Bitter Clash Splits Pasadena LGBT Group, Leaving the City with Two Competitors

A disagreement between the founder of Pasadena Pride Center and its board of directors has escalated into a bitter legal battle.

Pasadena Pride Center, founded in 2011 by Rev. Rick Eisenlord, is suing Eisenlord, alleging he misappropriated the center’s website address and email contact list to create his own LGBT center, slandered PPC’s board of directors and misappropriated PPC funds by using its ATM card to pay personal expenses.

Last October the PPC board asked for the resignations of Eisenlord and co-founder Paulette Hunnewell. According to the lawsuit, Eisenlord demanded the PPC pay him $10,000 for his services to the non-profit LGBT advocacy and service organization. Pasadena Pride Center board member Liz Schiller has assumed the role of interim president for that organization.

Eisenlord, who is pastor of Pasadena’s Good Shepherd Church, an LGBT congregation, then established the San Gabriel Valley Gay and Lesbian Center. The PPC lawsuit alleges that Eisenlord used PPC’s email contact list to promote the SGV Center and its new website. Furthermore, the PPC board says Eisenlord retained ownership of the PPC website, the home page of which is currently inaccessible, and is using the PPC logo. PPC now has a new website.

PPC says that Eisenlord slandered it in a press release in which he said he resigned from its board because it did not share his vision. “It is precisely these values of serving the community with no prospect of getting paid, putting the needs of others before our own and doing it in humility that I find missing in the Pasadena Pride Center,” he said.

In a filing in response to the lawsuit, Eisenlord contends that PPC is “an extension of outreach ministries taken through Good Shepherd Church” and that he created the website, its content and the organization’s logo and never transferred ownership to PPC. Eisenlord also argues that the lawsuit over use of the website’s url cannot be adjudicated in L.A. County Superior Court because ownership of web urls is regulated by the federal government.

Eisenlord argued that L.A. Superior Court should dismiss the suit and award him $2,520 to cover his attorney’s fees and bill PPC $1,500 for filing suit in the wrong court. The suit was transferred last month to U.S. District Court.

The PPC/Eisenlord lawsuit stands out in a city with a small LGBT community. Pasadena has a total population of 137,000 and was ranked in the current issue of the Advocate as America’s second-gayest city. The Advocate’s annual rankings, however, are widely disputed and not based on any real data. One indicator of the small size of the city’s gay population is the fact that its nightlife scene has shrunk. Today there is only one gay bar: The Boulevard, which is nearly 40 years old. Pasadena received a “C-” ranking from the Human Rights Campaign in its 2014 measure of LGBT inclusion.

Schiller said Pasadena Pride Center is forging ahead. “We have lots of stuff in the works,” she said, including building relationships with elected officials, seeking a physical location and building a staff. The PPC also has started a “Listening Project” to assess what kinds of programs and services are needed in the area.

Eisenlord said his new center’s first project is “Feed Pasadena,” an initiative to provide food and hygiene supplies to those in need, particularly those who are homeless and/or living with HIV. The organization has secured some grant funding for the program, Eisenlord said.

Feed Pasadena is a joint effort with Good Shepherd Church, which is described as its “birthing parent.” He said he plans to start the process of applying for non-profit status for the center soon. In addition, he said that the center has started a new group for lesbians.

“We’re really excited,” Eisenlord said. “We’ve got good things going.”