NEWS ANALYSIS : Gathering Seen as Both Defining and Two-Edged

The organizers of Sunday’s gay rights march were not modest in their expectations: The event would be the largest gathering of gays and lesbians and the biggest civil rights march in the nation’s history. It would be a defining moment for a movement that has only recently begun to gain national momentum, demonstrating its breadth and diversity.

The fight over the crowd count began even before the rally was over. Organizers boasted they had achieved the hoped for turnout of 1 million. However, the official National Park Service estimate was 300,000.

But whatever the number of demonstrators, the march--lasting more than six hours--was a significant public showing for a minority group long considered on the political fringes. Gay men and women came from every corner of the country in what was for them an exhilarating affirmation of self and a declaration of strength and unity.

They wanted to show to America that they were “regular” people, the kind that live next door, go to work every day and pay their taxes. While the march included the exotic--some bare-breasted women, transvestites and people clad in leather gear--for the most part, the demonstrators were conventional, orderly and well-behaved. They looked as if they could have been going to a Fourth of July celebration.

But for some observers, the marchers’ mere presence in the Capital was provocative, raising the dilemma of such a demonstration--will it increase public support for gay and lesbian goals or create a backlash? The march confronts Americans with a subject that makes many squeamish and uncomfortable.

“For most Americans, there’s a conflict,” observed John Petrocik, a UCLA political science professor who specializes in public opinion. “On the one hand, they personally do not like homosexuality. A substantial majority find it immoral, wrong. At the same time, probably an equal number don’t have interest in persecuting people because of this. There’s a kind of old-fashioned ethic of ‘live and let live.’ ”

And the sight of hundreds of thousands of homosexuals marching past the White House holding hands behind political banners puts mainstream America in the position of having to make a choice between those two competing strains of thought.

“In the short term it’s likely to produce less benign feelings, rather than more benign feelings,” Petrocik added. “They look at this and say, ‘I don’t like it.’ ”

Indeed, the folded arms and tight expressions of some heterosexuals watching the march was evidence of their discomfort.

“I’m scared,” admitted a woman from Baltimore as she stood with her husband watching chanting, smiling gays and lesbians stream by hour after hour. “I didn’t realize there were so many. It scares me to see so many of them. . . . It’s unbelievable to see how much they’ve organized.”

Her husband, asked if the march would make him more or less sympathetic to the gay cause, replied sharply: “Less, I don’t want them around me.”

Michael Maslansky, an analyst for Luntz Weber Research and Strategic Services, a Republican polling firm in Washington, also saw the massive march as a “double-edged sword.”

“I think it’s a good thing for their movement, exercising their rights. As far as the effect they will have, I think for many straight people, it’s a difficult sight to see this large a population flaunting its differentness. . . . They are being very public about what they’re doing. I think it’s got as much potential to increase support as to increase opposition.”

Moreover, while huge rallies energize the participants, they don’t necessarily change policy, said Ross K. Baker, a political science professor at Rutgers University. “Will the calls to Congress on gays and lesbians in the military turn around because of this? I don’t think so.

“Changing public policy has a lot to do with persistence, and we will see if this has legs, if these people have the same staying power as the right-to-lifers, who are willing to haunt Congress.”

Certainly, some of the march’s legacy will depend on how it is portrayed in the media.

Watching the coverage Sunday on CNN and C-SPAN, Philip Gaunt, an associate professor in communications at Wichita State University, thought the afternoon could only help the gay movement.

“It’s not been outrageous,” Gaunt said. The demonstrators he saw interviewed “came across as being very fair-minded and honest and serious about what they were doing. . . . I think the reporting will likely influence people favorably about the gay rights movement.”

As for a possible backlash, Gaunt said, “I think to the contrary, that people will start to say, ‘Hey, there’s a lot of them. Can a million people be wrong?’ ”

For the throngs of gays and lesbians marching, some of them with family and friends, the experience of being a festive majority at the march was clearly one they would take home with them.

“It’s wonderful,” said a 45-year-old computer systems analyst from Delaware decked out with gay-pride buttons. “This is more people than are in the state of Delaware, do you understand?”

The march was her first gay political event. “It was time to do this for me,” she explained, adding that it had given her a “new self-awareness. Maybe a little stiffening of the backbone so I can be a little more out--because it matters.”

Charity Imbrie, a Pittsburgh attorney marching with her two children, was equally enthusiastic about the weekend. “Everywhere you go, every restaurant, every hotel, every street is filled with gay people. It’s very empowering.”