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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 6, 2002)
September 6.2002 B ack to S chool Low PRICES! r The Burnside Triangle Advisory Group seems to be facing nothing but hostility from conservatives and apathy from queers. Is this a doomed effort, or can it be salvaged? Custom-Built Systems start at $699 Include: Intel Pentium 4 1.6GHz Processor Integrated Audio * 128MB RAM 56K Modem • 56x Speed CD-ROM Drive Microsoft Windows XP Home and Morel M aybe a majority of Portland residents do not want an official Burnside Triangle. You can say it, but not everyone wants to.say it. T he only thing that really makes it official no matter what anyone says or does not say is you say, “It’s official.” If “they” can say it’s offi cial, “they" also can say it’s unofficial. If you look in Portland’s Gay &. Lesbian Community Yellow Pages, you’ll see gay-owned businesses are all over the city and beyond. You probably never asked anyone to “offici ate” you being gay or lesbian or whatever. I understand the area is well known for gay enter tainment, but that is not all being gay is about. I hardly have spent any time in the Triangle, but I’ve spent time at gay places all over town. If I were heterosexual I think it would be a bit silly to have a heterosexual “square." I think the more we are integrated into society, as in “Gay people are basically everywhere,” not thought of as just in some “triangle," the world will be a better place. Casia s s todag. M's V s romdg lu b u ild fu r g o u t PO RTLAN D A R E A SEATTLE 503.297.1011 8122 SW Beaverton-Hillsdale Hwy Portland. OR 97225 425.394.1011 485 Front St. N„ Suita C Itsaquah. WA 98027 AREA Visit us ordina et www.computerdror.com Northwest Technology Formerly Computnr Doctor L ee S erenethos Beaverton • • • • • • as Just O ut taken the time to really find out what the Burnside Triangle project is all about? Has anyone from Just Out come to one of our meetings to see what we are doing as a body? It seems that Just Out is making some major assumptions here without researching what it is writing about. How can a project that is only a few months old be dimmed? W ho said we are facing apathy from the queer community? A nd the only hos tility we have faced so far came from a conserv ative group that failed to materialize. Doomed? I think not! I also think it would be wise for Just Out, our community newspaper, to research the facts before making public com ments like this. H N orman N evers Portland Eugene Weekly published a half-page opin ion piece April 11 prom oting the idea that “HIV doesn’t cause A ID S.” My reply, pub lished April 25, questioned its ethics in pub lishing advice th a t m ight lead to somebody’s death w ithout at least providing a link to “T h e Evidence T h a t H IV Causes A ID S” ( w w w .niaid.nih.gov/factsheets/evidhiv.htm ) by the N ational Institutes of H ealth. A n outreach director for the Eugene HIV A lliance provided the only other rebuttal. All of the many other letters accused the “AIDS establishm ent" o f conspiring to suppress sci entific dissent. Peter Duesberg is a leading scientist who claims nothing proves HIV causes AIDS, but he needed no proof for his personal decision to avoid infection. He refuses to infect himself with HIV to prove his theory that HIV is harmless because he is worried that an undis covered co-contam inant might cause AIDS, according to the carefully documented inter view notes in Edward Hixiper’s book, The River, which linked African HIV infections to 1950s oral polio vaccines. Despite this, many people are volunteering to become HIV-infect ed hum an lab rats in an unethical experiment to prove his theory right! O n a recent visit to Borders, I found 90 per cent of the books in the AIDS section deny the link between HIV and AIDS. Many casy-to- find Web sites supplement these Kx>ks, which s a member of the Burnside Triangle Advi sory Group from the beginning, I found the task quite daunting. To turn a portion of the downtown with a reputation as a gathering place for homosexual men into a place for folks to meander on a Sunday afternoon under shade trees to eat an ice cream cone seemed improba ble but not quite impossible. But not many other people seemed to see it th a t way. A pathy in the gay community abounds. Gays are accepted in many neighbor hoods in Portland, and they do not need to con gregate in this area downtown. As a historic place, as a monument as what used to be in the past, the Burnside Triangle should be preserved. Markers should be placed showing the public what fascinating events hap pened years past at places in the blocks in the A have influenced the South African government to deny AIDS treatm ent to its citizens. These conspiracy theories further were fueled when U.S. AIDS officials refused to sign the Durban Declaration affirming, “HIV is the cause of AIDS,” which more than 5,000 world-class sci entists have signed to refute South Africa’s decision. The problem of AIDS denial needs to be addressed, but our government’s HIV programs appear unwilling to confront it. I no longer can remain silent about this. T homas K raemer Corvallis Smoke screen T o the E ditor : special thing happened Aug. 15 at the Egyptian Club. People got to come togeth er and feel good about themselves. We were treated to free drinks, free smokes and a table of beautiful food, complete with a lovely hum an centerpiece. After being expert ly decorated with body jewelry and henna ta t toos, groups of friends got to pose for profes sional pictures in a luxurious tent right out of 1001 Arabian Nights. It was like drifting into a genie bottle. There was even a gorgeous belly dancer behind a Moroccan screen. So why did we get A area. The streets should be made attractive. But for attitudes of the people to change will take time and lots cjf effort. We cannot abandon the place to gentrifica- tion. We must involve the businesses and devel opers to help preserve the past along with open ing the future for a clean and lively piece of downtown Portland. Lisa Costello 503-372-3129 Personal VW Consultant vdublisa@ hotm ail.com Herzog-Meier K athy B ambeck Portland next ILT4!f4 xm you be participating in Cascade AIDS Project’s AIDSWalk02? Why or why nott Respond at www.justout.com. (Don’t forget to include your name, city and daytime telephone number.) treated to such a dreamy celebration of sensual ity? This fantasy evening was brought to us by Camel’s 7 Pleasures of the Exotic. W hy would this big cigarette company cre ate such an elaborate party just for the patrons of the Egyptian Club? Perhaps they want sexual minorities to feel gixxi about their community and to treat them to something special. O r maybe corporate America finally has rec ognized the benefits of marketing to gay men and lesbians. W hile it’s wonderful to be recog nized by the suits in the boardroom, is it really so great that those suits are being worn by big tobacco? Tobacco kills four times as many people as AIDS, suicide, hom icide and car crashes com bined. A nd this num ber m ight be even higher for sexual minorities, because approxi mately 50 percent of gay men and lesbians smoke compared to less th an 30 percent of straights. HIV-positive smokers develop full blown AIDS faster th an nonsmokers, while lesbians who smoke have five times the risk for breast cancer. Smoking and bar culture are a big part of com ing out, and tobacco advertising is designed to teach us that smoking is an easy way to be tough, cool, sophisticated and sexu ally desirable. It’s pushed as a way to fit in and deal with stress. Continued on Page 7 Travel Services & Gift Gallerv 6547 SW Beav Hills Hwv • 503 292 0675 sales@worldaccents.com Is
