8 ▼ d e c e m b e r 18, 1 9 8 7 ▼ ju s t o u t
national news
Tepid reception
Wayne Boulette
PACIFIC NORTHW EST
AIDS advisory council9s progress report gives Clinton weak
praise states ‘strong reservations9 on HIV names reporting
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rogress in the federal response to AIDS
has stalled in recent months, contribut
ing to a sense of diminished priority for
AIDS issues during the president’s sec
ond term,” charged the Presidential
Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS in its
Progress Report. The council hammered out final
language during a meeting held Dec. 4-7 in Wash
ington, D.C.
The report praised President Clinton for the
steps he has taken around HIV/AIDS, but noted
that “most of the important strides occurred dur
ing the president’s first term.” It cited Clinton’s
lack of leadership on, among other points, Med
icaid expansion, needle-exchange programs and
other prevention activities.
However while this report was critical, its
language was more restrained than in the first,
which was issued in July 1996.
This time, the council noted that at least half of
new HIV infections can be traced to injection
drug use. It renewed earlier calls for the adminis
tration to lift the ban on federal funding of needle-
exchange programs, and chastised the adminis
tration for making “little effort to educate Con
gress and the American public” about those pro
grams “or to build political support” for the change.
In a separate letter to the president, the council
urged Clinton to lift the ban before Congress
comes back into session on Jan. 27, and said the
Department of Health and Human Services should
immediately begin work on “guidelines for needle-
exchange programs, as part of a continuum of an
HIV prevention program.... The debate at this
time should no longer be if, but how, needle-
exchange programs should be established.”
Talk of resignation over this issue was more
restrained than at previous meetings, but the issue
will likely arise again at the council’s March
meeting, if only because of public pressure from
AIDS activists.
P
The council’s bitterest debate came over names
reporting of people who test positive for HIV. No
one advocated such programs, which are now in
effect in more than two dozen states, but the
prevention committee put forward a detailed rec
ommendation that did not foreclose such an op
Second
tion.
It also sought a broader discussion of what
may be needed to construct a surveillance system
that is a useful tool for effectively shaping preven
tion efforts and planning for delivery of care.
“We concluded that data should drive a deci
sion [on names reporting],” said committee co
chair Mike Isbell, former policy director of Gay
Men’s Health Crisis.
But there is little research on the impact of
names reporting or alternative surveillance on
either the quality of data obtained or its effect on
driving people away from getting tested.
The committee strongly recommended the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention make
no changes in surveillance until it assesses and
reports back on the impact of various options,
including names reporting.
Tom Henderson, a person with AIDS from
Texas, put forward an amendment to have the
council go on record as opposing names report
ing.
After strong debate and some modifications of
language, the body added “its strong reservations
regarding the use of a national HIV names-report-
ing surveillance system” to the report.
In his closing remarks, Chairman R. Scott Hitt
urged the council to keep up the pressure on
needle exchange and Medicaid waivers.
“We are on the verge of losing both of these
issues,” he said. “And you all know that. Without
a substantive amount of pressure, both of these
issues are going to come out the wrong way.”
Catholic perspectives
addressed at conference
articles. I could not speak to the media. Finally I
was ordered to give up all ministry to gays and
lesbians. And when I could not in conscience
fulfill that order, the Vatican ordered me to be
dismissed from the Society of Jesus.”
He criticized church policy that absolves same-
sex encounters of the “boy-was-I-drunk-last-night”
variety while condemning long-term committed
relationships. He concluded the church actually
“promoted promiscuous sex” through its position.
Richard McCormick, a theologian at Notre
Dame University, presented what is known as the
revisionist position.
He praised marriage as the context for full
sexual expression and to “escape the narcissism
that affects all of us.”
But he asked, “What about those who can’t
[because they are gay]? There are times when we
should not urge on people things we know they
can’t do.... We must provide a pastoral alterna
tive.”
James P. Hanigan represented the magiste
rial—or more traditional wing—of the church.
He is a former Jesuit, now married, and professor
of theology at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh.
The cardinal’s invective had given Hanigan
“considerable pause” as to participating, but he
concluded that all views “have to be given social
space.... We can and we must grow to see more
than our fathers and mothers in the faith saw, but
we dare not grow to see less.”
“I feel like a gay child with homophobic
parents,” said John J. McNeil in describing his
relationship with the Catholic Church. “This is
the first time in 25 years I’ve been able to speak at
a podium such as this.”
The forum was Bridging the Gap: A Theologi
cal Debate about Homosexuality and Catholi
cism, held Dec. 6 on the Georgetown University
campus.
The event, sponsored by New Ways Ministry
and three campus groups, prompted strong objec
tions from Washington’s Cardinal James A.
Hickey.
“The church’s teaching will not receive a fair
hearing,” he charged in the archdiocese’s news
paper.
The forum at the Jesuit-run university sought
to balance promoting “the teaching of the Catho
lic Church on all issues, including human sexual
ity” with “the free exchange of ideas [whichj is
essential to our academic mission.”
McNeil’s “homecoming” was the emotional
core of the event for most of the 300-plus who
filled the hall to capacity.
“In 1977, the Vatican ordered me to silence; I
was not allowed to speak publicly as a Jesuit for
almost 10 years,” the 72-year-old former priest
and gay psychotherapist recounted. “I could not
appear on a panel like this. I could not write
Mi l *
Bob Roehr