Although the Schumer measure failed on a party-line vote in the Judiciary Committee, the American Civil Liberties Union said it was optimistic that the measure would be considered on the House floor. Schumer also vowed to continue fighting for the measure.

"We are very encouraged by the close nature of today's vote and the continued strong support of Congressman Schumer and many of his colleagues," said Christopher E. Anders, a legislative counsel with the ACLU's Washington National Office who focuses on lesbian and gay rights.

"This amendment would fix a problem that Congress never anticipated when it enacted legislation requiring sexual offender registration," Anders said.

"Countless people are being unfairly added to sexual offender lists nationwide," he added. "The law passed by Congress was written to apply to rapists and child molesters. But several states are including people who clearly are not dangerous, had no involvement with children and pose absolutely no threat to others."

The Schumer amendment would have revised the Jacob Wetterling Act passed by Congress in 1994 and amended by Megan's Law last year. It requires states to keep track of the names and addresses of people convicted of certain violent sexual crimes and most offenses committed against children.

While the Wetterling Act was aimed at protecting children, several states began registering persons who posed absolutely no threat to minors, but who had criminal records stemming from convictions under consensual sodomy and other consensual sexual conduct laws. Many of those involved gay men who were arrested for engaging in consensual sex with other adults.

The amendment would not have altered the registration requirements for child molesters, violent sexual offenders or "sexual predators," but would have sharpened the focus of those crimes by encouraging states to avoid registering persons who pose no threat to public safety, such as persons charged with consensual sodomy, lewd conduct and other similar offenses, the ACLU argued.

Recent news stories have highlighted several cases of people being unfairly targeted. In California, a 90-year-old Orange County man, who is now married, is being added to a sexual offender list because of a lewd conduct conviction for touching the knee of another man in a parked car. The incident occurred in 1944.

And in Massachusetts -- which has one of the nation's broadest sexual registration laws -- a 61-year-old grandfather who was arrested in 1980 for touching an undercover male state trooper is being required to register with the local police. He recently brought a lawsuit challenging the state law.

According to Rep. Schumer's office, a number of states are planning to add consensual sodomy to their roster of sexual offenses that require registration, including Arizona, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina.

Nationwide, twenty-one states today have laws prohibiting sodomy betweeen consenting adults, six of which bar sodomy only between people of the same gender, the ACLU said. The U.S. Department of State, already facing a major downsizing by Senator Jesse Helms, chair of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee, is facing an even more serious dilemma, namely a bill now backed by the Republican leadership and sponsored by a coalition of conservative Christian groups.

This bill, which evokes and reflects U.S. religious zealots' self-images as persecuted martyrs, mandates economic sanctions against any nation that refuses certain brands of so-called Christian missionary activity deemed necessary by major evangelical and fundamentalist groups.

The "Freedom from Religious Persecution Act" has already been endorsed by Trent Lott, the Senate Majority Leader and Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House.

State Department officials complain that the new "anti-persecution" lobby emerging, one backed by the National Association of Evangelicals, the Southern Baptist Convention and the Family Research Council and their respective newsletters and broadcasters, will eliminate the flexibility needed to deal pragmatically with religious persecution.

Calling it a "blunderbuss approach" the State Department insiders fear the effect of the bill on U.S. relations with Moslem allies such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Once again, others say, old boundaries that were violated with impunity centuries ago by Christians and Moslems during their unrelenting religious wars (The Crusades) are once again under assault.

"This is one of the top priorities of the Republican Congress," Newt Gingrich told representatives of 30 religious organizations eager to pass the bill. With scarce exceptions, the majority of these groups were certifiably made up of evangelicals and other religious conservatives.

While many now complain that constraints on international trade are already too cumbersome, the introduction of the new bill further complicates matters, according to export experts.

The issue is a sticky one, as few politicians want to risk voting against "religious persecution," though, in fact, they realize that the bill is little more than a Trojan horse for religious fundamentalist aims.

Groups that oppose religious tinkering in matters of State, and who invite the support of all Americans with similar concerns, include Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a venerable organization founded 50 years ago.

In its efforts to prevent the encroachments of religious-hatched schemes in government, Americans United's Barry Lynn explains that his quarrel is not with religion or Christianity. "Please understand one thing," he says, AU's "quarrel is not with religious Americans. Far from it. I'm a Christian minister myself, and many of AU's members are people of faith."

What AU and its directors do want to do, insists Lynn, is help make "life uncomfortable for Pat Robertson and his cronies." Americans and Others United for Separation of Church and State wants to "crush" Robertson's plan "for replacing American democracy with a rigid theocracy" where all laws are based on a narrow interpretation of scriptures, he says.

"Thomas Jefferson's 'wall of separation' has never undergone the relentless and ugly assault that it is facing today from the Religious Rights," according to Lynn.

Americans United opposes "with dangerous zealots," he says, "who use religion or the Bible as a club to attack others."

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, maintains a national office at 1816 Jefferson Place, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036