AIDS: Blaming the victim

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In the face of a serious and rapidly spreading epidemic which has already struck 4177 people, 43 percent of whom have died, the government's response has been inadequate funding on the one hand, and increased political repression and stirring up of homophobia on the other.

The disease is acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It was first recognized in San Francisco in 1981. AIDS impairs the immune system, leaving the body vulnerable to various opportunistic illnesses. The fatality rate for AIDS is more than 85 percent two years after diagnosis. The number of victims has been doubling every eight months.

Most experts believe that AIDS is transmitted through intimate sexual contact which involves exchange of body fluids. Seventy-five percent of its victims in the United States thus far are gay men. AIDS has also struck Haitians, intravenous drug users, hemophiliacs, women who have had regular sexual contact with AIDS patients, and children born to these mothers. Forty percent of people with AIDS are Black or Hispanic. Because most AIDS victims are gay men the epidemic has been used as an excuse to deny gay civil rights and to clamp down on gay sexuality.

California state Sen. H. L. Richardson exploited fear of the AIDS epidemic this spring in his campaign against passage of AB-1 in the California legislature. The bill would have outlawed employment discrimination against lesbians and gays. It narrowly passed both houses but was vetoed by Gov. George Deukmejian.

On April 9, San Francisco Public Health Director Mervyn Silverman issued a ban on all sexual activity in gay bathhouses and sex clubs in the city. The ban is to be enforced by periodic unannounced inspections by the city health department.

This decision was the result of a compromise reached between city officials and gay Democratic politicians, physicians, businessmen, and other "leaders" of the gay community. Dr. Silverman and Mayor Feinstein, along with some of these gay misleaders, originally proposed the closing of the baths. Gay Supervisor Harry Britt, a Democrat, was in attendance at Dr. Silverman's press conference and approved the sex ban.

Bathhouses closed

This measure was taken despite widespread opposition in the gay community to government moves against the baths. At a community meeting in San Francisco May 24, attended by 100 people, speakers opposing closure of the baths outnumbered supporters five to one. Since the sex ban was announced, however, two bathhouses have felt compelled to close their businesses.

Many gays believe that the way to stop the spread of AIDS is through education, not repression. Gay historian Allan Berube wrote in the April edition of Coming Up, a San Francisco lesbian and gay newspaper, "Today, gay men need our bathhouses more then ever, but as radically changed institutions. Although there is no known cure for AIDS, it can be prevented if gay men limit their sexual activity to what is now being called 'safe sex' .... The closing of all gay bathhouses on the other hand will force casual sex underground, may help spread AIDS, and will invite a wave of political repression?

Gay activists in other parts of the country agree. Said Nicholas Ifft, presiBUT NUDE SO dent of Philadelphia AIDS taskforce, "All available evidence indicates that the transmission of AIDS is associated with specific behaviors and not with locations where these activities occur.' Many gays suspect the move is a political rather than a medical one, an attempt to "clean up" the city before the Democratic Convention in July. "It's hard to imagine that (the Democratic Convention) is not related"' Allan Berube told the Washington Post. The "clean up" effort is apparently something gay Democratic politicians are willing to go along with.

Many gays worry about ahead for the gay community in the name of stopping the spread of AIDS. The closing of gay bars? The passage of new anti-sodomy laws?

The AIDS crisis is not the first time that San Francisco city officials have Socialist Action/May May Gong taken repressive measures against a minority group during an epidemic. At the turn of the century, health officials dealt with an outbreak of bubonic plague in San Francisco's Chinatown in a similar fashion. They imposed a quarantine on the entire area and forbade Chinese- and Japanese-Americans to leave the state. Door-to-door searches were conducted, numerous buildings in Chinatown were condemned and destroyed, and proposals were even made to set up detention camps for San Francisco's 14,000 Chinese. Just as bubonic plague was seen at the time as a disease exclusively affecting orientals, AIDS today has been falsely characterized as a gay disease.

But if a cure is not found, AIDS may eventually spread to the heterosexual population. Heterosexuals are clearly not immune from the disease. The April 17 New York Times reported that in Zaire, a country one-eighth the size of the United States, epidemiologists estimate that there have been 3500 to 7000 cases of AIDS, an incidence 10 to 20 times higher than in the United States. Yet, 40 percent of the patients are women and few of the males are homosexuals. Specialists in Zaire say that the disease may be spreading through "normal" heterosexual contact.

Money for AIDS

While the ban on bathhouse sex was being imposed in San Francisco, scientists in France and the United States were vying for credit for the discovery of a retrovirus which they claim to be the cause of AIDS. The New York Times observed in its April 26 editorial, "Certainly, no one deserves the Nobel Prize... what you are hearing is not yet a public benefit but a private competition for fame, prizes, and new research funds"' According to Health and Human Services Secretary Margaret Heckler, it will be two more years before an antiAIDS serum is developed. French researchers estimate 10 years. Everyone agrees that a cure is even farther off.

How long it actually takes to find a cure for AIDS largely depends on the amount of funding that is provided for research. Thus far, government funding has been grossly inadequate. In its 1984 budget, Congress appropriated $64.8 million in military aid for El Salvador and is now considering-with bi-partisan support-supplemental appropriations of another $61.8 million in emergency military aid. The American government apparently cares more (continued on page 18, in “New play rediscovers Margaret Fuller”)

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