WASHINGTON (UPI) -- An openly homosexual campaign worker has filed a
complaint with the District of Columbia charging he was forced out of
the Bush-Quayle campaign as a result of strong influence exerted by the
religious right and its ``very anti-gay rhetoric.''
	Tyler Franz, a $15,000 per year staffer in the Bush-Quayle '92
campaign, lodged the complaint under the district's employment-rights
ordinance, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. The law, which
bars job discrimination based on sexual preference, is one of the
broadest in the nation.
	Franz, who worked as the manager of the Bush-Quayle campaign
information resource center, said in an interview Wednesday on the ABC 
``Nightline'' program that officials initially demoted him in an effort
to force him out of the campaign. They later offered a ``lump-sum
payment'' if he would refrain from making any claims in court.
	``I think the demotion...was an attempt to force me out, to embarrass
me, to humiliate me, and for me to just quit,'' Franz said. ``They did
offer me a lump-sum payment if I would sign a release not claiming any
further, excuse me, not making any future claims in court against the
campaign.''
	Franz said he does not believe President Bush is biased against
homosexuals, but he said ``no one in that campaign is stopping the anti-
gay rhetoric.''
	Asked about his claim that senior staff members of the Bush-Quayle
campaign talk about ``flaming faggots,'' Franz said the tone within the
campaign was raw.
	``It most definitely was,'' he said. ``Commonly I overheard anti-gay
statements said throughout the campaign, but most of it was focused
within the department of coalitions, where the evangelical coalition had
certainly started an insurgence as early as last March.''
	The department of coalitions acts as a bridge between the Bush
campaign and the various grass-roots organizations that support
conservative candidates.
	Franz said members of the religious right, working through the
department of coalitions, ``wielded enormous influence although small in
numbers, in terms of percentage in the overall campaign.''
	He said that many of the documents ``that came through the campaign
were clearly from religious leaders who had very anti-gay rhetoric in
their presentations, and this became part of the coalitions department
agenda.''
	Franz said he complained to Bush's campaign chairman, Robert
Mosbacher.
	``He understood where I was coming from,'' Franz said of his
discussion with Mosbacher. ``We talked openly about various forms of
bigotry, racism, anti-Semitism. He said all campaigns will have staff
who possess those characteristics.''
	Franz was asked why he believed he was forced out if Mosbacher was
sympathetic.
	``My belief is that the religious right was taking such a stronghold
in the campaign that they were virtually taking over the campaign's
direction,'' Franz said.
	He told ABC he specifically informed Mosbacher about the Rev. Louis
P. Sheldon, whose anti-gay rhetoric Franz considered ``very damaging to
the campaign'' because it was ``alienating significant voter blocs, to
include gay and lesbian Americans.''
	Sheldon, the chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition
representing 25,000 churches, charged Thursday that Franz had been 
``orchestrating his own dismissal from the campaign for some time now in
order to file grievances and politicize his chosen form of sexual
expression.''
	Sheldon said he believed anyone should be able to work for a
presidential candidate.
	``What we object to is when that individual's sexual identity
prohibits them from functioning rationally to the detriment of their
employer,'' he said.