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Gay Peoples Chronicle

NATIONAL NEWS...

AIDS Not Casually Transmitted

Early in February a report published in the New England Journal of Medicine strongly supported statements by the Centers for Disease Control that the HTLV-3 virus is not spread by casual contact.

Concentrating on 101 persons who lived in close contact with family members who had AIDS, sharing drinking glasses, towels, toothbrushes, and toilets, the study concluded that the virus can not be spread through close

personal contact of this kind, nor by kissing.

The same issue of the Journal included an editorial urging the medical profession to "take a more active and influential role in quelling the hysteria over the casual transmission of AIDS.

Media treatment of the report varied. The New York Times story was a textbook example of comprehensive coverage, making all the

March 1986

BY: Casmir Kuczynski

points needed to reassure the public. It began on the front page, under the headline Study of AIDS Victims' Families Casts Doubt on Disease's Spread, with the continuation headlined Study of Victims' Kin Doubts Immune Disease is Spreading.

The Plain Dealer ran a brief summary, covering the important points, headlined AIDS Study Examines Victims' Kin.

Pacific Bell Homophobia Bared

A San Francisco Superior Court Judge ruled that a lawsit filed against Pacific Bell by lesbians and gay men will proceed to trial as a

class action.

The case, originally known as Gay Law Students v. Pacific Telephone & Telegraph, was filed in June, 1975 by rejected applicants and employees of the phone company and two gay organizations. The plaintiffs are being represented by the San Francisco law office of Heller, Ehrman, White & McAuliffe and National Gay Rights Advocates, a public interest law firm.

The ruling came on the heels of new evidence in the form of documents that Pacific Bell and its lawyers had concealed for years.

One document shows that

Pacific Bell had a written policy in the 1970's, approved by its highest level management, forbidding the employment of "manifest homosexuals." In another longhidden document, an interviewer's notes show that gay job applicants were labelled "CODE 48 HOMOSEXUAL," and rejected without further consideration. Although Pacific Bell "cleaned up" its written policy after 1979, plaintiffs intend to prove at trial that discrimination practices still persist.

Vowing not to allow this type of bias, Leonard Graff, NGRA Legal Director, said, "We are putting employers on notice in this state. If they discriminate against lesbians and gay men or other minorities, it's going to hurt them on the bottom line." Graff estimated that the claims against Pacific

Choral Directors Surrender-

The American Choral Directors Association has agreed that choruses may use the words "gay" and "lesbian" in their names. When Sister Sharon Bredon, president of the ACDA Western Division, ruled that the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles, chosen to sing at its convention, could not perform under that name because, she said, the word "gay" is "political," the Chorus filed suit.

The Association capitulated in an out-of-court settlement that represented a sweeping victory against ho-

mophobia.

Jerry Carlson, director the Chorus, told the Bay Area Reporter, "We got basically everything we asked for. We will be able to use our name, and they will print a disclaimer in the program stating that the ACDA does not necessarily endorse the lifestyles of any of the performing groups. That's fine with us. We're not asking that they be in love with us at all, just that we be able to perform under our name."

Carlson

described

Homophobia or Greed?

The U.S. Military, notoriously a center for extreme homophobia, is considering a $12,500,000 research project aimed at proving that the HTLV-3 virus spreads through casual contact. The proposal was made by a California organization, the Advanced Investigation of Medical Science Group.

Among the plans considered in

the proposal is one re-

the

quiring everyone with the virus to carry an identifying sign. This is specifically referred to as the "Star of David concept," referring to the yellow star the Nazis required Jews to

wear.

After the San Francisco

Examiner broke the news, a host of research institutes and individuals hastily dissociated themselves from the project.

Bell will $5,000, 000.

far exceed

When the suit was first filed, the plaintiffs alleged that Pacific Bell had a written policy prohibiting the hiring of gay men and women. Pacific argued, all the way to the California Supreme Court, that they had no such policy, but that in any event the law did not prevent them from discriminating. They lost. In a landmark decision, the Court held in 1979 that no employer in California could discriminate against openly gay people in employment opportunities.

The Bay Area Reporter reports rumors that Pacific Bell is moving toward a settlement out of court.

policy prohibiting choruses with "controversial" names from performing as "blatant homophobia."

As part of the settlement, the American Choral Director's Association is adding "sexual preference" to its non-discrimination statement. It also agreed that its Choral Journal will stop omitting the words "gay" and "lesbian" from the names of choruses.

The Windy City Gay Men's Chorus will also be allowed to perform, under that name, at the Midwest Convention.

Clerics

Fear

Gay Rights

Skirmishing over the proposed gay rights ordinance

uncil 0 New York the

forces of homophobia rolling our their heavy artillery.

Bishop Mugavero of the Brooklyn Catholic Diocese, whose silence on the issue has often been contrasted with the flood of noisy pronouncements issued by Cardinal O'Connor, had in earlier years pointed out that homosexuals have to contend with what he called "unjust discrimination." But that was under a different pope. Mugavero has now joined O'Connor in a joint statement denouncing the ordinance as dangerous to society and undermining Catholic teaching. The New York Times responded with an editorial accusing them of transcending the boundaries between church and state, pointing out that the state cannot allow church teaching to justify "painful discrimination

against a minority."

Rabbi Yehuda Levin, who unsuccessfully ran for mayor as the Right to Life Party candidate, followed the lead of his fellow clergymen by an article in the Times urging the bill's defeat. Accusing homosexuals of leading the nation toward decadence, he held that gay rights will destroy the family [a prediction dating back at least to the early 19th century, century, when the Napoleonic Code's legalization of homosexual sex between consenting adults evoked the same warning].

Rabbi Levin also classed homosexuals with murderers, and rapists [But then the rabbi, who led anti-abortion demonstrations outside gay bathhouses, seems to class any emission of semen not directed at procreation within the bounds of lawful marriage as murder]. Letters responding to his article suggest that he might actually be very effective convincing people that gay rights are necessary.

Straights Abuse Children

The Gay Community News reports that the two foster children taken away from a gay male couple by the Massachusetts Department of Social Services may have been sexually abused in their most recent foster home.

According to the Boston Globe, the older of the two boys, who is four, told a

social worker about the sexual abuse. The New Bedford Family and Child Services has charged that the abuse was committed by their foster-mother, her 30-year-old son (who allegedly has a history of child molestation), and a woman who had been a foster child in their home. The New Bedford District Attorney is investigating.