CINCINNATI'S ODD COUPLE by Donald Suggs and Mandy Carter (NYTimes Op-Ed, 12/13/93) (Donald Suggs is public affairs director at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation of New York. Mandy Carter is a public policy advocate at the Human Rights Campaign Fund) For years, leaders of the gay and lesbian rights movement have given highest priority to the interests of their most powerful constituents -- white men. This has enabled the religious right to depict the movement as a group of well-off whites fighting for "special rights." Last month, conservatives put a new spin on this effort: an anti-gay ballot measure passed in Cincinnati with heavy support from black ministers and their parishioners. Blacks make up 38 percent of the city's electorate, and the religious right clearly considered them vital to its campaign. As they have in other cities, conservative groups, many from out of state, worked for months and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to establish personal contact with black church leaders and their communities. They also produced and distributed a manipulative video called "Gay Rights, Special Rights," which cleverly and misleadingly juxtaposes images from recent gay rights rallies and black civil rights marches of the 60's. Using footage out of context, the video implies that the two movements are at odds and that gay and lesbian gains will detract from those made by blacks. While the city's old-guard black leaders opposed the anti-gay measure, conservative ministers were far more outspoken in their support and persuasively made the case that discrimination against homosexuals is not a civil rights issue. They were effective: 56 percent of voters in the traditionally liberal black precincts voted to repeal the anti-bias protections. Gay leaders haven't completely ignored blacks. But few have gone further than securing public endorsements from prominent black leaders like Jesse Jackson. Apparently they assume that blacks are unaware of the religious right's dismal history on civil rights and that it's only a matter of time before blacks wake up to the reality that they're being used. After all, the notion that lesbians and gay men are seeking special rights is not new. It's the same rhetoric that was used by opponents of black civil rights laws during the Reagan-Bush era, complete with references to quotas and "preferential treatment" that no lesbian or gay organization has asked for or endorsed. What many gay people don't see is that black leaders are benefiting from their pacts with religious conservatives and will continue to sway their followers against homosexuals. For ambitious black ministers in Cincinnati like K. Z. Smith and Charles Winburn, the media exposure they got for their anti-gay activism was priceless. And the passing of the measure won't end their mutual beneficial alliance with the religious right, which has sent a stream of cash into their coffers. One group, Coloradans for Family Values, sent $400,000 into Cincinnati before the vote. The situation is compounded many lesbian and gay activists who insist that racism isn't a gay issue. Anyone who tries to widen the focus of gay activism to broader civil rights issues is characterized in some gay publications as a white-male basher or is accused of caving in to political correctness. This alienates and exhausts black lesbians and gay men and our allies. The gay movement should concede that it has been dangerously narrow in its view of civil rights. If it hopes to get black support, it is going to have to bring more black lesbians and gay men into its upper levels on the local and national levels. Likewise, black leaders must stop looking at the gay movement as a white issue and begin acknowledging and addressing the concerns of the gay people in the communities. Otherwise, the religious right will continue winning the hearts and minds of blacks in Cincinnati and beyond.