides, Tong added: “I’m not Korean; I’m Chinese.”

Times staff writer Jessica Gelt contributed to this report.

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-weho-sexual-scandal- protests-20190216-story.html

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