Fundamentalist Calls Back Veto of Rights Bill : Capitol Hill Phones Jammed After Falwell Supports Reagan’s Move

WASHINGTON — A massive telephone campaign by fundamentalist Christians swamped Capitol Hill switchboards on Thursday in a drive to sustain President Reagan’s veto of a new civil rights bill.

Backers of the anti-discrimination measure mounted a counter-attack in hopes that the Senate and House would override the veto next week.

Capitol Hill officials said more than a half million phone calls were received by congressional offices on Thursday, running as high as 80,000 an hour.

Right-wing opponents in the Senate stalled for time and forced a delay until Tuesday for the roll-call showdown on the measure, which has drawn fierce criticism from the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority and prominent radio and television evangelists.

Intense Lobbying Effort

While most congressional observers had expected the veto to be overridden by a two-thirds vote in both the Senate and House, the emotional intensity of the lobbying effort in support of Reagan caused some to hedge their bets. “People are getting nervous,” an aide to one senator observed.

A letter sent by Falwell to fundamentalist ministers--and often cited by telephone callers to members of the Senate and House--claimed that the bill could force a church to hire a homosexual drug addict with AIDS as a teacher or youth pastor.

House Majority Whip Tony Coelho (D-Merced) challenged Falwell’s statement, saying: “The sad truth is that Rev. Falwell has broken the commandment against bearing false witness in order to defeat a civil rights bill.”

Falwell could not be reached for comment. His office in Lynchburg, Va., said he had sent letters about the bill to pastors but was on vacation this week.

Support for Measure

Supporters of the measure, including the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, mounted a countercampaign to dramatize the support of Catholic, Protestant and Jewish leaders for the measure. They arranged a news conference today by mainstream religious figures in an effort to bolster wavering lawmakers.

The outpouring of telephone calls to congressional offices, which began Wednesday when Reagan issued his veto, was enormous and, in some cases, unprecedented.

The office of Democratic Majority Whip Alan Cranston of California received a call on the bill every five seconds on Wednesday, a spokesman said, and “some of them were pretty nasty.” Cranston supports the measure.

Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), who also voted for the bill and will vote to override the veto, also was a target of the bill’s opponents. His office had tallied more than 2,000 calls against the measure.

‘Inundated by Calls’

“We have been inundated by calls from people who believe, incorrectly, that the bill is going to undermine religion,” a spokesman for Wilson said.

A spokesman for Sen. Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), who voted for the bill but may switch and back Reagan next Tuesday, said the telephone drive “overloaded the circuits” so that congressional phones stopped working temporarily.

An official in the Senate sergeant-at-arms’ office said 479,241 calls were received on Wednesday, more than double the average daily number in February, and Thursday’s total would far exceed a half million.

The controversial legislation, which passed easily in both the House and Senate, is called the Civil Rights Restoration Act. The bill would apply federal civil rights protections to entire institutions even if only parts of those institutions received federal aid.

High Court Ruling Cited

If it takes effect, the legislation will restore federal anti-discrimination protections that were eliminated in 1984 when the Supreme Court ruled that Grove City College, a small Pennsylvania institution affiliated with the United Presbyterian Church, was free to follow discriminatory procedures in programs that did not receive federal aid.

In his veto message, Reagan said the bill “would seriously impinge upon religious liberty because of its unprecedented and pervasive coverage of churches and synagogues based on receipt of even a small amount of federal aid for just one activity.”

Falwell’s letter, made available by Coelho’s office, described the bill in apocalyptic terms, calling it “the greatest threat to religious freedom and traditional moral values ever passed.”