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The AIDS Czar
by Joe Lillich
There has been a lot of speculation about the
AIDS Czar, the position proposed by President
Clinton to coordinate the United States response to
the epidemic.
Will the Aids Czar report to Health and
Human Services? Will the AIDS Czar direct the
work done in AIDS at the National Institutes of
Health, the CDC and the FDA? Will a figurehead be
appointed? What powers, staff, and funding will
the AIDS Czar be accorded?
And who is going to be the AIDS Czar?
So far, the candidates most frequently men
tioned are Connecticut’s Governor Lowell Weickert.
Dr. June Osborne, and former Surgeon General C.
Everett Koop.
Whatever the respective virtues of the candi
dates are, it is noteworthy that they are all known
heterosexuals.
How did we
AIDS and the community based organiza
tions which it spawned were suddenly supposed to
change. The epidemic was magically transformed
over the latter half of the eighties into an epidemic
which affected everyone. Diseased infants and
aging pop stars suddenly dominated the posters
and literature of AIDS education. And the funding
and organizations began to change as well. If AIDS
was for eveiyone, what were all these, gay men
doing in charge of all these organizations? Some
times the pressure was subtle and many gay men
found themselves offered safe little sinecures in the
government and in the foundations.
Many gay men died and many just got tired,
but the epidemic itself was not completely respon
sible for the gay leadership missing in action.
Sometimes the oiganizations found their funding
dependent upon degaying. Fora while, the Helms-
Dannemeyer Amendment dictated that no federal
for concern and employment. The heterosexual
women and men who became involved in the
epidemic have been vital to the mission. They
deserve our appreciation. But we must realize that
the cost of increased funding and participation and
respectability may have been too high. Now that
the funding is in place, eveiyone wants a piece of
the pie. Even the Catholic Church, which con
demns the use of condoms and considers homo
sexuality a disorder, has their hand out. And
decisions about who should get that money are not
in the hands of people with AIDS.
No one should be surprised Angiy perhaps,
but not surprised.
As AIDS became a business, it became subject
to beaurocrad.es. Beaurocracies are like commit
tees — self protecting life forms with hundreds of
mouths to feed and no soul. Beaurocracies also
have this funny habit of not wishing to offend any
part of their con
stituency. This is
another reason
messages directed
to gay men disap
peared. The mes
sage of America Responds to AIDS featured hetero
sexual-families and heterosexual couples. In Geor
gia, HIV became equated with vampirism and
individuals were cautioned-to avoid “fly by night
relationships.”
The gay community bears some responsibil
ity for the current condition of leadership in AIDS.
We let the beaurocracies take over the organiza
tions and we let the message go out that AIDS was
not a gay disease. In the United States, two thirds
of all cases involve gay men, but it is no longer a gay
disease. Look at the numbers, then look at the
organizations and their leadership. It is no wonder
that none of the currently proposed candidates for
the position of AIDS Czar are gay. This might entail
giving real power and real money to a homosexual.
Even sadder, if a gay man were to be ap
pointed, it would look like a publicity stunt, a
political sop to a political people.
Are we so ashamed of AIDS in our community
that we will continue to sacrifice the leadership and
jobs and services and education our community
deserves? Will we let the media blitz convince us
that we have done all that needs to be done in the
gay community? Will we take the crumbs and be
satisfied?
Probably.V
■ ■—^■'23
come to this point
in the epidemic?
In the early
eighties, AIDS was
consigned to the
fringes of concern. The grass roots efforts of the gay
community to comfort and aid their dying broth
ers inspired the formation of group after group
across the country. Operating within the vacuum
of national leadership, education began. Educa
tion that was explicit, sex positive, and gay positive
began to appear.
By the mid eighties, these community based
organizations began to outgrow their volunteer
bases. Full time professional staffs and the budgets
they require became a fact. And these organiza
tions suddenly needed the kind of funding that was
only available through foundations and govern
ments.
Nothing queer going on
dollars be spent which could be interpreted as
supporting homosexuality. Safer sex messages be
came generic little homilies — safe in more ways
than one.
Only a few organizations held to their original
mission to serve the gay community, like the Gay
Men’s Health Crisis, Whitman-Walker, and
Atlanta’s own Atlanta Gay Center.
It is not surprising that AIDS, the business,
became different from the mission. There was
money involved. As the paying jobs appeared, gay
men were sidelined. And the messages to gay men
disappeared. On the positive side, funding did
increase. And AIDS became an acceptable venue
the Atlanta Gay Center’s
Helpline
Daily, 6-11 pm
892-0661
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