Dornan HIV Law on Way Out

House Republican leaders turned their backs Wednesday on Rep. Robert K. Dornan, agreeing to repeal the law he wrote requiring the honorable discharge of military personnel who test positive for the AIDS virus.

The political setback for Dornan (R-Garden Grove) came in the form of a budget compromise reached Wednesday by congressional and White House negotiators, which included a Senate bill to repeal the HIV law.

“I think it’s good sense prevailing over extremist ideology,” said Rep. Jane Harman (D-Rolling Hills), who sponsored the House effort to undo the HIV law. “I’m pleased the Republican conference has figured out there’s no place for the Dornan amendment.”

Determined to strike back, however, Dornan will reintroduce the measure today when the military personnel subcommittee he chairs begins work on the 1997 Defense Authorization bill, an aide said.

Dornan also informed colleagues during a private meeting Wednesday that he will seek repeal of part of the Clinton administration’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military by requiring that incoming military personnel be asked about their sexual orientation upon induction, congressional staffers said.

A third issue, the role of women in combat, also was mentioned by Dornan as an issue he might take up next week, the aides said.

Dornan, who did not return telephone calls from The Times, told the Associated Press: “This disgusting act of cowardice with my purported leaders caving in to a pro-homosexual, draft-dodging pathological liar in the White House is pathetic. It dooms the [Sen. Bob] Dole challenge.”

Later, on the House floor, Dornan criticized the “weak Republican leadership” for giving in on this issue, accused “lame-duck Republicans in the other chamber and Democrats [of] catering to the homosexual lobby,” and placed the House speaker “on notice” that he intended to go after the issue of gays in the military.

President Clinton reluctantly signed the HIV bill into law in February, saying he had to accept it in order to avoid vetoing a larger defense authorization bill. He also ordered the Justice Department not to defend against legal challenges to the bill.

If the law were implemented as scheduled on Aug. 10, it would have affected 1,049 service members.

Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.), who co-sponsored the Senate bill to strike the Dornan law, called the expected repeal “a victory for fairness over bigotry.”

The Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights lobby group that pushed to repeal Dornan’s HIV law, also applauded the agreement.

“Robert Dornan went out on a limb and the Republican leadership cut him off,” said David M. Smith, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign. “There was a bipartisan understanding that Robert Dornan’s measure was mean and vindictive and that’s what sunk him here. . . . The message of treating people fairly prevailed.”

For days, Dornan lobbied House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Texas) and Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston (R-La.), and ultimately sought to persuade the offices of House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Dole, to stand firm in support of the newly enacted law, said Bill Fallon, Dornan’s aide on military issues.

But late Tuesday, and again on Wednesday, congressional negotiators anxious to close a budget deal with the White House informed Dornan of their decision to support the Senate bill to repeal the HIV law. They gave him the option of asking for a House floor vote on the issue, but Dornan retreated.

Among those leading the campaign to knock out the Dornan measure was Sen. Mark Hatfield (R-Ore.), chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, who called the repeal “the right thing to do.”

The long-delayed compromise on the 1996 budget, which funds government through September, now goes to the House and Senate for approval. A spokesman for the House “Conservative Action Team,” of which Dornan is a member, said the group is weighing whether to support the budget with the HIV provision and four other issues negotiated out of the spending plan.

Dornan first attempted and failed two years ago to remove HIV-positive personnel from the armed services.

This year, Dornan included the discharge requirement in the 1996 defense authorization bill, maintaining that people who contract HIV have committed immoral or illegal acts--homosexual behavior, sex with prostitutes or the use of drugs with infected needles. Opponents argued that half of the military personnel who would be affected are married and have children.

Clinton signed the bill because it contained other provisions that he favored, such as a military pay raise.

During an unrelated Military Personnel Subcommittee hearing last month, Dornan displayed his anger over efforts to undo his legislation.

In a tirade lasting nearly 10 minutes, Dornan put top military leaders “on notice” for the Department of Defense’s “cowardly” and “hypocritical” position of opposing his HIV law.

He referred to published comments of Air Force Lt. Col. Deborah Bosich, who praised the Senate for removing the provision.

“She has the effrontery to get involved in politics,” Dornan said during the hearing, as the stunned audience listened in silence. “She’s talking about keeping on duty people with a fatal venereal disease.

“This chairman is tired of having people with gold braid on their sleeves tell me one thing in private and something different in public,” he continued. “I’m astounded by the power of the homosexual lobby over the president of the United States of America.”

A spokesman for Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-El Cajon), a member of the military personnel subcommittee, said Hunter would support Dornan’s efforts to resurrect the mandatory discharge of HIV-positive personnel as well as efforts to reverse Clinton’s “gays in the military” policy.

“They are very significant issues in terms of their effect on military readiness,” said Hunter’s spokesman, Harald Stavenas.