After Willie Horton ARE GAYS NEXT?

By PRISCILLA PAINTON

Campaigning is like working a jury: it takes dry evidence about ballistics, but it also takes looking into the jurors' eyes and whispering darkly about drifters, fast women and empty streets. In 1988 Bush promised "no new taxes," but the television picture of Willie Horton also helped secure his victory. Now gay groups are convinced that they have replaced black convicts in the Republican demonology.

Just beneath the Republican rhetoric against the Democratic "big liberal ticket" is a steady rumble about "traditional family values," an expression that G.O.P. strategists will helpfully make explicit -- as long as they remain anonymous. When Vice President Dan Quayle said three weeks ago that Bush "is willing to stand up for basic values, rather than treating all life-style choices as morally equivalent," an aide helpfully translated for reporters that life-styles meant homosexuality. "When we talk about family values, part of it will be to point out that Clinton went out to California, had a fund raiser by the biggest gay group there and bought into their agenda," an unnamed senior campaign official told the New York Times two weeks ago. Now campaign officials are getting bolder: senior campaign adviser Charles Black charged publicly last week that Clinton has "adopted the gay agenda."

Bill Kristol, the Vice President's chief of staff, argues that the campaign is not singling out gays so much as drawing a legitimate distinction between the two parties at a time when "the gay-rights movement has become much more aggressive." But gay leaders like Urvashi Vaid, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, contend that gays are simply the latest victims in a Republican strategy of distraction. "They don't have Willie Horton to kick around anymore," she says. The ad was effective, but its sour aftertaste and the wounds opened by the Los Angeles riots have made it trickier for Republicans to appeal to racial fears.

In addition, Bill Clinton has given the Republicans a practical reason for a low-level assault on homosexuals: the Democratic nominee is the first to assiduously court their vote, to mention gays in his acceptance speech, to invite a gay man with AIDS and a lesbian to address the convention, and to say he would sign an Executive Order reversing the ban against homosexuals serving in the military.

Gay issues have also gained prominence in this campaign because of Ross Perot. His erstwhile candidacy put pressure on the Bush-Quayle campaign to solidify its support with core constituencies like the evangelicals -- pressure that one low-level gay staff member for the Bush-Quayle campaign believes was the reason for a sudden demotion this month. Tyler Franz, 37, filed a discrimination complaint with the District of Columbia last week after claiming that the personnel chief attributed the reassignment to "ideological differences with the religious right." The campaign denies Franz's claim.

So far, the White House has sent out mixed signals. Bush has stood firm in his opposition to gays serving in the military, and told the New York Times that he "cannot accept as normal life-style people of the same sex being parents." His party refused to let gay Republican leaders address the platform committee in Salt Lake City last May. But the White House has drawn loud complaints from the right for twice inviting gay groups to bill-signing ceremonies and for letting campaign chairman Robert Mosbacher, whose daughter is openly lesbian, meet with gay leaders in February. Bush himself has said he has "no litmus test" that would result in his "knowingly" excluding homosexuals from the Cabinet.

The Democrats are convinced that if the Republicans do make gay rights into a campaign issue, it will backfire on them by splitting the G.O.P. coalition between its religious right wing and its base of young voters who are fiscal conservatives but also libertarians. And Clinton's pollster, Stan Greenberg, argues that at a time of national anxiety, "standing up for family values" ranks a distant fourth behind getting "the economy moving." Still, the Democrats realize that they must navigate these primordial waters carefully. The Clinton-Gore ticket has made clear that it favors protecting gays under the Civil Rights Act, but it is quick to say it does not support extending marital rights to gay couples. "When the issue is discrimination, there is broad support, but when it gets into a type of marriage or family, the public is not very tolerant," Greenberg says. The Bush strategists seem to be betting that the limits to public tolerance are a good deal stricter than that.

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett/Washington