Gays Are New Willie Horton, Activists Say : GOP: Homosexuals say they have been derided on the convention floor and their platform concerns ignored in order to placate evangelicals in the party.

Derided on the convention floor and excluded from platform deliberations, gay and lesbian activists say that they have been transformed into nothing less than “the new Willie Hortons” at the Republican National Convention here this week.

In sharp contrast to the Democrats--who adopted the homosexual movement’s policy priorities and featured openly gay and lesbian speakers at their convention--the GOP platform opposes same-sex marriages and adoptions and favors a continued ban on homosexuals in the military. Gay protesters burned President Bush in effigy Monday night and were routed after a confrontation with baton-wielding Houston police.

Homosexual Republican activists maintain that Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle’s campaign for “traditional family values” is a thinly veiled code for gay-bashing to placate the party’s well-organized, militant evangelical minority. Some, including prominent conservative Marvin Liebman, say they cannot bring themselves to vote for Bush in November.

“President Bush has the shameful distinction of being the most anti-gay President in American history,” Urvashi Vaid, executive director of the nonpartisan Gay and Lesbian Task Force, said at a news conference here. His campaign has engaged in “unprecedented homophobia” and has “vilified and demeaned” homosexuals, she said.

The Bush-Quayle campaign maintains it is not anti-gay but rather that it opposes Democrat-backed efforts to grant government preferences for homosexual lifestyles through anti-discrimination or affirmative action laws.

Bush said in an interview earlier this month that homosexuality “in my view is not normal.” At a speech to the Republican National Committee on Wednesday, he was taunted by demonstrators waving condoms and shouting, “What about AIDS?”

Few issues present a sharper distinction between the Democratic and Republican presidential tickets this year. Politically, the question is whether Republicans can use it to paint Democrats as outside the political and cultural mainstream without, in the process, turning off critically important swing voters.

“Many strategists calculate that you can be critical of gay rights without antagonizing a lot of Americans on the other side,” said William Schneider, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. “You run the risk of alienating moderate, well-educated suburban voters who don’t like intolerance and prejudice.”

Gays and lesbians themselves make up an increasingly politically active and outspoken community. It is difficult to gauge the number of homosexual voters but, according to the long-used estimate that 10% of Americans are gay, the figure could be 9 million or more. Some conservatives maintain that the number is far smaller.

Gay leaders hailed their unprecedented inclusion at the Democratic Convention in New York as a watershed, marking recognition of increased gay and lesbian political clout. The Democratic platform calls for adoption of a federal gay and lesbian civil rights bill, an end to the ban on military service and the marshaling of greater federal resources for AIDS prevention, research and treatment.

The Democratic gay and lesbian delegate caucus claimed 107 members. In contrast, the Republicans have only two openly gay alternates here, both from California.

Nationwide, the overwhelming majority of gays are Democrats, and they have rallied in support of party nominee Bill Clinton in recent months as a champion of their goals, despite his lukewarm record on homosexual issues as governor of Arkansas. His campaign has already raised large sums of money from the gay community.

But, like their heterosexual counterparts, many gays are Republicans because of the party’s stress on economic opportunity, individual rights and anti-communism. Some affluent gays are drawn by the GOP’s anti-tax stance; others who served in the military--albeit without disclosing their homosexuality--find the party’s pro-defense orthodoxy appealing.

“To be gay, conservative and Republican is not a contradiction,” Liebman said here Tuesday. “I’m proud to be all three, less proud this week to be a Republican.”

Across the nation, the Log Cabin Federation, a gay Republican organization, has 25 chapters in 13 states with nearly 6,000 members--including 1,000 in California. But at the Log Cabin mini-convention here prior to the GOP gathering, members voted not to endorse Bush and Quayle.

“It’s important to hold the party’s feet to the fire,” said Marty Keller, a gay California alternate here who is an official in the state’s Consumer Affairs Department and a former president of Log Cabin California. “And I think it’s important to say that real family values are supported by the majority of the gay community--nurturing, education, a strong economy, safe streets.”