Former nun from Cleveland

boosts gay rights at convention

By Richard G. Zimmerman

Plain Dealer Convention Bureau

NEW YORK

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When Jean O'.

Leary left a Cleveland area convent after 41⁄2 years, she did more than leap over the wall. She came out of the closet.

Ms. O'Leary is a lesbian. She also is a New York delegate to the Democratic National Convention, one of three who are active members of the new gay caucus of the Democratic party. And she is dedicated to the proposition that someday, hopefully 1980, the party platform will endorse a ban on discrimination based on sexual preference.

Ms. O'Leary, 28, a candidate for a Ph.D. degree from Yeshiva University in New York, is coexecutive of the National Gay Task Force. Her organization is one of many that has set up headquarters here to lobby for various

causes.

"Our job is to educate people in the party and to destroy myths about gay people and to establish everyone's right to privacy and individual rights," she said.

Pointing out that there are 30 congressional sponsors to a bill outlawing discrimination against homosexuals and that 15 states and 38 communities have repealed laws outlawing private homosexual acts between consenting adults, Ms. O'Leary is optimistic about the future.

She also pointed out that Democratic Chairman Robert Strauss permitted the Gay Task Force to hold a press conference in Madison Square Garden, an act she considers equal to official party recognition.

Ms. O'Leary came to New York five years ago from Cleveland, where her parents still live, and immediately became active in the gay rights movement. She has yet to encounter discrimination in employment personally. But she expects to enter education and the

NEW YORY

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Associated Press

Jean O'Leary, a New York delegate, on the floor of the Democratic National Convention.

prospects of her running into some form of discrimination are great.

She called the 41⁄2 years spent in the convent "very rewarding" but, said after coming to terms with her sexual preference "I felt my place was out in the world.” She left the convent, which she declined to identify, before taking her final vows.

The gay lobby here is not pleased with the 1976 Democratic platform because it is silent on the issue of homosexual rights. But the lobbyists seem satisfied with Jimmy Carter, who is on record as opposing "all forms of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation."