Clinton Backs Anti-Gay Job Bias Legislation

President Clinton put himself on record Friday as the nation’s first chief executive to support a federal measure that would outlaw job discrimination against gay men and lesbians, an idea that has growing support in Congress but is unlikely to win passage any time soon.

Clinton’s announcement likely will shore up his political backing among gays and lesbians, who say they were disappointed by the Administration’s failure to repeal the military’s ban on openly gay personnel.

But a conservative activist called Clinton’s move “a political blunder” that will hurt his reelection effort next year.

California is among nine states that forbid job discrimination based on sexual orientation. In most of the nation, however, employers may refuse freely to hire or may fire persons because of their sexual orientation.

Under federal law, employers may not discriminate against workers based on their race, religion, gender, national origin, age or disability. Companies can be forced to pay up to $300,000 in damages for violating the law.

A proposal to add “sexual orientation” to that list has been introduced in Congress every year since 1980 and the most recent version has 30 sponsors in the Senate and 130 in the House.

During his 1992 campaign, Clinton said that he supported the idea “in principle” and on Friday, the President announced his support in writing for a slightly revised bill that exempts religious organizations from the proposed law.

“Individuals should not be denied a job on the basis of something that has no relationship to their ability to perform their work,” Clinton said in a letter to Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), a lead sponsor of the bill.

The bill also excludes employers with fewer than 15 workers and makes clear that gays do not deserve “preferential treatment” to increase their numbers. The bill also bars claims of discrimination based just on statistics showing an absence of gay employees.

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Kennedy’s chief co-sponsor is Republican Sen. James M. Jeffords (R-Vt.), who said he plans hearings on the proposal early next year.

But the Republican leadership in the House and Senate has shown no enthusiasm for expanding civil rights protections for gays and almost certainly will block the Kennedy-Jeffords bill from becoming law.

Nonetheless, gay-rights activists say that they are optimistic because they believe the tide of public opinion is moving in their direction.

“Civil rights legislation is a long-term process and we’re in this for the long term,” said David M. Smith, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign Fund, a lobbying group for gay rights. “This was a politically courageous move on the President’s part.”

Clinton won strong support from gays during the 1992 campaign but his compromise “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy for gays in the military has been sharply criticized by gay activists. During the summer, the criticism escalated when the Administration chose to stay out of the Supreme Court battle over an anti-gay state constitutional amendment passed by Colorado’s voters. The court heard arguments in the case this month but will not rule on it for several months.

But White House political adviser George Stephanopoulos won applause from the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Assn. on Friday as he cited Clinton’s steady efforts to support the concerns of gays and lesbians.

“Pat Robertson won’t like this and Pat Buchanan won’t like it,” he said, “but most Americans believe that no one should lose their jobs for reasons that have nothing to do with job performance.”

However, Robert H. Knight, an official of the Family Research Council, called Clinton’s stand a blunder and said it would hurt him politically.

“Most Americans made it clear they disagreed with the Administration’s attempt to open the military to homosexuality. They are also fed up with special rights in general and newly coined ones in particular such as ‘gay rights’,” Knight said.

The office of Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) did not return calls seeking comment on the legislation or Clinton’s announcement.

As front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, Dole has seemed unsure of how to handle the gay-rights issue. His campaign returned a $1,000 contribution from the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay group, because, Dole said, he could not support their “agenda.”

This week, however, Dole backtracked and said that his campaign aides had erred when they returned the check.