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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (May 7, 1999)
CALIFORNIA T ) erhaps now the San Francisco sheriff’s office 1 will listen a little more closely to its inmates. A failure to listen recently cost the sheriff’s office $755,000. A U.S. District Court jury in the city by the Bay awarded that amount to a transsexual who was subjected to a strip-search by deputies who wanted to confirm her gender. Victoria Schneider was awarded $750,000 for emotional pain and suffering and $5,000 in punitive damages, according to an April 20 United Press International story. In June 1997, Schneider was arrested for investigation of prostitution. She was never charged. When deputies booked her, they booked her as a male. Schneider protested, say ing that she was a woman and feared for her safety in a cell with men. She informed deputies the search was unnecessary because she had been searched after a 1993 arrest, and authori ties then determined she was a woman. She asked deputies to look up the records. Her request was ignored. • need 1 houM with a soul? try Design That Fits... Kenneth Moholt-Siebert Building Design 2021 S.E. Salmon • *>rtun4 C Ö Ö .Ö \ £ ./ W estov er H eights C L I N I C L Serving the community for 17 yearj 2330 NW Flanders Suite 207 226-6678 M ore than $3 million was spent in Novem ber’s battle over a state constitutional amendment designed to ban same-sex marriage. The figure accounts for nearly 37 percent of the special interest money spent in all of 1998’s state elections, reports the April 24 Honolulu Star- Bulletin. Serving your real estate needs for... CONDOS • V acation H omes H otel P roperties A partment B logs . (760) 833-5434 B g E Although supporters of same-sex marriage lost the election, they won on the money. Their largest individual contribution came from Tim Gill, chief executive officer of Quark Inc., who made his donation to the political action com mittee affiliated with the Human Rights Cam paign. Big spenders for the other side include the Mormon Church and the Roman Catholic Church of Hawaii. NATIONAL person with A ID S would have to take powerful drug cocktails for at least 60 years to be free of HIV, according to a report in the May issue of the journal Nature Medicine. In another report that appears in the same issue, scientists found that such a drug regi men— known as highly active anti-retroviral therapy, or H A A R T — may weaken the body’s own ability to fight HIV. H A A R T consists of drugs like AZT, combined with protease inhibitors or non-nucleoside reverse transcrip tase inhibitors. The two studies suggest that people with A ID S can keep HIV at bay only by continuing on difficult and expensive drug regimens, says an April 26 United Press International story. Some scientists say costs, side effects and the potential for the development of resistance make this impractical. A pflin sp&incs C ray HAWAII FLORIDA ast December, the Miami-Dade County Commission amended the county’s human rights ordinance to include sexual orientation. Not surprisingly, the Miami-Dade County Christian Coalition opposed the change and has been leading a campaign to repeal that amend ment. According to the April 25 issue of The Miami Herald, as part of its signature-gathering cam paign the Christian Coalition has been distrib uting, on its letterhead, a document titled “Gay Manifesto.” Offering general internal medicine and excelling in sexual health care ^ Dannemeyer’s manifesto was then copied word for word by the Miami-Dade County chap ter of the Christian Coalition. It was distrib uted— without attribution— to local church leaders and billed as the future plan of the local gay and lesbian community. 211L Palin Canyon Palm Spring*, CA 92264 It contains comments such as “Homosexual ity must be spoken in your churches and syna gogues as an honorable estate,” and “We will subject orthodox Jews and Christians to the most sustained hatred and vilification in recent memory.” Written in the first person, the mani festo does not list an author. Anthony Verdugo, chairman of the Miami- Dade Christian Coalition chapter, said via a let ter to the editor in the Herald that the manifesto first appeared as an editorial by Michael Swift in a 1987 edition of Boston’s Gay Community News. In fact, the real source is a little-known book called Shadow in the Land: Homosexuality in America, written by ultraconservative California U.S. Rep. William Dannemeyer. The Gay Manifesto” is lifted verbatim from pages 105 to 107 of the book, and Dannemeyer admits the text is a “paraphrase (oil the argu ment the homosexual community is making.” What is really going on here? Swift did write a short essay in 1987 expressing his personal frustrations. That essay was then misrepresented as fact. It was entered into the Congressional Record without the opening paragraph explain ing its basis. Dannemeyer then wrote his book warning the world of the evils of gay activists and created his own version of a “Gay Mani festo.” HIV hides itself in resting T-cells, rare cells that provide long-term protection against dis eases like measles after one has been exposed to the infectious agent. The new research reveals that resting T-cells, also called memory cells, can survive for more than 60 years. This gives HIV a lifetime safe haven. Immunologist Robert Siliciano says: “The results are pretty shocking. The survival of these cells is remarkable.” He adds, “This means you probably can t stop and expect that the virus will be gone. You can’t take medicines and wait out the virus. Stopping the medications allows the infec tion to rebound in a matter of weeks. ■ Compiled by KRISTINE C h atw o o o