San Francisco Chronicle (SF) - SUNDAY, November 27, 1994 Edition: SUNDAY Section: News Page: S4 Word Count: 1,716
Louis Freedberg, Chronicle Washington Bureau

"The time has come to sound the trumpet of righteousness," said the Rev. Lou Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, a leading fundamentalist organization closely allied to the Republican Party. "What is right is right, and what is wrong is wrong."

Declarations like these have thrown gay and lesbian leaders into a state of extreme consternation, if not quite panic, as they face a Congress with longtime gay rights opponents such as North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms and Speaker-elect Newt Gingrich now firmly in control.

At stake are programs and policies ranging from condom distribution to prevent the spread of AIDS to promoting tolerance of homosexual lifestyles in schools.

In an interview last week, Sheldon readily agreed that gay fears were "well-founded." "Homosexual lifestyle is dysfunctional, it is a developmental disorder, it is condemned by the great religions of the world," he said. After an era when gays made significant advances, he said, "you're going to see the pendulum swing back."

He and other Christian fundamentalists, for years promoting anti-gay positions from the sidelines, are now relishing their influence at the center of the new power elite in Washington, D.C. Seldom has the contrast between San Francisco, where voters elected three openly gay candidates to the Board of Supervisors on November 8, and the national political scene, been so graphically displayed.

While Helms has been the most vehement anti-gay member of Congress, Gingrich has voted against virtually every issue identified by gay organizations as important to them. During the current Congressional session, Gingrich received a zero rating from the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the nation's largest gay organization.

Gingrich has already promised Sheldon that Congress will hold hearings next year on barring federal funds for school districts, including San Francisco's, that offer curricula promoting tolerance of gay lifestyles, as well as those that refer gay students for counseling or other special services.

The measure was only narrowly defeated by Congress this year, at a time when Democrats were in the majority. If it passes the next time around, San Francisco schools could lose $12 million in federal aid, equivalent to the salaries of 250 teachers.

"I have no doubt I will face some of the most formidable challenges of my life," said Elizabeth Birch, director of litigation for Apple Computer in Sunnyvale, who will take over as head of the Human Rights Campaign Fund just two days after the new Congress is sworn in in January. "It will be like climbing up a vertical cliff."

Birch is also likely to find the White House less enthusiastic than before about embracing issues on her organization's agenda. President Clinton's attempt to lift the ban on gays in the military during the first week of his presidency is viewed by some analysts -- including many in the White House -- as a key element in the Republican triumph at the polls.

Gays face a tough road in almost every arena. For one thing, gay issues have become uncomfortably enmeshed in the debate about "values" carried out by Gingrich and his Republican colleagues.

"When (Gingrich) talks about Democrats being the enemy of normal Americans, who do you think he is talking about?" said Barney Frank of Massachusetts, one of three openly gay congressmen who won re-election three weeks ago. "Culture wars, values, these are all words which include attacks on gays."

Financing for AIDS research, as well as strategies for preventing its spread, is also likely to come under attack. Conservatives, for example, are opposed to condom distribution, the central component of the federal government's prevention strategy.

Moreover, because the GOP platform calls for a balanced budget amendment, tax refunds and increasing the military budget, almost every part of the domestic federal budget will shrink -- presumably endangering funds for AIDS research as well.

Clinton administration officials say they are determined to protect funding for AIDS research and prevention. "The administration will continue its prevention efforts as strongly as before and fight every attempt to curtail our authority to prevent the spread of HIV," said Patsy Fleming, the coordinator of AIDS policy at the White House.

But what could resurface on Capitol Hill are bills such as Helms' "AIDS Control Act" which failed last year. The bill would outlaw the use of federal funds to distribute condoms or to promote their use as an AIDS prevention technique. Instead, clinics would be required to promote abstinence as the most effective way to prevent the spread of the disease.

Many gay leaders see other dangers lurking in the GOP's political agenda; some at first glance do not seem tied to gay issues. For example, they say, Gingrich's declaration that he plans to pass a constitutional amendment allowing prayer in the schools could open the door to religious attacks on gays.

"If the religious right can get religion back into public institutions such as schools and government, then they can institutionalize on a federal and state level that lesbian and gay lives are immoral, wrong and against religious teachings," said Tom di Maria, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation in San Francisco.

Gay organizations must build completely new relationships on Capitol Hill, now that traditional allies such as Senator Edward Kennedy and California Representative Henry Waxman, have been deposed as heads of, respectively, the Labor and Human resources subcommittee and the Health and Environment subcommittee.

Key Waxman aides such as Tim Westmoreland, once mentioned as a candidate to be White House AIDS "czar," will be out of jobs by the end of the month. Gay groups will have to educate and inform a new phalanx of Republican legislative aides, many of whom will start out hostile to their concerns.

"We are going to lose some very dear friends," said Jane Silver of the American Foundation for AIDS research. "We are going to put our best face on it, we are going to go forward and talk to people we have not talked to in years."

In recent weeks, gay leaders have convened a series of strategy sessions to map out a plan to protect the gains they have made over the past decade and to counter anti-gay proposals that are sure to emerge during the next session of Congress.

Shortly after the election, 30 AIDS organizations met in Washington under the sponsorship of the National Organization Responding to AIDS. Peri Jude Radecic, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, has called for a summit of gay and lesbian organizations to meet before the new Congress convenes to develop a response to the outcome of the elections.

Radecic said gays will be hurt by what she anticipates will be an overall attack by Republicans on civil rights initiatives identified with President Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" programs, such as affirmative action, disability rights and other issues.

She and others are hoping that Clinton will veto the most extreme measures. "We know the president is going to move to the right, but it is still important that he take a stand, and not allow our current protections to be taken away."

That, however, is probably wishful thinking. His fingers already badly burned by his muddled attempts to lift the ban on gays in the military, Clinton is unlikely to take tough positions on issues that almost certainly would hurt him among conservative voters, especially in the South.

In fact, just the reverse may occur. Two weeks ago Clinton said he would consider GOP demands for a constitutional amendment allowing prayer in the schools, a shift that elicited shrill catcalls from many of his traditional liberal supporters.

For now, gay leaders are taking solace in the fact that most of their key supporters in Congress were reelected. In addition to Frank, the only other gay representatives, Gary Studds of Massachusetts and Steve Gunderson of Wisconsin, are returning. Oliver North, perhaps the most high profile anti-gay candidate, was defeated, albeit narrowly. And even in Republican-controlled Idaho and Oregon, voters turned back anti-gay initiatives, despite being flooded with "voter guides" issued by the far-right Christian Coalition.

But those victories are offset by the fact that at least 50 pro-choice Democrats, normally sympathetic to gay and lesbian issues, were defeated. And as Frank noted, Republican lawmakers from Idaho and Oregon are unlikely to lend their support to gay rights on Capitol Hill. The reality, he insisted, is that Congress is now controlled by an extremely conservative Republican party that no longer represents even the majority of Americans. "The public as a whole is not as anti-gay as the Republican party," said Frank.

A post-election poll conducted by the Human Rights Campaign Fund seemed to confirm Frank's analysis. Of 800 people polled, 70 percent (including 64 percent of Republicans) said they were opposed to job discrimination against gays. Seventy-eight percent favored increased funds for AIDS research and prevention, and more people were worried about threats from a "religious right wing agenda" (40 percent) than a "gay agenda" (21 percent).

Some hope gay Republicans will temper the influence of the extreme right wing in their party. According to a voter exit poll cited in the New York Times, 40 percent of those who identified themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual said they voted for Republicans. "Fundamentalists continue to represent a potent but extreme minority," said Birch of the Human Rights Campaign Fund. "I think the Republican Party is as concerned about the extreme right as the general citizenship."

Gay leaders say that despite the occupation of Capitol Hill by some of their bitterest opponents, they have no choice but to try to win Republicans to their side, especially on life-and-death matters such as AIDS. "We no longer have the choice of picking and choosing whom we have to work with," said Spencer Cox of the Treatment Action Group, an AIDS advocacy group in New York City. "The epidemic is not going to stop, so for better or worse we are going to have to work together. No one is willing to abandon huge numbers of people with HIV just because we don't like Newt Gingrich."

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