Gay-Rights Activists Plan National PBS Protests : Television: Three groups aim to jam Los Angeles phone lines during KCET’s current pledge drive.

Gay-rights activists say they plan to protest PBS’ decision to back away from two previously planned gay-themed programs with demonstrations at about a dozen public-television stations across the United States.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) said its members will stage protests in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and elsewhere against the network’s refusal to air two short films, “Stop the Church,” about a demonstration by the gay activist group ACTUP at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, and “Son of Sam and Delilah,” which uses a serial killer as a metaphor for AIDS.

In Los Angeles, three organizations--GLAAD, Queer Nation and ACTUP--said they plan to orchestrate what they call a “phone zap” against KCET Channel 28 during the 13-day on-air fund-raising drive that began Wednesday. Members of the groups will jam the pledge lines at the station with calls urging KCET to air the two films, organizers said.

KCET vice president Barbara Goen said Thursday that leaders from the local gay and lesbian community will be invited to the station to talk about their grievances. A decision on whether to air the two shows independently of PBS will be put off until such meetings are held, she said.

“We’re extremely anxious to gather input from and talk to leaders in the gay and lesbian community,” said Goen, who would not comment on the planned demonstrations.

KCET, she said, has produced 15 programs about the AIDS crisis, and several more about gay and lesbian lifestyles and issues. “We’re extremely proud of the amount of programming we’ve produced about the AIDS crisis,” Goen said. “We’ve done more than any other local station to tell those stories.”

Richard Jennings, executive director of GLAAD in Los Angeles, said that if PBS and its stations don’t air the two films, the groups plan to call for a boycott of their pledge drives.

“We are fed up with PBS’ failure to consider gays and lesbians as part of the broadcasting public and its failure to serve our community,” Jennings said. “This latest series of censorship actions we think has just about denied them the right to call on gays and lesbians and our families and friends for support.”

PBS’ decisions to cancel “Stop the Church,” which was to have aired as part of the opinion-oriented series “P.O.V.,” and to refuse to schedule “Son of Sam and Delilah,” which was to have been part of the “New Television” series, came on the heels of controversy generated by the network’s airing of another “P.O.V.” film last month about black homosexuals.

Although the network stood behind that film, Marlon Riggs’ “Tongues Untied,” 98 stations refused to air it. And the film so incensed fundamentalist Christian groups such as the Rev. Donald Wildmon’s American Family Assn. that they and others filed obscenity complaints against 13 stations that did broadcast it.

“It would have been nice to have heard from (GLAAD) and from their members with positive comments and a positive vote of support when ‘Tongues Untied’ aired,” said Stu Kantor, PBS’ associate director of corporate information. “It would be nice to see similar positive outpourings of sentiment when (the gay-themed film) ‘Longtime Companion’ airs on ‘American Playhouse’ in several weeks.”

Kantor defended public television’s record in serving the gay and lesbian community, citing the network’s funding of “Longtime Companion” and its airing of “Out in America” earlier this summer.

But Jennings said that the airing of such films is not enough.

“They have 52 weeks of programming a year, and for them to only air a couple of programs like that during Gay Pride Week does not amount to serving our community,” he said.

The groups plan to ask PBS to form a gay and lesbian caucus, which would offer programming advice.