POLITICS ’88 : Controversial Issues Aired for Platform Drafters : GOP Panel Hears Advocates of Causes

Practicing their own version of glasnost, Republican Party platform drafters Tuesday reached well outside the GOP’s ideological mainstream to hear advocates of such controversial causes as freedom of choice on abortion, gay rights and a prominent federal role in funding and regulating day care for children of working parents.

In large part, this exercise during a daylong platform committee hearing on domestic issues in a Kansas City hotel seemed symbolic, intended to draw a favorable contrast with the Democrats, who appear determined to reduce their 1988 platform in size and specificity.

But party leaders nevertheless insisted that their eagerness to hear different points of view reflected their awareness of the need for the GOP to adjust to changing times.

‘Greater Detail’

“I don’t see that the new platform will give us a divergent philosophy,” said National Chairman Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr. “But I do see it speaking in greater detail on such issues as the environment, child care, education and urban problems.”

When asked whether the party would depart from the 1980 and 1984 platforms, whose drafting was dominated by hard-line conservatives, Nebraska Gov. Kay A. Orr, chairwoman of the platform committee, said that those documents provide “a good base.” But she added: “The times have changed. There’s a new emphasis that we’ll need.”

Moreover, party leaders here contended that the idea of making new departures on public policy have the quiet but strong support of the presumptive nominee, Vice President George Bush. His supporters will control the 106-member permanent platform committee, which will begin drafting the platform Aug. 8 in New Orleans, a week before the nominating convention opens.

The drafting committee will meet in Los Angeles to consider economic issues on June 30, its last meeting before heading to New Orleans.

‘Looks to the Future’

“He (Bush) wants a platform that looks to the future,” said Rep. Jerry Lewis of Redlands, a platform committee co-chairman. “He wants a platform that looks to the 21st Century, not the 19th.”

To help reach that goal, the committee heard testimony Tuesday from spokesmen for viewpoints that some Republicans would consider close to heretical.

John Thomas of Dallas, a board member of a gay rights group called the Human Rights Campaign Fund, called on the committee in written testimony to recognize gay men and lesbians “as part of the pluralistic society we, as Republicans, champion,” and to back an “unprecedented effort” to combat AIDS.

‘Narrow Minority’

Another witness striving to buck the tides of the past was Randall J. Moody, testifying on behalf of Planned Parenthood in Nebraska, who contended that the 1984 platform’s call for an amendment outlawing abortion allowed “a narrow minority to use the power of the federal government to impose its religious view on all Americans.”

The divergence of views heard by the platform committee was nowhere more in evidence than in the makeup of the two panels of speakers on family-related issues, which have been getting increasing attention from both political parties.

The leadoff speaker on the first panel was the Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority. Participating in the second panel was Judith Weitz, state and local affairs director for the Children’s Defense Fund, a Washington-based liberal organization that advocates a major role for the federal government in child care and other family issues.

In his opening remarks at the hearings, Fahrenkopf contrasted the efforts of the GOP platform committee with the approach taken by its Democratic counterpart. “The Democrats have made it clear that they are determined to edit their platform before it is written. Unlike the Democrats, we have not yet written our platform. We are sincerely interested in your best ideas for America.”

Sharpens Arguments

Even conservative partisans said that they welcomed hearing divergent viewpoints. “I think it helps us sharpen our arguments,” said Phyllis Schlafly, head of the Eagle Forum, who testified in opposition to federal legislation for day care, which she said amounted to having the federal government “plunge into the baby-sitting business.”

Schlafly argued instead that the government could best help finance day care without discriminating against mothers who choose not to work outside the home through a system of income tax credits, targeted at low-income families.