ju s t o u t ▼ J a n u a r y 2 0 , 1 9 9 5 ? 5
I
national news
Out with the old,
in with the new
New Year’s came on Jan. 3 for the ban on gay
men and lesbians in the military. It was out with the
old and in with the new.
Joe Steffan quietly announced that he would
not appeal to the Supreme Court his negative
decision from the Washington, D.C., federal court.
Thus ended his six-year legal challenge to the
“old” ban on lesbians and gay men in the military
stemming from his discharge from the U.S. Naval
Academy at Annapolis in 1987.
“It was an emotionally painful thing for Joe in
the sense that he is a fighter, and this is wrong, and
the knee-jerk thing is to make right what is wrong,”
said Beatrice Dohm, legal director of the Lambda
Legal Defense and Education Fund. The group had
helped Steffan press his case.
“But Joe also recognizes that for the ‘cause’
reasons, it’s the moment for him to pass the torch
to the Able case, which addresses the real current
question of the ‘new’ ban.”
The torch pass came quicker and in a more
dramatic fashion than anyone had expected. Later
that same day, a three-member appeals panel of the
2nd Circuit in New York ruled on a motion in the
Able case, the lead legal challenge to the “new”
military ban.
The panel held that trial judge Eugene Nickerson
had used the wrong standards in issuing an injunc
tion barring the military from proceeding to dis
charge the plaintiffs in the case. But they left the
injunction in place until March 31, essentially
ordering the trial and decision to be concluded by
that date.
The Pentagon and Lambda were shocked, both
having assumed that pretrial motions and discov
ery would delay start of the trial until at least the
summer, if not the fall. Both are scurrying to
prepare their cases.
What appears to be developing is a game of
legal “chicken,” where both sides presently would
like more time to prepare but neither wants to be
the first to ask, as that would give the other lever
age in seeking concessions.
The fast-track ruling by the court panel virtu
ally scuttled the Clinton administration’s political
and legal strategies of “stall and delay” in resolv
ing the question of lesbians and gay men in the
military. It makes it increasingly likely that the
issue will be a highly visible one, perhaps even
before the Supreme Court, during the coming
presidential election campaign. It is something
Clinton strategists had wanted to avoid.
AIDS Action
names new head
AIDS Action Council, the largest national HIV/
AIDS policy and lobbying organization, named
Mark Barnes its new executive director Jan. 6. He
will start the first of February. He succeeds Dan
Bross, who served in that position for four years.
Barnes, 34, hails from East Tallassee in east
central Alabama. He is a graduate of Yale law
school and taught at the Columbia University
School of Law, where he co-founded an AIDS Law
Clinic. He has also worked as an attorney in private
practice.
He was named director of AIDS policy for the
New York State Department of Health in 1989, and
served as New York City Department of Health
associate commissioner for medical and legal policy
from 1992 to ’94.
In an interview prior to the official announce
ment of his hiring as executive director, Bames
stated that his principle mission will be “to save,
sustain, and hopefully strengthen the existing fed
eral programs” for communities living with and at
risk for HIV and AIDS.
He wants to build “even more of a presence in
Washington, and offer even more help to local and
state organizations.” He would like to strengthen
the organization as an information clearinghouse
or resource center, offering technical assistance
and analysis.
Bames continually returned to the need for
AIDS Action to become more representative of the
diversity of the communities affected by AIDS and
to work in broader coalitions to achieve its goals.
The AIDS Action Council has faced increasing
criticism on these very grounds. Many have called
it a trade association dominated by the handful of
large local service organizations which provide the
bulk of its funding. It is a charge that board presi
dent Mario Cooper acknowledges has some valid
ity, and he has vowed to correct the situation.
“I know there are some people who will look at
AIDS Action and go ‘Tisk, tisk, tisk, they hired
another gay white man,’ ” said Cornelius Baker,
public policy director with the National Associa
tion of People with AIDS.
Baker called Bames “very good, very sharp,
someone who has been able to maintain a fair level
of respect in the community while being in a very
difficult environment.”
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Marijuana on trial
as a medicine
Jerry Mensch found himself in a Maryland
courtroom fighting for his marijuana, and perhaps
his life.
Mensch had grown and smoked marijuana to
relieve the fatigue, nausea and diarrhea that are
side effects of ddl, one of the many drugs he takes
to fight the HIV vims.
In November 1993 he was arrested for posses
sion of 10 grams of marijuana at his farm, where he
raises goats, about
an hour southeast
o f W ashington,
D .C., in rural
Charles County.
The arrest wasn’t
the result of bril
liant police work,
it came from a dis
gruntled form er
housem ate who
turned him in.
But, Mensch
told judge George Bowling on Dec. 19, “I just
looked in the mirror. I just looked like I was
slipping away.” The marijuana curbed the side
effects of his medication, he said, allowing him to
regain weight and resume normal activity.
The three-hour preliminary hearing was to de
termine if the court will allow Mensch to argue that
using marijuana was necessary for his health.
It is called a medical necessity defense and has
been used by a small but growing number of people
to defend their use of marijuana to combat the
effects of maladies ranging from AIDS to glau
coma, and the radiation and chemotherapy used in
fighting cancers.
“Many judges will not allow it,” said Allen St.
Pierre, spokesman for the National Organization
for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. “Probably 80
percent or more of the time it never gets by its first
impediment, which is a judge saying no to a motion
to bring it up.”
But when an attorney is allowed to use that
defense, and brings in the primary caregivers and
an outside expert to testify, a jury almost inevitably
finds in favor of the sick person. “The winning rate
is remarkable, close to 98 to 99 percent,” said St.
Pierre.
Mensch’s physician, Doug Ward, testified at
the hearing that he had not recommended Marinol,
a prescription medicine containing synthetic THC,
the active ingredient in natural marijuana.
Additional legal briefs will be submitted, and
Judge Bowling is expected to rule soon on whether
or not to allow Mensch to use the medical necessity
defense.
Reported by Bob Roehr
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