There are about 30 so-called| “gay” bars for homosexuals in San Francisco and a at least half are facing license revocation proceedings on various levels of litigation, a State Liquor Department official said yesterday. Sidney Feinderg, area administrator for northern Callifornia, said this ratio of troublesome bars to the total in the “gay” class is higher than that for “normal” bars. Feinberg admitted, however, that law enforcement authorities as a practical matter are likely to devote considerable time keeping the “gay” bars under surveillance.

TELLS OBJECTIVES

The liquor administrator outlined the department’s objectives and structure at the first national convention of the Daughters of Bilitis, an organization of women whose purpose is to “promote the integration of the homosexual into society.” Feinberg said that under present decisions of the State Supreme Court, the liquor department cannot proceed against a bar solely because its patronage principally is from homosexuals. He told the convention that the department is in general accord with this view and is interested only in taking action against places “in which acts that would be offensive or disorderly any place occur.” 

Feinberg said the question of what was “offensive” was ultimately a question for the people through the Legislature to decide and in absence of statutory definition, a matter for courts. Attorney Morris Lowenthal, who participated in two cases which had much to do with the present judicial outlook toward the so-called “gay” bars, disagreed with [Feinberg’s position that liquor license holders were. Your fully protected by “due process” in revocation proceedings. Lowenthal said he objects principally to the status of department hearing officers who make initial decisions on revocation recommendations.

Because they are appointed through the department they are not really “independent,” he said. Earlier in the opening day of the organization’s threeday meeting, delegates heard a medical-psychiatric discussion on homosexuality by Dr. Frank A. Beach of the University of California psychology department; Dr. Norman Reider, head of the Mt. Zion Hospital psychiatric clinic; Dr. Leo J. Zeff of Berkeley, and Patricia Lyon, ethnologist and archaeologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara.