Patti Tate is thinking back.

It's the summer of '69, and she's got her hands on her sister's stomach, feeling the baby inside kick. She was 11 years old then and her 26-year-old sister, actress Sharon Tate, was two weeks away from having her first baby. But on a hot August night, followers of Charles Manson killed seven people, including Sharon Tate, who was repeatedly stabbed as she pleaded for her life and that of her unborn child.

"My sister was everything to me," said Tate, 36. "She was so sweet and such a gentle soul. She was a movie star and beautiful, and in my eyes she was just so big. There wasn't anything I wouldn't have done for her."

Twenty-four years later, there still isn't.

For her sister, Patti Tate has launched a national boycott against Geffen Records after Guns N' Roses, which records on the Geffen label, refused to remove a song written by Manson from its new album, "The Spaghetti Incident?"

Tate said the record company "is putting Manson up on a pedestal for young people who don't know who he is to worship like an idol." She and other members of the Doris Tate Crime Victims Bureau are asking people to write and fax letters of protest to Geffen Records as well as to phone the record company.

Ed Rosenblatt, Geffen Records president, has told The Times that the company "would have preferred that the song wasn't on the album, but given our belief in freedom of speech as well as the clear restraints of our legal agreements with the band, it is not our decision to make. That decision belongs solely to Guns N' Roses. We genuinely regret the distress the situation has caused."

Geffen Records has said neither Manson nor Guns N' Roses will collect any money from the song, and royalties will be funneled to the son of one of Manson's victims and to various environmental and crime-victim organizations. But that doesn't satisfy Tate, who three weeks ago faced Geffen executives in a private meeting.

"Nothing came out of it," she said, "but it was necessary for me to sit down with them, face to face and ask them, 'Do you realize what you are creating here?' This isn't about whether or not Manson is making money or who is making money. This is about Manson still profiting by becoming a cult hero, an idol to a lot of young kids out there who will buy the album. And that's where violence and crime is hitting us the worst right now, with our kids.