SEPTEMBER 17, 1993

COMMUNITY FORUM

GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE 11

Continued from previous page

interest in CW dancing held by part of the lesbian and gay community. And it was done with the help of the Country Dancers and Rainbow Wranglers, who prepared music for the event.

Everything did not happen as planned, in part due to circumstances over which the Dancin' committee had no control (such as the rain and earlier performances exceeding their allotted time). These kinds of things happen, especially at outdoor events, and often require adjustments in the schedule. The committee did a remarkable job of adjusting to these circumstances and keeping Dancin' on track.

Perhaps the rescheduling and trimming of performances could have been handled better and less arbitrarily. Cutting the Country Dancers' set while they were onstage was unfortunate at best, but certainly carried no malicious intent on the part of the organizers. We can all learn from our mistakes-as I mentioned to a representative from the CCCD when I spoke with him the week after the event.

•

4

feel about Dancin', the Dancin' committee volunteers deserve our heartfelt thanks for working so diligently to raise badly needed funds for HIT programs. Dancin' will continue to be held, continue to improve, and continue to try to include as many parts of the community as is logistically possible.

Joseph Interrante Executive Director Health Issues Taskforce

Racial issues concern more than a few

To the Editors:

Thank you for the open discussion of the Center's struggle with institutional racism in your front page article in the August 20 edition of the Chronicle. Every person in the gay and lesbian communities has a stake in both the process and the outcome of efforts to end oppression from within our community. It is only in this way that we may one day struggle in true coalition against homophobia and heterosexism.

But I also believe that the disappointI would offer one correction to your ments and anger expressed by Dancin's story. The "charges of racial insensitivity" critics are as much a matter of unfair expectations as they are matters of "broken promises." If the Cleveland lesbian and gay community had more major events, and if country western fans had an established venue for dancing, I believe that events like Dancin' would not be loaded down with expectations which are impossible to meet. Certainly, the inability to live up to those expectations would not elicit the kinds of reactions I have seen in the Chronicle. Certainly, the unequal representation of country western entertainment would not be analogized to lesbian and gay oppression.

Whatever problems or disappointments may have occurred, however, it is unfair . and unacceptable to engage in personal attacks on a group of well-intentioned and dedicated volunteers who collectively put in thousands of hours to make Dancin' a reality. It is unfair and unacceptable to attack personally Melissa Ross, who did a wonderful job under very difficult circum-

stances.

In fact, the most disconcerting aspect of this exchange over Dancin' is not the criticism of Dancin'. It is the subtextual hostility toward drag entertainers as a group which

toward people of color in general, and African-Americans in particular, are neither new, nor only being pressed by trustees of the Center. People of Color at the Center is an ad hoc group of current and former Center trustees, staff, volunteers and Center users and potential users. We share a concern that an organization to which we have given time, dedication, money and energy still remains unable to hear or respond to the communities that we call home. By failing to speak with other concerned people of color, your article seemed to imply that Peggi Cella is the sole, or primary, person of color pressing such concerns.

I invite the Chronicle to join us for the Fishbowl Listening Process [September 10]

hosted by People of Color at the Center, and

its follow-up session, facilitated by the

women of Stop Oppression and Racism

(SOAR). For every conscious person in this community struggling with these same issues, it is an opportunity to hear us, in all of our diversity, speak for ourselves.

Mistinguette Smith Malone People of Color at the Center

runs throughout the discussion. It is espeA plan, not a 'vision'

cially distressing to find such sentiments articulated by individuals who are themselves complaining of unequal treatment. Where does this hostility come from? Why is it relevant to the issue of inadequate representation of country western music? And what does it mean for our vision of an inclusive community, that we have to put down others to promote our own interests and preferences?

Drag entertainment and country western dancing (and more generally cowboy drag) are both part of the history and present culture of lesbian-gay community life. Both drag performers and country western groups have been active in local fund-raising for AIDS generally and the Taskforce specifically. Drag entertainers and some members of the Country Dancers and Rainbow Wranglers have also been active in HIT's HIV prevention programs for the gay community, and will be joined by bartenders and other community figures as we adapt the "We Got You Covered" campaign to new community needs. It is our desire to work with all segments of the gay and lesbian community in the ongoing battle against AIDS.

To the Editors:

It was Urvashi Vaid, urging additional grassroots and financial support of gay and lesbian causes in the Advocate, that had me reworking my already overcommitted schedule to fit in two volunteer assignments

this year.

What I found lacking in the organization of one event, I found refreshing to experience at a deeper level in the other. Solid business sense, (building project task lists, assigning accountability, compiling and disseminating meeting minutes, and generally keeping projects on track and participants informed) was what made Garden Party IV a smashing success to me, and perhaps more importantly, a probable candidate for my money next year.

Having had the pleasure of this most recent volunteer experience fresh in my mind, I was disappointed, rather than encouraged, after reading your August 20 commentary on how a "take charge" attitude could better serve our Lesbian-Gay Community Service Center.

After trying to "make a difference" by

Talent that the Chronicle's 30,000 readers regularly rent to successful businesses in this and other areas around the country every day.

If anyone is interested in buoying up or adding to the success of our community's center, I would suggest offering to do what you already do best.

Should Judith Rainbrook and the board seriously intend to stabilize the Center's current level of service, at least, or increase its presence, at most, I am sure that their extensively defined project plans include tasks that have seemingly been tailor-made for Pat Blow, Pat Executive, or Pat InBetween that may come to help.

We all have something to add to a process that is thoroughly-defined and carefully executed, even if it is not a super human's savior suit.

S.K. Bair

Produce & propaganda

To the Editors:

My partner and I were buying some delicious-looking produce at the Hillside Orchard in Hinckley on Route 303, when we noticed anti-gay and anti-choice propaganda up on the bulletin board behind the checkout counter. We asked the clerk to stop ringing up our purchase, and then we told the manager that we could not support an establishment that was against civil rights. She said she was entitled to her opinion, which is certainly true, but we said we would tell our friends, which is why we're writing to the Chronicle! Please don't patronize (or matronize) this establishmentand do speak up! It's scary but empowering!

Yours in the struggle,

Amanda Aikman

"Acceptable violence' not acceptable

The following was sent to the Plain Dealer: To the Editors:

What kind of society are we supporting that it is "healthier" for a child to be says raised by a grandmother who stood by and did nothing when her own daughter was molested than for that child to be raised by two loving parents, just because those parents are lesbians (Sept. 8 "Lesbian Loses Custody of Son").

It is the same kind of society that has enabled more than 50 incidents of gaylesbian bashing in Cleveland since the beginning of this year and that drives gay and lesbian youth to commit suicide at three times the rate of other teenagers. It is a society of hatred and insecurity, disguised as Christian "morality."

For those who wish to speak out against this standard of "acceptable violence," I suggest they call or write Judge Buford Parsons at: Henrico County Circuit Court, P.O. Box 27032, Richmond, VA 23273; 804-672-4202.

People interested in assisting Sharon Bottoms and April Wade in regaining the custody of their son, please call the LesbianGay Community Service Center at 5221999 for information on how to help.

Judith Rainbrook

Executive Director

Lesbian-Gay Community Service Center

volunteering and supporting Cleveland's HIV isn't the cause Whatever disappointments people may community for almost ten years, I will no

Obituaries

Obituaries may be placed in the Chronicle free of charge. They can be sent by mail or fax (see editorial page for address); but we can't take information over the phone. Include your name and phone, so we may contact you. A photo can be included; please send a self-addressed stamped envelope if you want it returned.

longer involve myself with efforts that only provide me with a "vision." I demand a plan. Well thought out, presented professionally, and workable by most anyone that would like to be involved.

Idealism is not going to anchor the programs already in trouble at the Center, nor help it expand into the "proactive rallying point" that you suggest it become. What the Center needs from this community is talent.

To the Editors:

The September 3 issue of the Gay People's Chronicle featured a front-page article about a conference "to usher in a new beginning in AIDS research." The government henchmen mentioned as participants (Broder, Fauci, Kessler) are the same people who have been in charge since the beginning of the epidemic. Dr. Robert Gallo continues on the government payroll de-

spite a well-known record of research falsification.

Even the "outsiders" included are insiders in disguise. Martin Delaney's "nonprofit" organization, Project Inform, was bought long ago by its largest financial contributor, Burroughs Wellcome, the manufacturer of AZT. Larry Kramer is an ACT UP founder who gave up activism to revel in the company of the powers-that-be.

It is ludicrous to believe that these guys will produce a fresh approach to AIDS research for their new "czar". They are too busy promoting the tenets of "HIV/AIDS” orthodoxy and pushing the agenda of the medical-industrial complex. It is not surprising that the conference was closed to the media and to the public: there is a cover-up in progress.

For if we know anything from the sorry results of ten years of research, it is that the current HIV/AIDS paradigm is dead wrong. HIV is no more the cause of AIDS than carrot juice is the cause of cancer.

Dr. Peter Duesberg, one of the world's leading experts on retroviruses, has been insisting since 1987 that HIV is too inactive, infects too few cells, and is too hard to even find in AIDS patients to cause the disease. (Remember that the vast majority of people "in the spectrum," as the current jargon goes, have never been tested for the presence of HIV itself. The so-called "AIDS test" merely indicates the presence of antibodies to the virus, and so should be regarded as an indicator that the body has successfully fought off the invader.) What was the result of Duesberg's candor? His research grants were rescinded.

Duesberg has been joined in the last couple of years by a growing number of prominent scientists who doubt that HIV causes AIDS. Their viewpoint is based on the following facts:

1) Most people who test positive for HIV antibodies do not go on to develop AIDS. Those who stay away from highly toxic drugs like AZT and ddl are as healthy as their HIV-negative counterparts. The U.S. government continues its cover-up in part by annually increasing the numbers of years HIV is said to lay dormant in the body.

2) Not all people with AIDS test positive for HIV. Hundreds of HIV-free AIDS cases were reported at the 1992 International Conference on AIDS, and the number is now in the thousands. The U.S.government continues its cover-up by giving the disease in these cases a different name, although the symptoms are identical. And this is to say nothing of hundreds of thousands of cases of chronic fatigue immune deficiency syndrome, which is characterized by many of these same symptoms.

3) HIV may not be sexually transmitted. It is nearly impossible to isolate in semen. Female prostitutes rarely contract HIV unless they also use drugs. AIDS has not become the heterosexual plague predicted in the fund-raising letters of AIDS organizations.

4) Scientists have never been able to produce AIDS symptoms in laboratory animals by injecting them with HIV, the standard proof that a microorganism causes a disease.

If HIV is not the cause of AIDS, then what is? There are numerous theories, none of which can be proven or disproven because their proponents cannot get funding for research. The New York Native, one of the nation's largest gay newspapers, champions a herpes virus, HHV-6, as the cause of both AIDS and chronic fatigue. Many scientists, including Dr. Luc Montagnier, the French researcher from whose laboratory Gallo stole the human immunodeficincy virus, and Dr. Robert Root-Bernstein, author of the recent book, Rethinking AIDS, believe that it is caused by HIV in combination with one or more factors, probably microbacteria. Duesberg believes that AIDS is caused not by any organism, but by repeated exposure of the body to immunosuppressive toxins. In the case of drug users,

Continued on next page