Gay Issue Quietly Spreads Rifts Through Civil Rights Groups : Lobbyists: High-profile black and Latino groups are on sidelines in battle to end military’s ban on homosexuals. Some say ‘60s coalition is fracturing.

The clash over whether to eliminate the ban on gays in the military has quietly split the national civil rights coalition that has been the mainstay of many human-rights battles.

Although some black leaders have publicly supported lifting the ban, the army of voters and lobbyists swarming over Capitol Hill in the gay-rights push has been conspicuously white--and devoid of high-profile support from mainstream black- and Latino-run civil rights groups.

The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, for example, has not even taken a position on the issue and is not likely to do so anytime soon, an official of the organization said.

Staffers at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, another of the traditional lions of the civil rights struggle, have met privately with gay and lesbian groups to consider possible legislation, but they have not joined the lobbying effort to support the proposed change for the military.

Latino groups have not been rushing to join the battle either. Lupe Perez, president of Comision Femenil de Los Angeles, said she believes that the issue is important, but added that her group has “so many issues on our table that we don’t have the time.”

What makes the absence of blacks so telling is that gay-rights groups have sought to portray their own struggle with the military as a replay of that faced by blacks in the late 1940s when they were trying to remove racial barriers in the armed services.

In some ways, the parallels are eerie: The nation’s top general warns that lowering barriers in the military will jeopardize good order and discipline. Soldiers and veterans’ groups complain bitterly. Minority groups stage protests.

In 1947, Gen. Omar N. Bradley argued against ending the segregation of blacks into separate units. Today, Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, contends that the two issues simply are not the same.

But Donna Brazile, issues director for Eleanor Holmes Norton, the congressional delegate from the District of Columbia and one of the few high-profile blacks who openly supports lifting the ban on gays in the military, contends that for many blacks, the two causes have limited similarities.

Although blacks can easily identify with efforts to end discrimination based on race or sex--characteristics that are apparent at birth--many of them believe, along with many whites, that “being gay is a matter of choice,” Brazile said.

That belief, however, has been undercut in recent years by research at UCLA and the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, which has found evidence that the brains of homosexual males are fundamentally different from those of heterosexual males. The findings suggest that homosexuality is determined by biological factors rather than by choice.

Analysts also point out that the black community traditionally has been influenced by black ministers, who are fairly fundamentalist when it comes to such issues as abortion and homosexuality. The ministers, in turn, often set the agenda for black civil rights groups.

And some black spokesmen say that, partly because of earlier stereotyping by whites, many blacks simply are uncomfortable being identified publicly with sexual issues of any sort--such as those raised during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

The result, Brazile contends, is a visible coolness on the issue. Although a majority of residents in the District of Columbia are black, Brazile said she has not been lobbied “by one civil rights leader or by one human rights leader” on the gay issue.

Not only that, Brazile said, but “initially our calls were running 2 to 1 against” the military ban. “Now it’s beginning to reverse itself,” she said, “but we’ve still got a lot of work to do.”

For the moment, leaders in the campaign to end the military ban on gays are trying to soft-pedal the absence of support from blacks.

Joe Grabarz, legislative director for the Human Rights Campaign Fund, said gay-rights supporters have noted that black groups “have not been out front” but adds that “we are willing to work with people as they are.”

“I don’t believe it means there’s a real division,” Grabarz said.

But some analysts contend that the apparent split is more evidence that the civil rights coalition of the 1960s has already fragmented substantially in the face of fading economic barriers and the emergence of a growing black middle class.

Most black civil rights leaders “are no longer marching--they’re Establishment,” said David Mixner, a Los Angeles-based gay-rights activist.

Desegregating the Services

President Clinton’s push to lift the ban on homosexuals in the military is not the first time a President has gotten involved in the issue of who can serve their country. Here is a look at an earlier executive order: The order: President Harry S. Truman’s Executive Order 9981, issued on July 26, 1948, stipulated that the races be treated equally in the military.

Implementation: The order said nothing about integration, and historians say that the armed forces did not change treatment of blacks for some months. When change came, it may have more reflected manpower needs than a desire to remedy discrimination. In 1949, the Air Force became the first service to change; mechanics in overstaffed black units were needed in understaffed white ones; black pilots were needed in all-white bombers.

The history: After serving in Colonial and Revolutionary War forces, blacks were officially excluded from the Army and Marines--although they were tolerated by the Navy--until the Civil War. After that, they served in segregated units, often relegated to menial labor.

Integration: It was not until 1954 that the secretary of the Army pronounced the service desegregated--that is, no unit was more than half black.

For more information: See “Strength for the Fight: The History of Black Americans in the Military,” by Bernard Nalty, an Air Force historian; “The Integration of the Armed Forces: 1940-1965,” by Maurice MacGregor, a retired historian at the Army Center on Military History; “The Air Force Integrates: 1945-1964” by Alan Gropman; or “Coming Out Under Fire: The History of Gay Men and Women in World War II” by Allan Berube.