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SOUTHERN VOICE OCTOBER 7/1993 NEXT E E K Put on those walking shoes AIDS Walk Atlanta EDITORIAL VIE )L\TS u intended to provide a continuing forum J it ar pnrlcil. V. all si bmnnom mu«t he MgneJ Please jNj p$ your pboos tstmbef » «* Jwve <jue*n.<in$, V& revive (he ugh <0 edit lo-sr-ue Mail yoar kwrs to Soutaem Vo'CeA'ewpojhtj PO Bus 1X21S Mtjma. OcorgoJOjlfi EXECUTIVE EDITOR! OimtuiaCiuJi OCNMtM, MAVAOER-Uj&Vwfcrl ts EDITOR: Richard Shumae OFFICE MAN ACER: U»rv Kmipm.ii. DISPLAY UWKKIIMV.- Uj.ii ljylw Sli— - Njiicii l i. B N \TTO\Al ADVfRnSlNO R,venue:. Mi-kermp Co V1 etwe 1 Gravois aka advertising. Revel Key ClRCXLVn<» * V Brown, ZA\ KoK". K liigale, Kjr« Dyi-aci, C Summerville, Gam PRODtCnoS loan I Sleivo*!, Manager I’enumat AmsUr.i u Ms, Sherwood KC Wildmiv'n Railey-Rufc, Rachel Toraracr, Carmine Red, Steve Warren. Mara Otesnui, lJava: Stanley, fk.ijnan PHO n«;R APHKRS: I- Bennett, J.ra Marti, RinLFoto, Skye Mason P.s>.\ 1 ynch, Cirm.na Red ('«h> CiWtlttocJ, \dan Tailor. Staley Basalt FdtU.nal Am aerv C’, mm litre KeBy Alexander, Paine Sc Bell Sam Coppoek. Jena Jones. Duncan league SOUTHERN VOICE ii puhliibed by Ryan Publications. Inc with office at 11B9 Virginia Ace , Nfc, .V.*nta, CA VB(» All material m Southern IW n protected Dy federal copyright la* and may not or n ptodttced wphout the »T,tse: consent of the Editor GENERAL POLICY The views of Southern Voire am expressaioaJyimlie editorial atoms win Opinions cape veil are :hu*e of lhc writer, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Southern Voice or the The seauai urientationiof advertlseis,: photographera:/ear- toomsts. and writes pubKsheii heiein is neitherThfcirtd nor unphed, The appea: ariKtdlnitmes or pictorial n^irescnatioiis does not necessarily indicate the iexual orientation of that petscatorpenmn*. jttMjM mjjmm Southem Voke wefcomes marinated material including: cortBspondencetatSoBthew Vome.P,O.Box 18215, Atlanta. <3A3G316.{40t)K 7 h-i819 agaa68^^8a8s»Msa«.«:d«k^figaag««ag^ogagfig8ag 2fiS»«SS'»Ji9fa??51SSS2S5M!SI!«?T8a«8SS.SSa25SS 555 * S& S£°a5 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.