ASHINGTON - It looked like a sure thing: Bill Bradley courting the liberal vote by proposing that sexual orientation be added to the list of protected categories in the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But members of the black community and the nation's most prominent gay elected official yesterday rejected the plan as politically naive.
Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, said yesterday that the presidential candidate was ''well-intentioned but very incorrect'' in suggesting the Civil Rights Act needed to be amended. He was the first openly gay official to speak out against the proposal, echoing earlier objections by civil rights leaders that the law could be erased in a Republican-controlled Congress once opened to changes and amendments.
''I admire his instinct,'' said Frank, a Newton Democrat. ''But he is mistaken about the way to do it. What Bill Bradley has proposed ignores the very careful legislative work we've been doing. I wish he had checked with us.''
Bradley, the former senator from New Jersey, made the comment in an interview with the Advocate, a magazine, which is due out on newsstands on Sept. 28. He could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Bradley said the United States should ''add sexual orientation to the 1964 Civil Rights Act,'' which outlawed discrimination because of personal characteristics like race, gender or religion in housing, employment and lending and paved the way for affirmative action. The suggestion came as part of what has been a broad attempt by Bradley to align himself with the gay community. He has also criticized Clinton's ''don't ask, don't tell'' policy as insufficient and attacked a proposition on California's March 2000 ballot that would define marriage as viable only between a man and woman.
But the Civil Rights Act remark was his most far-reaching, and was seen as the most concrete affirmation of homosexual rights from any presidential candidate. The benefit of adding sexual orientation, Bradley said, was that it ''would clearly indicate that discrimination against gays is in the same category as discrimination against other protected groups,'' according to published reports.
The spirit of his message seemed to please some gay rights advocates, among them Gary Busek, executive director of Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders in Boston. Without addressing the political side effects of linking gay rights to rights for other minorities, Busek said, ''I suspect it could be received positively in the gay community.''
But civil rights leaders were far less enchanted. Last Friday, after Bradley's quote was made public, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson said he would ''not want to open up that bill because, with this right-wing Congress, they could restrict it rather than expand civil rights.'' US Civil Rights Commission chairwoman Mary Frances Berry attacked the idea as ''naive.'' And yesterday, Yvonne Scruggs-Leftwich, the executive director of the Black Leadership Forum, said that when she heard the news she was ''quite surprised.''
''I consider Senator Bradley to be very personally familiar with the difficulties of civil rights and maintaining civil rights advances,'' she said. ''I thought he must have meant something else.''
Frank, one of three openly gay members of the US House, said he was troubled not only by the possible Pandora's Box effect of readdressing civil rights, but also by the damaging side-effects for gays of arguing that homosexuals have suffered in the exact same way as blacks.
Linking gay rights to the Civil Rights Act would feed into the conservative Republican argument that gays are ''looking for quotas, looking for special rights,'' Frank said. But in fact, he said, the gay community is looking simply for nondiscrimination laws.
''The fight against racism and the fight against homophobia are not identical fights. They do have the same enemies,'' Frank said.
But, he added: ''There's one big difference. ... We were able to avoid some of that overt discrimination by hiding. What we want, therefore, is nondiscrimination without affirmative action'' - a goal that could be reached apart from Civil Rights.
Discrimination against homosexuals has become a focal point of debate between the offices of Bradley and Vice President Al Gore in recent days. Last Wednesday, after the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force issued a press release outlining the views of the presidential candidates, Bradley's campaign contacted the task force to air his views, spokesman David Elliot said. Then, after the task force released a new press release to account for Bradley's views, Gore aides called to add their remarks. The task force had to issue yet a third release.
Gore did not respond directly yesterday to criticism of Bradley's ideas. But spokesman Chris Lehane said Gore supports the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which is the proposed legislation to address discrimination against gays - and is distinctly separate from civil rights laws.
