Folks who've been following the trail carefully have already been here, and can take the bypass 
THE WASHINGTON POST
Capital Notebook
Tuesday, December 28, 1993
U.S. EXERTS CONTROL OVER THE RAINBOWS
By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
The Rainbow Family of Living Light, which gathers in a national forest each July, likely will fight the U.S. Forest Service in court over rules the group says, target the gathering.
The Rainbow Family of Living Light is too mellow for meetings, too mellow for bylaws and even too mellow to have leaders, but it is not too mellow to fight the federal bureaucracy.
The Rainbows are a counterculture phenomenon --"hippies," we used to call them --and every July in a national forest somewhere in the United States, they stage an enormous camping trip, or "gathering," they call it.
The lucky community blessed with the gathering gets to hobnob with 5,000 to 20,000 Deadheads, rastas, Hare Krishnas and other unusual people who live in the woods for a week while they laugh, sing, dance, pray for peace, feed their kids, fornicate, remember Jimi Hendrix, smoke dope and sometimes run naked.
The Rainbows believe that the U.S. Forest Service has been trying to bust them for years, and that, in its most ambitious scheme yet, has devised a new regulation requiring a camping permit that the Family will never be able to obtain.
"The only effect [of the regulation] is that it will make one particular event [the annual gathering] illegal," said William Thomas, a self-described "middle-aged philosopher" who probably would be working for the Family if the Family were ever to endorse the concept of employment.
The Forest Service denies nefarious intent. Instead, it says it wishes only to establish guidelines for forest use so large groups will not play havoc with tender sylvan environments.
"It's not specifically aimed at the Rainbow Family," said Lyle Laverty, the Forest Service's recreation director. "The purpose is not to deny permits but to facilitate activity." Laverty said the regulation should be written by the end of January.
To forestall this rush to judgment, the Rainbow Family has obtained help from People for Compassion and Understanding, a two and a half-month-old Washington group working on the Family's behalf to "prevent constitutional erosion."
Specifically, erosion of the First Amendment right of assembly, which, the group says. is under direct attack by the Forest Service. "A national forest is public land," said Thomas, a member of People for Compassion and Understanding. "Why should you have to have a permit to be on public land?"
Judy Sherman, another People member, describes the Family as a "gathering of predominantly alternative lifestyle people, who come together in the forest to share on many levels." This year's gathering, split between Alabama and Kentucky, was the Family's 21st annual get-together.
An examination of newspaper reports bears out Sherman's contention that the Family "has a good record with the Forest Service." Despite a nasty spate of dysentery in North Carolina a few years ago and a few arrests each year, the Family has a strong reputation for cleaning up after itself.
For an organization that supposedly has no organization, the Family's gatherings are quite well organized. Communal kitchens serve plenty of hot food, a clinic provides health care and there are a day care center, carefully sited latrines, a security corps and an ample supply of potable water.
Poblems do seem to arise fairly regularly with local communities, for whom the gathering must seem like a week-long mummer's parade. Local law tends to get nervous, the Forest Service sends reinforcements and everyone gets irritated.
So does the Family. Sherman says the Forest Service has a 'special team trained just to go to gatherings" and spy on people or arrest them. This claim could not be substantiated.
Instead of large-scale wilderness confrontations, however, the belligerents have chosen to do battle in the spirit of the 1980s and 1990s: They hire lawyers and go to court.
Twice in the 1980s, the Forest Service tried to write permit regulations for large camping groups, and twice courts shot them down as unconstitutional. The current attempt is the third.
The pending regulation would issue a permit to any group of 25 or more people who fulfill seven conditions, most of which have to do with health, lawbreaking or national security--no more using the Everglades for practice invasions of Cuba, for instance.
Also, however, the regulation requires a permit for anyone who hands out "printed material" in a national forest. It also demands that groups provide an adult to sign the permit and serve as the point of contact for the Forest Service.
Laverty indicated that the "printed material" provision had occasioned much criticism and is being reviewed, but the Rainbow Family "have been the only folks to express concern" about the signup. He is sure the Family will take the Forest Service to court.
Thomas ducked this question, simply noting that the Family "doesn't believe in leaders" and has trouble designating anybody to take responsibility, for anything. "The Family's purpose is to come together and pray for peace on Earth," Thomas said.
They may need a permit this year.??