Gay Community Has Something to Talk About : Radio: ‘The Connie Norman Show,’ hosted by a transsexual gay rights activist, premieres tonight on a commercial station.

When gay rights activist Connie Norman was a guest on a local radio show recently, the host asked for her opinion on the effectiveness of marches protesting Gov. Pete Wilson’s veto of a measure that would have provided homosexuals with civil rights protection against job discrimination.

“I told (the host), ‘Whether they’re productive or counterproductive, you don’t have the credentials to be asking that question because you’re not a gay or lesbian person,’ ” Norman recalled. “What angered me a great deal at that time is that we didn’t have a gay or lesbian person on the airwaves to pose just those sort of questions.”

That was a few weeks ago. Things have changed since then.

Today, Norman becomes the first gay rights activist to host a Monday-through-Friday talk program focusing on homosexual issues on a commercial station heard in the Los Angeles area. “The Connie Norman Show” premieres at 8 p.m. on XEK-AM (950), a station whose transmitter is in Baja California but whose news-talk programs originate from Hollywood.

“The gay and lesbian community has, to date, had to depend upon the kindness of others, like Blanche DuBois, and I’m tired of us having to do that,” Norman said. “If we’re going to have an argument, it should be amongst our family. It should not be a heterosexual person having the token argument or the token discussion for us.”

Norman’s show will deal mostly with political issues of concern to the gay community, but also will tackle broader subjects such as homelessness, poverty, racism and the defense budget. On Fridays, listeners will hear lighter fare, with celebrity interviews and performances by gay comedians.

But the thrust of the two-hour show will be the discussion of issues that Norman feels are not given expression in the mainstream media.

“In our community, we always come to this stumbling block of, ‘Don’t air your dirty laundry with the heterosexual press because they won’t put the right take on it, they won’t understand it, they won’t be able to couch it in the terms of our community,’ ” Norman said. “But what happens with that is it keeps us from having the discussion. So now we’ll be able to have the discussion without, ‘And now five minutes of rebuttal from the Ku Klux Klan.’ ”

Norman, 42, is a transsexual who has tested positive for HIV. In addition to having had her own public-access cable television talk show and having been a guest on various radio shows, she is a longtime AIDS activist and counsels runaway transsexuals. At 14, Norman ran away from her Texas home to live on the streets of Hollywood and became addicted to drugs. In 1976, after undergoing therapy and kicking her drug addiction, she had a sex-change operation.

“Connie Norman was a gay man and now is married to a man,” said Richard Jennings, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation/Los Angeles. “She might not be the best person to break a lot of stereotypes. But she’s a terrific communicator and she can empathize with gay men as well as women’s issues. She has a whole lot of heart and she’ll intrigue people. She’ll be lively. She is a beloved figure in the community.”

Norman hopes heterosexuals will listen to the show too.

“This is just the first little step for gay- and lesbian-kind, but it’s a giant leap for us as a society,” she said. “Because of the last 10 years of going back to the Stone Age socially, we don’t know each other anymore. I’m hoping this show will give us a way to get to know each other. And I think once we get to know each other, we’re going to love, respect and admire each other.”

Mindful of the fact that many advertisers avoid TV programs with gay-related story lines, XEK executives say they are bracing themselves for difficulties.

“It’s a very scary thing for a general manager or a program director to allow something on the air that they know may cause advertisers to go away,” said Tom Avila, XEK vice president of sales and operations. “Yes, we’ll have cancellations of advertisers and, yes, we’ll have some people that say, ‘We don’t want to advertise on that show.’ But we believe that in the long run it makes a statement about the station, that we want to be fair.”

“The Connie Norman Show” was the brainchild of Jim Simon, XEK’s vice president of news and programming, who previously was criticized by gay rights organizations for what they considered homophobic comments on talk shows he hosted at KGIL and KFI. He said he personally considers homosexuality “a perversion” but believes that gays should be allowed a forum.

“Just because I disagree with someone doesn’t mean I want them to keep their mouth shut,” Simon said. “I think they should have the same freedom that I have to talk about whatever. . . . You don’t have to believe what they believe or live life the way they do. I don’t want to and won’t. But at the same time, why should that dictate freedom of speech? I’m not afraid of the message they will put out.”

Simon contends that gays have not been given a substantial voice on other commercial radio stations.

“We’re putting our money where our mouth is in this particular situation,” Simon said. “There are radio stations all over town who just parrot this line of how the poor gays are getting discriminated against in employment practices, but they won’t hire any.”

David Hall, program director at competing talk station KFI-AM (640), said he thinks the show is a good idea, particularly for a fledgling station like XEK.

“It’s great to see it in mainstream media,” Hall said. “I think it’s important because there is a very sizable gay and lesbian community in Southern California. It’s kind of out of the scope of something that KFI would do. It would be narrowcasting for us, but for a smaller station, it would be a good niche and it would fill a need.”

Michael Fox, program director of top-rated talk station KABC-AM (790), agreed. “It’s an interesting idea which certainly would fulfill a need in the community, and I think it’s something I’ll be very interested to listen in to hear,” he said.

Only one other Los Angeles radio station, KPFK-FM (90.7), a non-commercial station owned by the Pacifica Foundation, has a regularly scheduled program hosted by homosexuals and dealing with gay and lesbian issues. “I M R U,” which has been on the air since the mid-1970s, is heard Sunday nights.