Already there are skeptics and outright opponents who reject the idea as unacceptable, not to mention political suicide.

But just as the Senate heard from outright opponents of admitting homosexuals, it heard from advocates.

Such comments would fit into a pattern of statements and actions that make the wife of President Carlos Saul Menem appear to be one of the strongest critics of her husband's policies, if not an outright opponent.

Mr. Biden, who has been in the Senate for nearly 30 years and briefly ran for president in 1988, has supported research and development of the antimissile system and is not an outright opponent.

Copland was a supporter of "contingent contagionism", an attempted compromise between the view that cholera was a contagious disease, and its outright opponents.

Two more G.O.P. leaders, Representatives Henry Hyde and John Kasich, are listed as outright opponents.

One, a journalist, played by Steven Burnett, evolves from a virtual proponent of the war to a skeptic and then an outright opponent.

The Prime Minister may be almost as contemptuous of her wetter supporters as of outright opponents - the 'hard core' of enemies any leader, especially a 'conviction politician', must acquire in nearly 15 years of leadership.

As for those who were outright opponents, he says, "It was much more comfortable to dismiss us as radicals, as leftists, as ambitious self-seekers."