Wednesday, in Seattle, Washington, King's niece attacked a Washington state ballot initiative 677, insisting sexual rights, and most particularly gay rights, can't be equated with civil rights.

Paradoxically, the widow of the slain civil rights leader, Mrs. Corretta Scott King, is being honored tonight by female and male homosexuals at a banquet held by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, D.C. where Vice-president Al Gore will also be present.

Coretta Scott King has endorsed a federal measure prohibiting discrimination because of sexual orientation. She told a June news conference that her late husband would have, also.

"Like Martin, I don't believe you can stand for freedom for one group of people and deny it to others," Coretta King said.

"None of us are free till all of us are free," an anarchist slogan expresses the same view. This approach, originated by Michael Bakunin, was adopted by members of New York's Gay Liberation Front immediately following the Stonewall uprising in 1969, an event which marked media's awareness of the gay movement.

Common to most gay and lesbian activists, the same approach was best expressed by the late Thomas Stoddard, who is quoted on the final pages of a highly acclaimed history book, The Gay Metropolis: 1940-1996, by Charles Kaiser due out in late October and published by Houghton-Mifflin. Speaking about the civil rights of all peoples, Stoddard effectively defined what he considered the proper stance of the gay and lesbian movement:

"It's about the tenor of a society which is intolerant of those people and those things that are different...There's no point in having a movement if you're just going to turn everyone into a suburban homemaker. The whole point is to celebrate difference. And there is something deeply offensive about a movement that only argues for its own people. The underlying idea behind the movement, to anyone's mind, its seems to me, is equality. If the idea is equality, it can't possibly be said that it should be equality for only one group of people. The idea of equality has to apply across the board, and therefore, it's not just that there ought to be interconnectedness between the African American community and the Latino community and the gay community. It's that what motivates these movements is exactly the same thing. And it is a terrible thing to just promote one's own equality. It's what lawyer's call special pleading. It's unprincipled and it's selfish--and it will never sell."

Alveda King had attempted last month to "sell" her views on the steps of the capitol building in in Sacremento, California. Her continuing theme remains her insistance that human sexuality isn't a civil rights issue. Thus, she says, she sees no reason why the citizens of Washington should stand against employment discrimination that affects gay men and lesbians.

Ms.King appeared along with approximately 25 other leaders and members of black fundamentalist churches that are opposing Initiative 677, slated on the state's November ballot. She couched her hate message in logic-defying rhetoric:

"Alveda King loves all people. Alveda King wants civil rights for all people. I uphold equal protection under the law," she said. However, she thinks the issue of homosexual orientation lacks "the innate and immutable" characteristics distinguishing the fight for black rights.

Being homosexual, she insists, is a decision. She compared discrimination based on sexuality to that faced by people who are obese, claiming she once was denied a flight attendant's job due to the fact that she was overweight.

"I felt pain. I felt suffering. But it wasn't the same kind of pain and suffering that I felt as a person of color who the next day couldn't take that away."

The organization Ms. King represents is called No Official Preferential Employment (NOPE), the Committee to Defeat I-677.

Shortly before Alveda King's news conference, Hands Off Washington, a group supporting the gay-rights initiative, held its own news conference with other leaders of area African American churches speaking in favor of the measure.

"It is disturbing to me that Martin's name is being used to hurt the people he loved and supported during his lifetime," said the Rev. Robert Jeffires of New Hope Baptist Church

Initiative 677 would provide citizens legal standing to sue for damages if they have been discriminated against based on sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation. Workplaces with eight or fewer employees are not covered by the proposed law.

Alveda King, her punitive religious scruples flying, announced that despite the 8-person exemption, the measure places unnecessary burdens on small businesses, forcing them to cope with moral issues she says are better left to religious institutions and families.

"I believe that the gay lobbyists don't want the homosexual community to know that there is another alternative lifestyle, and for those who say, 'I was born this way,' then we say, 'You can be born again.'"

King is the 46-year old daughter of the late Rev. A.D. King, Martin's brother, also a leader in the black civil rights movement. She leads King for America Inc., a civil rights group she founded.