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Gay Peoples Chronicle

ne 1986

Publisher

Cleveland Gay Peoples Press, Inc. A Non-Profit Corporation

Editor-in-Chief

Charles Callender

MANTZELL'S COMPETENCE

For gay people the fight against AIDS has three particularly important aspects. One is research on this disease itself, which may eventually provide means for its effective control and cure. We have little control over this aspect except through our lobbyists and friends in Congress.

Another aspect is education within the gay community, providing information about the transmission of the HTLV-3 virus and recommending techniques for controlling its spread through our own behavior. This is the aspect where we ourselves have most control.

The third aspect is public hysteria over AIDS, promoting attitudes and actions that are grossly unfair to people with AIDS and those carrying the HTLV-3 virus; and often go even beyond this to threaten the entire gay community, including lesbians as well as gay men. We have seen its effects on our stuggle for civil rights. Recent reports of growing violence against gay people describe AIDS hysteria as an important

cause.

So far the Cleveland area has escaped the worst excesses of AIDS hysteria. Several factors contribute to this. The incidence of AIDS here is still relatively low. The powerful medical establishment generally been sympathetic and helpful. In dealing with AIDS and related problems, our state, county, and city administrations are enlightened and informed, instituting very progressive policies. Through the Health Issues Taskforce this lesbian/gay community has organized to respond to the problems.

These circumstances have given us significant benefits. Cleveland's Alternative Testing Site offers tests for the HTLV-3 virus withour charge and with assurance of complete anonymity. The educational programs offered by the Ohio Department of Health and the Health Issues Taskforce are now expanding outside our own ranks. In January the United Labor Agency was the moving force behind an excellent and highly educational conference at Cleveland Clinic, designed to provide accurate and reassuring information about AIDS to nongays. Case Western Reserve University has adopted notably enlightened policies for dealing with AIDS and AIDS hysteria among its students and employees.

Although even the Fabian Bridges episode had little effect, these conditions were probably too good to last. May brought the First official expression of open fiyster-

hysteria: the policies for Cleveland Public Schools formulated by Betty L. Wantzell, Acting Supervisor of Health Services for the Cleveland Schools.

Wantzell's policies would ban any child with AIDS from attending a public school. More than that: any employee of the school system who is even suspected of having AIDS would be suspended and reinstated only with medical certification that he or she does not have the disease. Whether her rule also applies to those carrying the HTLV-3 virus is unclear. Given Wantzell's shocking lack of knowledge, she may well confuse the two conditions.

In a statement to the Plain Dealer, Wantzell indicates that she formulated her policies for the benefit of parents, not for the sake even of schoolchildren, let alone those who have AIDS.

Her recommendations are unlikely to be put into effect, if only because some of them have already been rejected by courts elsewhere and the rest seem blatantly illegal. But that a public official would even recommend them is, at first sight, frightening.

But on further thought, isn't this an instance where our proper response is not to voice alarm but to attack? And why not move to exercise some control over this aspect of the AIDS crisis?

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The Plain Dealer reports Wantzell claiming that she formulated her policies "after reviewing the state guidelines and weighing other information on AIDS."

The state guidelines provide no support for her policies, which conflict with their recommendations.

What "other information" about AIDS did she weigh? In recent months the Centers for Disease Control and many other bodies have repeatedly assured the public that AIDS is not highly contagious and is not spread by casual contact: Wantzell's belief that AIDS is as contagious as measles and chicken pox indicates she has little knowledge of the means by which the virus is actually transmitted. Unless children with AIDS are having sex or shooting up in school, they will not spread the virus there. Neither will employees. The time for our tolerating know-nothingism has passed. Why should we accept it? Wantzell's recommendations provide strong evidence of incompetence as a policy-making health official. We should directly challenge challenge her fitness to hold her position.

THE MILLS GRIND ON

Just as the AIDS crisis tends to bring out the best aspects of the gay/lesbian community, so--unfortunately--it can also highlight some of the worst. The worst include the rumor mills, whose output is often given credence it does not deserve and which can be very harmful.

The opposite page includes a statement that Buck Harris, Gay Health Consultant for the Ohio Department of Health, has sent us to print.

Rumors--yes, we hear them, too--suggest that business at gay bars and bathhouses has fallen off. We think this phenomenon reflects fear of gay sex in itself. One of the best ways to counteract this fear

is to promote techniques. Gay business establishments, including bathhouses, obviously offer some of the most effective arenas in which to spread the safe-sex message, on which the lives

education about safe-sex

many gay men ultimately depend, quite literally. This is not a message against gay sex only one to use techniques that prevent transmission of the HTLV-3 virus.

Spreading rumors that education in safesex is an attempt to close gay businesses does serious disservice to the community at many levels. In the end, as events in New York show, such education may be the only way that bathhouses can survive.

Writers

Charles Callender Rob Daroff Dora Forbes Mark Kroboth Casimir Kuczynski Sebastian Melmoth Martha Pontoni Phil Arula's Cat

Photographer & Cartoonist Rob Daroff

Columnists Peter Beebe Shana Blessing

Jym Roe

The Health Issues Taskforce

Production Staff Rod Caldwell Charles Callender Rob Daroff Mark Kroboth

Circulation Manager Bob Downing.

Circulation Staff

Ray Davis Bob Downing

Jim Price

Nick Santoni

Youngstown:

Bill Smith

Columbus: News of the Columbus Gay & Lesbian Community Business Manager Martha Pontoni

Publication of the name, picture, or other representation of an individual, organization, or place of busin The Chronicle not indicative of his/hers/its sexual orientation character.

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