Duo Voice Message With Humor, Candor : Performance: Singers Romanovsky & Phillips, who played to a cheering Irvine crowd, say their gay pride theme goes further in conservative areas.

IRVINE —  Paul Phillips waltzed on stage at UC Irvine on Sunday night wearing a skintight miniskirt, garters that gripped thigh-high white hose, one rhinestone earring and three strands of pearls--typical garb for a member of Romanovsky & Phillips, an openly gay duo who sing of closet homosexuals, AIDS and sodomy.

With gusto, the couple chanted: “Give me a guy who’s glad to be gay!”

With sober sincerity they harmonized: “Stand by the living and remain unified.”

With political zeal, they intoned: “It’s not right to legislate how we make love.”

Pretty daring stuff for Orange County--particularly for Irvine, where voters last month repealed an ordinance outlawing discrimination against homosexuals.

Romanovsky & Phillips, whose candid, often humorous, sometimes poignant songs about homosexual life have placed them at the forefront of gay-oriented music, are acutely aware of the county’s fierce anti-gay sentiments. They appeared at Santa Ana’s recent Gay Pride Festival, and afterward “we were sitting in our car at a stoplight,” Ron Romanovsky said after Sunday’s show. “And someone walked by and said: ‘There’s a car full of disease-carrying perverts.’ We sing about that kind of thing all the time, but to come so face-to-face with it . . . it was really scary.”

“It scares me that that attitude of hatred is so tolerated here,” guitarist Phillips said. “There are places in this world where people think those types of things, but would never say them.”

But the singer/songwriters, at the end of a 40-state tour, say that their message of gay pride and unity goes further in such conservative pockets as Orange County or Amarillo, Tex., where they played last week.

“The (gay) people living and staying here to improve things are very courageous,” said Romanovsky, who plays guitar and piano. “We want to give them a shot in the arm.”

They seemed to succeed Sunday: The crowd of about 200 laughed raucously at the duo’s trademark on-stage antics (Phillips described his miniskirt and pearls outfit as “Barbara Bush meets Cher”) and stood and cheered as the concert closed.

The show was a benefit for the UC Irvine Gay and Lesbian Student Union and the Orange County Visibility League, another gay activist group. “We’re glad to be here to help OCVL,” Romanovsky told the audience. “It’s been crazy with Measure N and all,” he said, referring to the recent Irvine vote.

Romanovsky, 30, who writes most of the duo’s music and lyrics, and Phillips, 35, began singing together shortly after they met and became romantically involved in San Francisco in 1981. At UC Irvine, they performed several songs from three albums recorded on their own label--Fresh Fruit Records--as well as newer material that bespeaks their breakup 17 months ago.

“I’m no good for you, or maybe nobody’s good enough for me,” went one song about the pain of lost love. Another caustic tune, written during an earlier separation, found a scorned lover advising his former boyfriend to take a nice long trip--a guilt trip, “all expenses paid.”

The duo, who are about to leave for Australia for their first engagement out of North America, don’t just write songs about gay issues; songs about politics, for instance, also figure into the mix. But in any case, they feel their music has universal appeal.

Sure enough, Bill Savage of Fullerton, who attended with his wife, Catherine, said he enjoyed Sunday’s show and would see Romanovsky & Phillips again. “I just thought it was really neat the way they got their message across,” he said. “It showed individuality.”