
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, July 12, 1990                   TAG: 9007120119
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

PIONEER OF POLITICAL RIGHT REVEALS HIS HOMOSEXUALITY

Marvin Liebman, a founder of the modern conservative movement, said Wednesday he decided to announce he's gay because he sees signs that the political right is becoming dangerously bigoted.

Liebman, 66, revealed his homosexuality this month in William F. Buckley's conservative National Review and The Advocate, a Los Angeles-based gay magazine.

In an interview Wednesday, Liebman said the National Review was a logical place because its readers are the people he most wanted to reach.

"The primary impact I wanted to have in this whole coming out was on the conservative community. Just to sort of alert them to the dangers of homophobia," he said.

Liebman also gave an interview to The Advocate - which he said he had never before read - in the hope he could set an example for other people who are living secret lives.

"The main thing I want to do within the gay community is to help people come out - not go through all I did for 60 years," he said.

Liebman is a man of contradictions, and his revelation in two radically different publications follows a lifelong pattern of seeming ambivalence.

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Liebman was a Jew until age 55, when he converted to Roman Catholicism. Buckley, whom he describes as his best friend, was his godfather. Until the early 1950s, he worked for a variety of left-leaning groups.

by CNB