PERSPECTIVE ON GAY RIGHTS : Political Reality and the Governor : Elemental injustices will continue, but the tenor of the times, especially in the GOP, means Wilson will veto the latest bill.

To imagine what it is like to be homosexual in America in 1992, heterosexuals should envision a society in which they comprise only 10%, and the most basic decisions of their lives are made by the other 90%, who are gay.

Imagine a society that rigorously pronounces what kind of jobs this minority can and cannot have. No heterosexual can serve in the military; that’s official policy. Nor, effectively, can you have a job in the public or private sector that requires a security clearance; you can’t be trusted.

Being a schoolteacher in most districts would be risky too, so you had better choose another line of work. Don’t try to go to the courts for relief. The U.S. Supreme Court has determined that this discrimination is entirely legal.

As for your private life, the nation’s highest tribunal has even said that you can be imprisoned for having sex. If you are a man and fall in love with a woman, don’t expect to be able to marry her; that’s against the law. Besides, everyone knows that heterosexuals cannot sustain a meaningful relationship anyway.

To complete the scenario, imagine that when these issues arise in political debate, the most outspoken politicians, including the vice president of the United States, will argue not that there is too much repression but not enough.

Visualize all this, and you might get a glimmer of how it feels to be gay and watch the public-policy debate over homosexuality this year.

Gay rights will shortly dominate California politics again because Gov. Pete Wilson must decide the fate of AB 2601, the new gay-rights bill, which would ban employment discrimination against gays and was passed by the Legislature last week and awaits the governor’s signature.

No matter what Wilson says about this bill, it’s clear he privately favors it. From the first days of his campaign for governor in 1990, Wilson indicated repeatedly that he was inclined to sign such legislation. His aides privately assured gay Republican leaders that he would sign the 1991 gay-rights bill--right up to the day he vetoed it, unleashing gay riots in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Wilson claimed that he vetoed the legislation because it might have hurt businesses and clogged the courts with litigation. The current gay-rights bill was crafted specifically to address Wilson’s every objection, but don’t hold your breath expecting him to sign it. He will veto it again because he must.

The tenor of the times, particularly in the Republican Party, demands such action from a politician with his eye on higher office. Conservative religious fundamentalists now dominate the Republican hierarchy in the South, and in several northern states. Opposition to gay rights is as important to them as a staunch anti-abortion position. No Republican with national aspirations can cross them on this issue and expect to survive. Pete Wilson will veto the 1992 gay-rights bill because he wants to be a viable candidate in the 1996 Republican presidential primaries.

The fundamentalists’ rhetoric is beguiling to millions. Gay rights, they allege, represents “special privileges.” The argument is reminiscent of Simone de Beauvoir’s observation that there are two kinds of people: human beings and women--and when women ask that they be treated as human beings, they are accused of wanting to be men. In this case, when gays ask for the same rights as everyone else, they’re accused of wanting special privileges.

The reality is that the story of gays in America is less a story about gay people than about heterosexuals. Gay people, in truth, have very little control over the most basic conditions of their lives.

Heterosexuals restrict our opportunities in most professional fields. Heterosexuals are sometimes amazed that so many gays end up as hairdressers or interior decorators, oblivious to the fact that these are some of the only fields where more obviously gay people are allowed to work without penalty.

Heterosexuals deny our relationships the legitimacy of marriage, because many seem to believe that the only way to maintain their institutions of marriage and family is to deny such rights to us.

In more subtle ways, heterosexuals even determine where gays live. Gays don’t move to West Hollywood and San Francisco because they like palm trees and Victorian houses, but because these are among the few places where we can find a modicum of tolerance. These cities are not gay Meccas; they are refugee camps.

Most heterosexuals, even those sympathetic to gays, seem strangely unoffended at the elemental injustices that they endure. Any heterosexual expression of indignity over a second Wilson veto will be faint, and soon forgotten.

While the homosexual response remains a potentially explosive wild card, the people who hate gays will never forget it if a politician supports gay rights. The political tragedy for gays in this country is that for the majority of those heterosexuals who support gay rights, the issue is not a determining factor when they vote. To most, it’s not a big deal. They have never stopped to imagine what it is like to live as they demand homosexuals to live--alone, in fear and in hiding. They won’t have to, as long as homosexuals accept such treatment--but that time is fast running out.