Vol. 9, No. 13
January 1995
Act like ya know
...Page 27
|n memory of Milk
...Page 12
The Carolines’ Most Comprehensive Gay & Lesbian Newspaper Printed on Recycled Paper lil^ FREE
Task Force announces controversial hiring
by David Stout
Q-Notes Staff
WASfflNGTON, DC—On Derember 6,
the Board of Directors of the National Gay
and Lesbian Task Force announced their in
tention to name Melinda Paras as the new
Executive Director of the organization. The
news was met with a mix of positive and
negative responses from gay and AIDS activ
ists and could make Paras the most controver
sial figure ever to head the Task Force, the
country’s oldest national gay civil rights
agency.
Paras, 41, a San Francisco Health Com
missioner, was tapped by the Board in Sep
tember to become the agency’s interim Chief
Operating Officer and transition team leader
for four months of “re-engineering.” The fo
cus of Paras’ duties was finding a way for the
organization to avoid a year-end budget defi
cit and survive a wave of staff defections,
including Executive Director Peri Jude
Radecic.
Most of the criticism the Board of Direc
tors has drawn for selecting Paras (pronounced
puh-ROSS) involves her past political ties to
Marxist organizations and her performance
as the former Deputy Director of the finan
cially mismanaged AIDS service agency,
Shanti Project. Others question the incestu
ous nature of Paras’ relationship to Board
members and the conspicuous absence of
Melinda Paras
national AIDS organizations from a Task
Force press release highlighting agency and
individual endorsements of the hiring.
Early Oi^anizing
Paras was raised in Madison, Wisconsin, a
college town that is home to the University of
Wisconsin. She dropped out of high school to
become more involved in local protest move
ments, such as anti-Vietnam War organizing,
and eventually joined a group of Cuban sym
pathizers called the Venceremos Brigade.
The Brigade traveled to Cuba when Paras
was just 16 and she journeyed with them.
Brigade members spent their time in the coun
try working with poor and needy citizens. But
Paras was favorably struck by aspects of their
socialist existence. When asked by Q-Notes
what she learned about Cuba during her stay.
Paras replied, “I learned a lot more about the
United States than I learned about Cuba from
my trip... In this country health care access is
such an issue — the first question is do you
have insurance? Do you have money? How
much is it going to cost? Who will pay for it?
— I was really struck that it was such a non
issue there.” ^ ^ j
Continued on page 30
AIDS groups plan new lobbying coalition
by David Jones
Q-Notes Staff
RALEIGH—Representatives of over 30
AIDS service organizations have held two
meetings to discuss forming a new coalition
to lobby in the North Carolina General As
sembly. Plans have been made to form a tax-
exempt corporation and hire a professional,
contract lobbyist in time for the January 25,
1995 legislative session.
Meetings began after a group of AIDS
service and care groups began discussing the
need for a lobbyist. State groups organized as
the North Carolina AIDS Service Coalition
were last represented from 1987 through 1989
by this reporter, then Roz Savitt in the 1991
and 1992 legislative sessions. The Coalition
disbanded prior to the 1992 legislative ses
sion.
Cullen Gurganus, Executive Director of
the AIDS Service Agency (ASA) based in
Raleigh, suggested to several activists in late
September that an exploratory meeting be
held to determine if there was interest in
forming a new coalition. Gurganus sent a
letter to twelve activists on October 6,1994,
also signed by Ben McFayden of the Triad
Health Project in Greensboro, Kimberly Scott
of the Eastern NC HIV/AIDS Consortium
based in Greenville, Patricia Montgomery of
the AIDS Service Agency and this reporter
for the UNC Hospitals AIDS Advisory Board
of Chapel Hill. The primary objective of the
proposed meeting was to determine if others
felt that there was enough interest to call a
statewide meeting to discuss options. The
meeting was held in ASA’s offices on Octo
ber 25,1994.
Gurganus told the group that ASA re
ceived regular inquiries on legislative matters
since it was based in the state capitol, and that
the volume of activity indicated a need for
some form of formal representation. Those
attending agreed that it was essential that
community-based HIV/AIDS groups be rep
resented, and that the new state AIDS Advi
sory Council could not be an effective voice
for community groups since it had infrequent
meetings and primarily gave advice to state
agencies. There was an extended discussion
of federal Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
regulations on how much lobbying tax-ex
empt charities could do. It was agreed that a
larger, statewide meeting to continue the dis
cussion was appropriate, and that a major
issue for some groups would be how IRS
regulations on lobbying might affect their
ability to participate. There was also a discus
sion of the kinds of education programs non-
Continued on page 4
Third gay man found dead in Mississippi
WASHINGTON,DC—Thebodyofathird
gay man was discovered Sunday, December
11 in Mississippi, just two months after the
brutal killings of Robert Walters and Joseph
Shoemake in Laurel. The body of Stanley
King was discovered near a vacant house in
Indianola, MS, approximately 100 miles north
of Laurel. Within hours of the discovery, the
Sunflower County Sheriff’s Department ar
rested Remus Terrell Wilson, 17, on charges
of armed robbery and murder.
The circumstances of the case are strik
ingly similar to those of the Walters and
Shoemake murders. Wilson, an African-
American youth, has confessed to the crime
and has used the explanation that the victim
tried to rape him as justification for the mur
der.
In a letter sent to Attorney General Janet
Reno, the National Gay and Lesbian Task
Force (NGLTF) Executive Director Melinda
Paras updated the Department of Justice (DO J)
on the latest killing and reiterated NGLTF’s
ongoing request for a separate DOJ investiga
tion.
“From our point of view,” said Paras, “there
is more going on in Mississippi than meets the
eye.
Paras said that she is “greatly distressed”
by the developing pattern of deaths in Missis
sippi and finds it “difficult to imagine that this
is merely a coincidence.”
In a November 30 response to previous
NGLTF requests for DOJ intervention in
Mississippi, Assistant Attorney General Deval
Patrick wrote that while the DOJ continued to
monitor developments related to the murders
in Jones County, federal intervention was not
possible on the basis of sexual orientation.
“As you know,” Patrick wrote, “there are
no federal laws providing criminal civil rights
protections on the basis of sexual orientation,
thus we would not be able to respond on that
basis. However, in the event the investigation
indicates that existing federal laws might have
been violated, we will take appropriate ac
tion.”
In her response. Paras said, “NGLTF en
courages the DOJ to find other grounds for
federal intervention. What is important is that
gay men are dying and it is time to go in.”
Patrick also acknowledged a NGLTF re
quest for a DOJ task force to investigate the
rise in hate crimes across the nation. He
called the suggestion a “good one” and pledged
to explore the creation of such a commission.
• Lesbian and gay activiists in Biloxi, MS
have since said that they were contacted by
local FBI agents and, as a result, have been
granted Biloxi police at the G/L Friendly
community center. They had previously re
ported receiving death threats and harassment
due to their continued monitoring of the double
niurder case in Jones County.
On Tuesday, December 20, Jones County
Circuit Judge Billy Landrum heard arguments
in a pretrial hearing in the case of Marvin
McClendon, the 16-year-old African-Ameri
can arrested for the double murders of Robert
Walters and Joseph Shoemake. The county
district attorney argued that the sexual orien
tation of the victims and the results of post
mortem HIV tests should not be admitted as
evidence in the January 30 murder trial.
Landrum shocked activists in November when
he agreed to a motion by the defense attorney
to conduct HIV tests on the frozen blood of
the victims and to consider the use of those
results in court.
In the pretrial hearing, Landrum said he
Continued on page 4
Gayzing ahead
by Bob Roehr
Special to Q-Notes
The old lavender crystal ball saw things
pretty clearly last year, a lot on target and not
too many screw ups. After a bit of Windex on
a soft rag, this is what we saw for 1995.
Congress
The new Republican majority will be too
busy with their “Contract with America” for
the first six months to pay much heed to
lesbians and gays. Call it benign neglect.
That will change in late summer and fall as
appropriations bills move forward. Newt
Gingrich and the leadership will allow “no
promo homo” amendments to be attached to
a few pieces of legislation so that both pro and
anti-gay sides can have recorded votes for
their Congressional ratings.
None of our “friends” in the Senate will
fall on their swords by filibustering to stop
anti-gay legislation. The number of such
provisions and their impact won’t be signifi
cantly different from past years.
Gay and lesbian activists will attempt to
“out” newly powerful Republican members
of Congress, with minimal success. There
will be circumstantial evidence but no “smok
ing gun.” Gingrich will say it doesn’t matter
to him whether or not the member is gay.
AIDS
Research: A theory of endogenous
retrovims as a significant cofactor in the pro
gression of HIV disease to AIDS will become
a hot topic of discussion. It will open up new
lines of research whose impact will be years
in coming.
Clinical trials of protease inhibitors, the
next family of HIV anti-virals, will continue
to show promise. Access through trials will
be expanded but don’t look for Food and Drug
Administration approval for over the counter
use this year.
AIDS Czar: Patsy Fleming will continue
to have the personal respect of AIDS activists.
But the office is now seen as increasingly
irrelevant by most activists because Bill
Clinton is unwilling to provide leadership on
the issue.
Funding: Liberal allies who delivered in
creased AIDS dollars in 1994 warned not to
expect further incre^es this year because of
the cap on spending imposed by deficit reduc
tion. And that was before the Republican
landslide changed control of Congress.
Most AIDS money comes through the
Ryan White CARE Act whose five year man
date is about to expire. It had strong biparti
san support in the past and may breeze through
again. Much more likely is tough wrangling
over sexually explicit materials and revamp
ing the formula on how money is distributed.
Those fights won’t necessarily be partisan in
nature.
A long shot scenario, though one that has
grown in the last few weeks, is that Ryan
White will simply disappear. AIDS and other
earmarked funding would be folded into larger
health block grants to states and localities
with fewer strings and oversights attached.
That would shift the fight for deciding re
source allocation from Capitol Hill to fifty
state houses.
Gays in the military
Joe Steffan will decide not to appeal his
case to the Supreme Court thus seemingly
ending the legal maneuvering over the “old”
ban on gays in the military.
Keith Meinhold is still in the Navy, having
won his case in court imder the “old” regula
tions. The brass will now try to go after him
Continued on page 11