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SOUTHERN VOICE
OCTOBER 7/1993
NEXT
E E K
Put on those
walking shoes
AIDS Walk Atlanta
EDITORIAL
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African Americans must stand against right's ruse
We’ll give the Christian right credit for
imagination, even if we can’t give them any
points for intellectual honesty.
The latest ruse being employed by these
right-wing chameleons is to use homophobia
as a weapon to build a political alliance with
African-American voters, with whom they have
next to nothing in common. This clever, if
morally bankrupt, tactic is being tried across
the nation, and in Atlanta, a group called
Jacob’s Well is trying to use the strategy in the
city elections. In one particularly egregious bit
of hyperbole, a Jacob’s Well leader said that
“MLK didn’t die for the rights of gay men to
sleep together.”
One of the ironies here is that, 30 years
ago, the Christian supremacist establishment,
which is now misusing the Bible to justify
oppression of gays and lesbians, was misusing
that same Bible to justify oppression of blacks.
Egged on by that atmosphere, people tossed
rocks in Selma and turned on the firehoses in
Birmingham—and aimed rifles in Memphis.
State Rep. Billy McKinney and the other
blacks who have entered into this unseemly
alliance are so blinded by their hatred of lesbi
ans and gays that they don’t recognize that
they are being duped by the very people who
have oppressed them.
Most African Americans, of course, aren’t
falling for such rot. But make no mistake—the
possibility of such an alliance needs to be
viewed as a serious threat, particularly in At
lanta, where large numbers of straight African
Americans live side-by-side with lesbians and
gay men of all colors. And if a fundamentalist/
black alliance in the city links up with rural
Sam Nunn Democrats and right-wing subur
ban Republicans, the resulting assault on what
few human rights protections exist in Georgia
could be truly frightening.
The question is how to counter this threat.
We believe the first line of defense is for
gay and lesbian African Americans to speak
up and organize. Anti-gay African American
demagogues get away with their outrageous
behavior by painting homosexuality as a “while
thing.” The people who arc best able to counter
this misinformation arc the people who,
through their own proud lives and examples,
prove that ignorant notion false.
We also believe that civil rights leaders,
and Atlanta’s African-American political es
tablishment, need to denounce this strategy
and its disciples.
There are, of course, many differences be
tween the gay/lesbian rights movement and
the African Americans’ struggle for equality
in the 1950s and 1960s. A complete parallel
does not exist. But an underlying principle—
that people should be judged by content and
not classification—is at the core of both move
ments.
Coretta Scott King and Rev. Joseph Lowery
of the Southern Christian Leadership Confer
ence have made strong, public statements in
support of lesbian and gay rights. We applaud
their courage and consistency. Now, political
leaders—the Andrew Youngs and Maynard
Jacksons—need to also speak out forcefully
against the evils of discrimination and exclu
sion. They need to denounce Jacob’s Well and
work to ihwart its hateful sneak attack.
Ditto for the city’s mayoral, City Council
and school board candidates.
This is a city where the issue of race stands
in the background like a 40-ton gorilla. Drag
ging it into the middle of the battle over les
bian/gay human rights, as Jacob’s Well seeks
to do, is reprehensible, of course. And if it
works, all lesbians and gay men, black and
white, will see what little progress we have
made imperiled.
With the eyes of the world upon us as 1996
approaches, this city—and all of its residents—
have a stake in not letting that happen.
RICHARD SHUMATE
Stop kissing Clinton's behind
Given the complete and utter betrayal of
lesbians and gays by Bill Clinton, we remain
amazed that so many people in our commu
nity still seem so willing to bend low and kiss
his posterior.
In particular, the Human Rights Campaign
Fund has been puckering up. They actually
spent money to send out a press release noting
that Clinton shook hands with two HRCF staff
ers at a recent bill signing. Yes, another
magnanamous, monumental gesture from our
beloved leader. Who needs civil rights when
you get to shake the Big Guy’s hand?
In another release, the HRCF’s newly
elected co-chair, Hilary Rosen, said, “We do
have a friend in the White House.”
Enough already. We do not have a friend
in the White House. Under any definition of
friendship that’s worth a hoot, a friend is some
body who doesn’t sell you out when the going
gets tough.
We may take small comfort in the fact that
Clinton is not as bad as Reagan and Bush.
That hardly qualifies him as a friend. The pret
tiest among three ugly frogs is still an ugly
frog.
And behaving as apologists for people who
screw us over may be the reason we keep
getting screwed over.
RICHARD SHUMATE
ANOTHER VIEW
Fallacies of the HIV-equals-AIDS orthodoxy
BY TIMOTHY HAND
If your main sources of information arc the
local paper and the TV, you are likely to be
lieve that AIDS is caused by a sexually trans
mitted virus. But if you visit the medical li
brary from time to time, you will come across
other views of AIDS. Scientists are not only
questioning the role of HIV in AIDS—they
are going further and asking: is AIDS an in
fectious, sexually transmitted disease at all?
Think about the characteristics of infec
tious diseases, particularly sexually transmit
ted diseases (STDs). All arc equally distrib
uted between the sexes. None remain confined
to risk groups. All are produced by a single,
common, active, abundant microbe after a brief
(days or weeks) incubation period. Never do
the symptoms vary with your nationality or
sexual orientation. For STDs, the most pro
miscuous people get the most disease. More
over, transmission is nearly guaranteed if you
engage in sex with a person who has active
disease.
AIDS does not behave like this. AIDS in
America and Europe is confined primarily
(about 90 percent) to males. It has had plenty
of time to spread to non-drug-using hetero
sexuals and to equilibriate between the sexes,
but it hasn’t done so. Highly promiscuous fe
male prostitutes remain nearly untouched by
the AIDS epidemic, despite the fact that they
rarely use condoms and suffer very high rates
of classical STDs. AIDS patients have no single
microbe in common; even HIV is completely
absent in hundreds, if not thousands, of people
with AIDS. (Renaming the disease in HIV-
free people, or redefining AIDS as immune
suppression with HIV, are unconvincing and
dishonest responses to the dilemma of HIV-
free AIDS). AIDS symptoms also tend to vary
with risk group; they differ in gays and
straights, and in Americans and Africans. Fi
nally, wives of hemophiliacs with HIV and/or
AIDS do not get AIDS, despite years of un
protected sexual contact with their husbands.
T-cell counts in these women are usually nor
mal. Partners of HIV-positive persons often
remain healthy and HIV-negative (for example,
There is now a new line of inquiry
that.. .proposes a completely new
concept of AIDS. But you would
never know that by reading the
gay or mainstream press.
Should we have a requiem for
investigative journalism?
the wives of Arthur Ashe and Magic Johnson,
as well as Rock Hudson’s partner, Marc Chris
tian).
Those who believe that sexually transmit
ted HIV “causes AIDS” must account for HIV-
free AIDS cases, HIV inactivity and scarcity
in infected persons and the absence of HIV
from the semen of nearly all HIV-infected men.
They must also explain why AIDS itself is
primarily a male disease in America, even
though the testing of millions of recruits for
the U.S. Army shows equal distribution of
HIV between the sexes.
Taken together, these observations suggest
that neither HIV nor AIDS itself is sexually
transmitted.
Why is none of this appearing in the main
stream press? Is it because preventing and treat
ing non-infectious diseases is commercially
uninteresting? Is it because we may have to
admit that the billions of dollars we’ve poured
into HIV/AZT research have been wasted?
Let’s continue questioning. Of the people
who died of “AIDS,” how many died not of
HIV but of the consequences of mcdicai/rcc-
realional drug use? How many died of hemo
philia itself? How many died of AZT poison
ing? (Independent studies show that chronic
AZT is ineffective against both HIV and AIDS,
that it is extremely harmful to health and that
it may actually cause AIDS diseases.)
Today’s prevalent “gospel truth” is that
sex = HIV transmission = AIDS = death. This
seems like the truth only because it has been
endlessly repeated like a mantra (usually by
journalists and AIDS activists who have no
medical or scientific training, or by doctors
who are trained to respect authority rather than
to think critically). But this dogma has only
been around for a few years, an eye blink in
medical history. It was accepted prematurely.
It has less scientific support than you might
think. And there is now a new line of inquiry
that rejects it and proposes a completely new
concept of AIDS.
But you would never know that by reading
the gay or mainstream press. They repeat the
tired mantra without thinking. Should we have
a requiem for investigauve journalism?
Hand, who has a Ph.D.in neuroscience, is
a professor at Oglethorpe University in At
lanta.