Perot Acts to Mend Fences With Gays, Aide Reports : Politics: He meets for 90 minutes with activists on bias issue. He also hosts lunch to present his 100-member advisory panel on national issues.

In an event combining serious policy purposes with what passes for glamour in national politics, Ross Perot on Tuesday threw a lunch for 350 supporters, advisers and celebrities at a Dallas hotel.

And, according to a Perot official in California, the Texas billionaire is preparing to publicly declare that he opposes discrimination against gays in an effort to mend fences with homosexuals.

Gay activists have been pressing Perot to make such a statement since he said on a network television show in May that he would not nominate homosexuals for Cabinet jobs and that overturning the military’s ban on homosexuals is not “realistic.”

The Dallas assemblage marked a cotillion of sorts for Perot’s nascent national advisory committee, a panel of 100 or so experts, activists and citizens who will help his independent campaign for the presidency craft its positions on a variety of national issues.

In addition to the requisite lawyers, bankers, businessmen and foreign-policy experts, the panel will include several celebrities--including Katherine Hepburn, O. J. Simpson and Willie Nelson.

Country crooner Nelson, dressed all in black and looking like a ponytailed priest, said he would offer Perot advice “on the farm issue, on the small family farmer.” No one was sure on what matters Simpson and Hepburn (neither of whom showed up at the luncheon) would advise, but Perot campaign manager Tom Luce said the Perot organization would be flexible.

“Our general approach in formulating policy is to seek input from as many diverse people and sources as we can,” he said. “Celebrities will have input as well. They have opinions too.”

Perot sought input from about 10 gay and civil rights activists in a 90-minute meeting Monday at his Dallas headquarters, according to Gloria Allred, a Los Angeles civil rights lawyer, and Debra Olson, a gay Beverly Hills real estate financier who is Perot’s civil rights coordinator in California.

Olson, who along with Allred was present at the meeting, said Perot’s anti-discrimination statement could be released as early as today.

A Perot spokeswoman in Dallas confirmed the meeting but not that a statement would be forthcoming. She said only that the issue would be discussed at a staff meeting today.

Olson said she believes Perot is “leaning toward” saying that he favors overturning the military’s current policy of excluding acknowledged homosexuals.

She quoted Perot as saying that rather than kick out gays on the theory that they cause sexual friction with heterosexuals, the military should simply tell service members--both gay and straight--to file sexual harassment complaints if they feel they have been the target of unwanted advances.

Olson said Perot indicated that people with AIDS should be able to obtain experimental drugs even if they have not been approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration. Gays have repeatedly criticized the FDA for not moving faster to release such drugs.

In Dallas, at a press conference before the luncheon for the Perot supporters, campaign manager Luce said the advisory panel would, over the next several weeks, begin to piece together what amounts to a platform for Perot, who has yet to formally announce his candidacy.

Among those with a central role in the policy-making process are former Jimmy Carter Administration budget deputy John P. White and newly named foreign policy coordinator Richard Fisher of Dallas.

Fisher, who runs a money-management firm, served as an aide to former Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal and advised former President Carter at the Tokyo and Bonn economic summits in 1978 and 1979.

Fisher caught Perot’s eye earlier this year with a newspaper article on the need to reinvent U.S. foreign policy in the aftermath of the Cold War. He followed that with a 30-page memo to Perot expanding on his views and was hired on June 19 as a full-time adviser.

Victoria Toensing, a former high-ranking Justice Department official during the Ronald Reagan Administration, also attended the luncheon and said she would serve as an adviser to the Perot campaign. An expert on terrorism and intelligence, Toensing said her chief interests now relate to economic espionage and the uses of embargoes as diplomatic weapons.

Perot opposed the Gulf War, saying the United States and its allies should have maintained and tightened the embargo against Iraq rather than engaging in combat.

Paul Nitze, a former Navy secretary and diplomat with more than 40 years’ service to Democratic and Republican administrations, said that he too would join Perot’s advisory panel--but that he had not decided whether to endorse Perot.

Broder reported from Dallas, Cheevers from Los Angeles.