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CHRONICLE

Vol. 1 No. 10

BWMT

Cleveland, Ohio

CELEBRATES

BY DORA FORBES

Aubrey Wertheim, Director of the National Gay Task Force Violence Project, will be the featured speaker at the Fifth Anniversary celebration of the Cleveland chapter of Black and White Men Together the weekend of November 1 through 3.

The Anniversary Weekend opens Friday evening at 7 with welcoming reception at St. Philomena School, 13824 Euclid Avenue. A night on the town will follow the reception.

Saturday morning the Regional Network and the Discrimination Response System will hold meetings at St. Philomena's. Coffee and doughnuts will be served at 10 a.., with the meetings running from 10:30 to 12:30.

Saturday afternoon Albert McQueen, Professor of Sociology at Oberlin College, will lead a workshop, "Black and White: Styles in Conflict." Following the 12:45 to 1:45 lunch break, the workshop will explore different approaches toward problem solving and conflict

resolution.

The Annøversary Banquet, at Higbee's Banquet Center, Severance Mall, begins at 6:30 with a cocktail hour. Besides Wertheim's talk, centering On violence

against gay people, it will include the installation of new BWMT-Cleveland officers. Two BWMT members are hosting a post-banquet party at their home.

The Weekend ends with Anniversary brunch at Higbee's Banquet Center, at 11

a.m.

BWMT invites the community to attend its celebration. Cost of the entire weekend is $18.50. The banquet is $12.75 or $13.25, depending on entree. Lunch and the Saturday afternoon workshop will be $5. The anniversary brunch is $6.15, payable at

the event.

For registration information, call 321-2418. Those volunteering to house outof-town guests may call 9615556.

Raffle tickets for the New availYork trip are still able. Drawing will be at the banquet.

AIDS HYSTERIA PANICS U.S.

By CHARLES CALLENDER

Groundless fear of AIDS, already strong among many straight Americans, is turning into hysteria in the wake of Rock Hudson's death. By claiming a prominent victim who acknowledged the

GPC

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Cleveland, OH

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Gay Support Group Regional Council on

nature of his illness, AIDS impressed its danger even more forcibly upon a public that government agencies have done little to inform. The U.S. Public Health Service recently called on the news media to help counter what Acting Assist-

Alcohol

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Cleveland, OH

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Take Back

The Night,

page 7

Rock Hudson in an early film

than

ant Secretary for Health James Mason called an "epidemic of fear." The media's record has been less satisfactory. And Mason himself injected new fears by warning that heterosexuals are ing

also at risk of acquirAIDS through sexual intercourse.

Since the AIDS epidemic was first recognized, its victims have too often been treated as pariahs with whom any kind of contact is dangerous.

In the current hysteria, similar attitudes are being extended toward those who test positive for the HTLV-3 virus, and toward gay people as a group.

The School Issue Much of the current fear

November 1985

centers on schoolchildren and protecting them from the occasional AIDS patient, usually hemophiliac, who is well enough to be able to attend school.

When a New York City Board Education panel ruled

of that one second-grader, who may or may not have AIDS, could attend public school, 10,000 Queens parents kept their children at home, and local school boards filed suit to overturn the panel's ruling.

Half the parents at a New Jersey school kept their children home after the admission of a 9-year-old boy whose sister has ARCs. particular issue has

This

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