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Health Project continued firom page 13 which were incorporated into the final form. To obtain a copy of the survey, contact the Health Project at the address or phone number given above. One Health Project member who completed the survey said, “It is clear, easy to fill out, and asks good, non threatening questions. It took about ten minutes." Community Education The Health Project can also offer various public discussions and workshops as part of its community outreach, on subjects relating to gay and lesbian health, both physical and mental. Many presentations focus on AIDS and related topics, and often include personal testimony by North Carolina people with AIDS. The health survey has also been a topic of presentation. Any group interested in more information on these presentations should contact the Health Project at the address or number given above. Most presentations are given free of charge, although a contribution to the project would also be appreciated. AlDa Support {Network When a person is diagnosed as having AIDS, he enters into a tangle of medical, legal, financial, and emotional problems, at a time when he is weakened both physically and mentally. Because of his disease, he may be deserted by his family, lover, and friends. To meet this crisis, the Health Project formed the AIDS Support Network. The purpose of the Network is to provide legal counselling, social service advocacy, limited financial assistance, and most important the companionship, assistance, and emotional support to continue day-to-day living. The Project initially faced the problem of reaching people who could use the Network’s support, without violating their privacy. Last August, they obtained the assistance of Dr. John Parsons, of the North Carolina Communicable Disease Branch, whose office maintains a confidential list of North Carolina residents with AIDS and AID-related conditions. The Health Project prepared a brochure, which Parsons then mailed to the people on his list. He has agreed to mail the brochure when cases are diagnosed in the future. Since May, the Network has worked with six people with AIDS, who have died in Triangle-area hospitals. All have been from North Carolina: Durham, Charlotte, Winston-Salem, Asheville, Newton Grove. Services have ranged from drafting wills and covering late Social Security checks to cutting hair and giving massages — the kinds of contact that mean so much at this time. When an out of town person is in a hospital, the Network makes sure that he has at least one visitor every day. The Network has abo worked with the families and lovers of people with AIDS. One man moved last November from San Francisco to the Triangle, where he could have good health care and still be in the same general area as his family. When he was discharged from the hospital, the Network found-an apartment for him, so he could live independently for at least a short time. When he had to re-enter the hospital, his family used the apartment while staying in the area to visit him. He died last May. One great service is to provide companionship to each man, up to the very end. A volunteer who has been with several of the men when they died talks of this as the most difficult and most rewarding aspect of the Network. It is also, he says, hard to find volunteers to do this: “Not many people are willing to be there when someone dies, or even to become close to someone who they know will die soon.” Nevertheless, he says, he does it because it obviously means so much to the men. In the case of the man who committed suicide, the Network was not notified in time to be of help. Instead, a Network member took it on himself to meet with the hospital officials to ask about their plans to avert similar tragedies in the future. The doctors, nurses, and administrators of the hospital’s infectious disease center acknowledged the seriousness of the problem and began plans to start an organized support team in the hospital. The team will probably involve staff social workers and psychologists, and will function like a crisis intervention team. The Network volunteer also indicated that he would try to make hospital officials familiar with the hospice concept, to show them how they can provide an environment in which a terminally ill person can die with independence and dignity. Anyone from the Triangle area wishing to volunteer for the AIDS Support Network should contact the Health Project at the address or number given above. The Project is also eager to hear from people in other areas who would like advice and support in starting a similar network. Funding So far, the Health Project has been funded mainly by grants from the Chicago Resources Center and Funds for Southern Communities. It has also done some informal fund-raising among Triangle-area businesses, which encouraging results. This coming spring, the Project will conduct more general fund raising drives, and hopes to receive support from the gay and lesbian community as a whole. • Sunday, November 18 Thanksgiving Dinner Members onlyTstarting af4pm Friday, November 23 Hesley Ross, Dee Dee Price I008 B. VtikuwH Aue (behind Hatley Vavidmi Motottudet) Gteetwille. H C oMetropolitan Community" Churtti gf Qreenville. Soutli CaroliT\a For information, call or write LeRoy D. Lawhorn fcV (803) 233-3527 *1 Those that be planted in the house of the LORD flourish in the courts of our God, vigorous in old age like trees full of sap, luxuriant and wide-spreading. Psalm 92 13.14. P.O. BOX 6322 GREENVILLE, S.C. 29606 SUNDAY WORSHIP: 7PM 213 MCDONALD STREET (JUSJ OFF N., MAIN STREET) Press Clippings % continued from page 14 pity: one really good joke could have convinced us it’s worth having our individual dignity reduced to stereotypes for the amusement of straights. Instead, Buckley pontificates solemnly: “The homosexual problem (it is certainly that, a problem) needs concentrated attention, bearing in mind the requirements of charity. But bearing in mind also the call of humor, which is the greatest balm of all, and an indispensable cathartic.” The column brought forth a letter from Bill Whitesides to the Gastonia Gazette (9-27). (Thank you, Bill, for keeping us posted on the continuing homophobia of the Gazette And its editor, Bill Williams.) Whitesides focusses on Buckley’s misconception about the “problem” and its “charitable” solution: “Mr. Buckley repeatedly refers to the ‘gay problem* and says he feels they should be dealt with in a charitable way. The only ‘problem’ with gays exists in the minds of those who refuse to examine anything they do not understand. Bigotry hides all truth, Mr. Buckley. As for dealing with gays through charity, I have yet to hear one gay perons ask or desire any. They do not seek special privileges, just the same ones that you and I possess: the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of their own natural lifestyles.” What puzzle me is Buckley’s avowed need for humor as “an indispensable cathartic.” Being rather pompous, Buckley probably mean “cathartic” in the Aristotelian sense of “purging pity and terror.” Being capable of even greater pomposity (I went to Yale, too), I prefer to take “cathartic” in its original meaning: “a medicine that causes evacuation of the bowels," i.e., a laxative. In short, Mr. B, if you need fag jokes as a cathartic, it’s only because you’re so full of shit. Fractious Facts In case any of you in the Winston-Salem area need something to write angry letters about, I direct your attention to page A-19 of the November 4 issue of the Winston-Salem Journal. (Thanks to Harold D. of W-S for sending it to us.) There you will find a half-page ad headlined “Is It Right For Our Government To Force Homosexuals Into All Areas Of Our Public And Private Lives?” No group takes credit for the ad, which claims that is “not endorsed or paid for by any candidate.” Nevertheless, it quotes from the Democratic platform plank on gays, and comes out against Mondale, Hunt and, Steve Neal, and for Reagan, Helms, and Stu Epperson. (Epperson was the Republican who unsuccessfully ran for Neal's House seat.) The usual biblical quotations are scattered about the ad, as are various “Is it right?” questions: “Is it right to force them into every branch of our armed forces where there is virtually no privacy in shower and toilet facilities?” We're talking rights and dignity, and they’re talking toilets. “Is it right for the government to force these sodomites into our public and private schools, churches, boy scout and girl scout camps, restaurants and other food handling services, and any place else they choose to work or recruit victims?” How about putting the gay men in the girl scout camps, and the lesbians in the boy scout camps? No more danger of child molestation (either homo or hetero), and the girls would learn cooking and cleaning, and the boys would learn to be butch. The true heart of the ad is a list of “facts” about homosexuality. These “facts” come from the Presidential Biblical Scorecard 1984 — the rag in which Reagan stated that he could not condone homosexuality because it threatened the family. The “facts” begin with statistics about sexually transmitted diseases, with an emphasis on AIDS, especially on the cost to taxpayers. Then we get the “facts” about gay sexual practices: “• 22% engage in handballing or ‘fisting’.” [Do straights really know what this means? The nasty things!] “• 23% engage in ‘golden showers’.” [Ditto!] “• 37% engage in sadomasochism.” And the real gem: “• By 19, most gays admit to oral/ anal sex (‘rimming*); by age 30,89% admit to it.” [“Admit to”?!? Just think — at 19, an “avowed rimmcr”!] Remember, these “facts” came from the Presidential Biblical Scorecard, the publication in which our recently re-elected President chose to make his public statement about homosexuality. I'm sure that, in the next few weeks, he will announce his foreign policy plans in an equally creditable place — like DC Comics. The Winston-Salem Journal printed this ad only under protest. The front page of the November 4 issue contained a “Publisher’s Note”: “We think many readers will find the advertisement on Page A19 to be both tasteless and vulgar.... The advertisement runs only because we find playing the role of censor more repugnant than the ad.” Noble sentiments, but misdirected. The publisher assumes that people will find the ad “tasteless” — not because it uses vicious lies to attack a minority, but because it uses naughty words. Au contraire. It’s the thoughts, not the language, that make the ad “tasteless and vulgar.” A publication can use .words like “rimming” and still be in good taste. Witness The Front Page, which always tastes good. • — Michael Schwartz St. John's METROPOLITAN Community Church The Reverend June Norris, Pastor ■ 814 Dixie Trail, Raleigh Sunday Worship 2:45 pm ■ 7:15 pm June, July and August Mid-Week Worship Service, 7:15 pm on Wednesdays ■ Phone: 834-2611 ■ Non-religious rap: 8:00 pm, Thursdays Sunday services interpreted for the hearing impaired. ■
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