THE UNMARRYING KIND

By Jill Smolowe

Unlike the 200 gay and lesbian couples whose mass "wedding" ceremony last month made a loud political statement in San Francisco, Gerry Crane planned his commitment ceremony to be a private and discreet affair. On a misty day last October, 80 of Crane's closest friends gathered at a botanical garden in Grand Rapids, Michigan. With a Presbyterian minister presiding, Crane, 31, a high school music director, and his lover of four years, Randy Block, 36, affirmed their love and exchanged gold rings. Almost immediately the religious right directed its ire at Crane with the pinpoint accuracy of a laser-guided missile.

Crane is the object of a tactic that is proving increasingly effective--going after local targets just below the national media radar. Even while the Christian right's media-savvy national leaders are downplaying antigay initiatives, its local soldiers are working to raise the issue that America's young people are being exposed to gay alternatives too early in life. By pitching the attack closer to home, where parental fears are more easily aroused, conservatives are extending their influence while escaping the tough scrutiny that has greeted their more visible campaign in statehouses to ban same-sex marriages. At the local level, the accent is on keeping homosexuality out of the curriculum and the classroom and on blocking ordinances that protect gays and lesbians from discrimination. Such campaigns trickle up: grass-roots fears of "homosexual recruitment" led the Utah legislature last week to ban gay clubs in high schools.

The religious right is escalating the battle with tactics that have the sting of an all-out assault. "They use the gay issues to whip up hysteria among their own ranks, which helps them raise money, rally troops at the local level, build infrastructure and effectively challenge issues at a federal level," says Elliot Mincberg of People for the American Way, a liberal watchdog group. "In many respects, it's a national witch-hunt."

In fact, most of the action is local rather than national, but it can wreak havoc, as in Crane's case. After word of his gay "marriage" leaked back to the school in rural Byron Center (pop. 6,500), where Crane has been teaching for three years, outraged parents demanded his ouster. There were no grounds for firing him, especially since he had shaped up the once moribund school band to win a regional award. Instead, the school board proclaimed that "individuals who espouse homosexuality do not constitute proper role models" and promised to "monitor" Crane.

Soon flyers appeared on windshields in church parking lots denouncing the "Sodomite music teacher." Next the parents of Crane's 140 students were mailed packages that bore no return address and contained an antigay video called Gay Rights/ Special Rights, produced by the California-based Traditional Values Coalition; a 100-page antigay treatise titled "Setting the Record Straight" by the Colorado-based Focus on the Family; and a letter exhorting parents to "perceive the grave dangers that your child is facing." National religious-right groups deny involvement. "Their point," says a skeptical Crane, "is to flood people with misinformation so it will incite a community."

The mailing had its intended effect. Since October, 26 students have dropped out of Crane's classes. One student told the teacher that her parents and church pressured her to quit and were concerned that her boyfriend would become gay if he remained in the school choir. Crane explained that her boyfriend would not become a homosexual, and asked if her church had applied pressure. As a result, Crane was reprimanded for ignoring a school edict not to discuss homosexuality, and received a warning for violating school policy against religious harassment. Crane sought to have the demerits expunged from his record. Last month, after 20 minutes of deliberation, the board turned him down. "I don't feel safe at all," he says. "There is an incredible aura of mistrust within the school."

That feeling now permeates the schools of Merrimack, New Hampshire. Last August a five-member school board adopted Policy 6540, which states that the school district "shall neither implement nor carry out any program or activity that has either the purpose or effect of encouraging or supporting homosexuality as a positive life-style alternative." The language was lifted verbatim from a failed amendment to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1994 championed by North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms and New Hampshire Senator Robert C. Smith.

"Nothing officially has been eliminated," says Susan Ruggieri, president of the Merrimack Teachers' Association, "but teachers are very, very vigilant in censoring themselves." Thus far, vigilance has led to the dropping of a video on Walt Whitman from 11th-grade English classes because the tape mentions the poet's homosexuality. Shakespeare's Twelfth Night has also been dropped from a class (the play has a character who cross-dresses). Social-problems-and-family-relations classes no longer brook mention of homosexuality. "Part of the problem," says Ruggieri, "is that you don't know where a discussion is going to go."

Merrimack has made news before. Last year the school board briefly flirted with the idea of introducing creationism into the classroom, then backed away. That effort was engineered by a local clergyman. This time around, the local populace had outside help. Before the August vote, the Rev. Lou Sheldon, head of the Traditional Values Coalition, advised local Christian groups. "We walked them through the whole process--philosophically, legally and morally--so they could be grounded in the information that would make them sound far more credible on radio or television," he says. "That's the way we do it."

In February a handful of parents and teachers filed suit in federal court, charging that 6540 violates the First and 14th amendments. "This is a violation of freedom of speech and is discriminatory," says Richard Walker, the lead plaintiff and the high school's guidance counselor. "I don't see this as a homosexual issue." Walker says his ability to do his job is now severely restricted. He steers clear of any discussion of sexuality with students, though he knows that in cases of potential teen suicide, it may be a key issue. "We cannot refer kids to gay or lesbian youth groups," he adds. "But what about a clinical psychologist who is gay, through an HMO? I don't know."

Most national conservative groups disavow a direct role but say they monitor and advise local battles through members at the grass roots. Some, however, don't. In Salt Lake City the Utah chapter of Phyllis Schlafly's Eagle Forum spearheaded a school-board vote to ban all after-school clubs for the specific purpose of keeping a local high school from being host of an after-school club for gay teens. Last week the legislature passed a bill banning gay clubs in high schools statewide, mandating that local school boards "deny access to any student organization or club whose activity is to encourage criminal or delinquent conduct, promote bigotry or involve human sexuality." G.O.P. Governor Michael Leavitt is expected to sign the bill into law.

The grass-roots sentiments help propel the religious right's top priority for this year: to stomp out the possibility of civil marriages for gays. The furor was touched off in 1993 when the Hawaii supreme court ruled that denying marriage licenses to three gay couples appeared to violate the equal-protection clause of the state constitution. The case was remanded to a lower court, and is not expected to be thoroughly settled before 1998. But the religious right has been galvanized by fears that a gay marriage in Hawaii might, under the U.S. Constitution, have to be recognized in other states. "It will be the most important issue our country will face in this decade and perhaps for all time," says Jim Woodall, a leader of Concerned Women for America, "because it could redefine the family."

To date, 31 states have taken up the same-sex-marriage issue, with mixed results: five states--Georgia, Kansas, Idaho, South Dakota and Utah--have enacted bans, and 13 others have rejected them. Gay activists are leaning on historical precedent to quash other efforts. "In our lifetime it was illegal to marry someone of the 'wrong race,'" says Evan Wolfson, who directs the Marriage Project for the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund in New York. "Our opponents talk about marriage like it's been the same for 6,000 years." Count on the religious right's taking the issue to the G.O.P. Convention in San Diego--and trying to force into the platform a plank banning same-sex marriages.

--Reported by Sam Allis/Boston, Wendy Cole/Chicago and Jeanne McDowell/Los Angeles

With reporting by SAM ALLIS/BOSTON, WENDY COLE/CHICAGO AND JEANNE MCDOWELL/LOS ANGELES