SEATTLE — Joined by rock stars and flanked by signs proclaiming "Remember the Supreme Court," a group of advocates of the environment, gay rights and abortion rights today kicked off a five- state tour aimed at people thinking of voting for Ralph Nader. Their message: Don't do it. Vote for Al Gore.

"We appeal to Nader voters across the nation to reconsider their vote," said Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest organization of gay men and lesbians. Other rallies are planned in New Mexico, Minnesota, Oregon and Wisconsin. At today's rally, Ms. Birch argued that Vice President Al Gore was vastly preferable to Gov. George W. Bush of Texas.

"There is a Grand Canyon between these men," Ms. Birch said of the two major-party candidates. "From the environment to a woman's right to choose to basic civil rights, we believe that great harm, in fact severe harm, will come with a Bush presidency."

The rally at the Paramount Theater, featuring a free concert by the singer Melissa Etheridge, was part of an increasingly energetic and even agitated campaign started by Mr. Gore's allies in the labor, environment, gay and women's movements. They fear that votes for Mr. Nader, the Green Party nominee, could tip the presidency to Mr. Bush.

Several of those who led today's rally cast themselves as veterans of electoral idealism. They spoke ruefully of having once experienced the same alienation that many Nader supporters expressed about the candidates of the two major parties and of having committed what they described as the mistake of concluding there was little at stake.

"I was young once," said Denis Hayes, the chairman of the first Earth Day and of this year's 30th annual version of the event, now known as International Earth Day. "I got baptized into presidential politics in 1968 with `Clean Gene' McCarthy. Pure as the driven snow, and without a snowflake's chance in hell of winning the presidency.

"I committed everything to him," Mr. Hayes said. "And when he was squeezed out of the system, I had enormous difficulty in seeing any reason to choose between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. I put a bumper sticker on my car, `Thank God only one of them can win.' And one of them did win, and he went on to invade Cambodia, he went on to design a Southern strategy that set back race relations in the United States a quarter of a century."

Mr. Hayes was not the only one to depict the 1968 election as an example of how liberals could sit on their hands or vote for a third party and help deliver the White House to a conservative.

"Today the dead hand of Richard M. Nixon is still writing Supreme Court decisions in the body of Chief Justice William Rehnquist," said Robert Cox, president of the Sierra Club, who predicted that a Bush presidency would have "the most far-reaching consequences for the environment in 20 decades."

Supreme Court appointments were also on the minds of abortion- rights leaders, several of whom expressed dismay at a comment by Mr. Nader today on the ABC News program, "This Week," in which he implied that a Supreme Court reversal of its ruling on a woman's right to an abortion might not be so ruinous to a woman's right to choose.

"Even if Roe v. Wade is reversed, that doesn't end it," Mr. Nader said on the program. "It just reverts it back to the states."

Alice Germond, vice president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League, said that Bush appointees to the Supreme Court could help eliminate abortion rights in state after state where legislatures would vote against them.

"Just add one or two or three more justices to join Rehnquist, to join Scalia and to join Thomas, and there goes a woman's right to choose in this nation," Ms. Germond said.

One women in the crowd, Jodi Mumford, of Olympia, Wash., said she was distressed by what she considered Mr. Bush's and Mr. Gore's lack of respect for lesbian rights. Although the speakers had made her "think about" her vote, she said she would probably stick with Mr. Nader.

"I don't like the idea of voting for the lesser of two evils," Ms. Mumford said. "I want to vote for the good."

And a Nader supporter handing out leaflets, Joe Katroscik, repeated arguments made by many Nader supporters, who say that a Bush victory might just invigorate what Mr. Katroscik described as a "true progressive movement" in the country.

"Sometimes you have to cut the trees back," he explained. "Sometimes you have to really prune back the tree in order to help it grow."

Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company

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