BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) – A court-appointed monitor warns that erratic treatment of HIV-positive inmates in an Alabama prison could develop into treatment-resistant AIDS.

A new report by Dr. Joseph Bick issued that warning. It came a year after the state Department of Corrections agreed to improve medical treatment for the HIV-positive prisoners.

Bick documented four types of “sub-optimal” HIV treatment at Limestone Correctional Facility, where more than 200 HIV-positive inmates are housed.

A California expert in prison medicine, Bick was appointed by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Ott to visit Limestone four times a year and evaluate whether the state and its medical contractor provided dozens of improvements required in a lawsuit settlement.

Although state officials promised in the settlement last year to hire an HIV specialist for the men, there has not been one during much of the year, leading to erratic treatment.

“The lack of an HIV specialist continues to negatively impact upon the health of this inmate population,” Bick wrote after a prison inspection in May.

Bick’s conclusions, submitted to the federal court July 7, were reported by The Birmingham News.

HIV specialist Dr. Nancy Garcia of the Medical College of Georgia began work at the prison a little more than a month after Bick’s visit.

Tennessee-based Prison Health Services, the private company that oversees care in Alabama prisons, says many of the problems Bick found were related to that position being vacant.

“It’s difficult to recruit a highly qualified HIV specialist, especially to a rural area,” the company said in a statement.

Two specialists PHS previously hired left the job within weeks or months.

Bick warned that the mistakes in previous care could have irreversibly harmed patients.

During his weeklong visit in late May, Bick found: substitute doctors who mixed drugs that were not supposed to be used together; patients with rising viral loads who had not been seen for treatment changes or whose failing regimens were changed only one drug at a time; and doctors who made treatment changes without telling the patient.

An HIV/AIDS expert at the University of Alabama at Birmingham said Bick’s concerns “sounded right on target.” Dr. Michael Saag, a professor of medicine at UAB and director of its AIDS center, called the mixing of the medicines “a bad mistake.”

The goal of therapy is to reduce the virus to undetectable levels because viral growth during drug treatment breeds drug-resistant virus. “From a clinical perspective, any detectable virus present while a patient is taking an anti-HIV regimen will certainly lead to resistance over time,” Saag said.

The speed at which resistance could develop ranges from a few days to much longer. “The consequences of developing resistant virus for the patients is limitation of future treatment options,” he said.

State prison officials declined to comment on the report, saying it was supposed to have been sealed at their request. The report was posted on a federal court Web site. Only sections revealing inmates’ names and conditions were sealed.

Bick’s reports have noted some improvements but he has continued to focus on the inability of keeping doctors and of keeping critical positions filled.

“Due to the fragile nature of this medical program, I recommend that every effort be made to retain physicians once they are hired,” Bick wrote in the new report.

Besides the HIV population, Limestone houses 1,800 other prisoners and has one physician and one nurse practitioner to provide their care as well as care for 135 work-release prisoners in Decatur. Bick called this “by all measures … inadequate” and recommended three full-time physicians.

PHS has hired several doctors over the last year, including HIV specialists, who have not stayed long. The company also said that negative press coverage has frustrated its efforts to hire a specialist.

Bick has commended PHS for significant improvements over the course of the year, including better medical record-keeping, timely attention to inmate grievances and improved nursing staffing. Prisoners are not sharing medicines, nor are they providing medical care to each other, things that occurred before the lawsuit was settled.

“The latest Bick report clearly indicates great progress has been made in delivering quality care to our patients. The noncompliance findings have dropped from 27 to 18.5 [a 30-percent improvement],” the PHS statement said.

ATLANTA (AP) – The billboard shows five casually dressed men and women standing arm-in-arm, along with a simple message: “We are your neighbors. And … we are gay.”

The sign, posted on a stretch of nightclubs and restaurants in midtown Atlanta, is part of the first wave of a statewide campaign that Georgia’s largest gay and lesbian group hopes will change attitudes throughout the state.

“For so long, extremists have used gays and lesbians as a means to further their own agendas,” said Chuck Bowen, executive director of Georgia Equality. “The purpose of this campaign is to let people know we’re no different than anybody else.”

The group’s “We Are Your Neighbors” campaign is an 18-month effort that comes on the heels of what gay activists call a bruising year in politics.

Last year, several states, including Georgia, passed same-sex marriage bans, and many believe homosexuality was used as a divisive wedge issue in the presidential campaign.

“We’re tired of being chased,” Bowen said. “We constantly had to react to very negative, erroneous misrepresentations of us. Now, we’re trying to send a positive signal to let people know who we really are.”

The campaign began with 12 billboards in metro Atlanta’s Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Forsyth, Fulton, Gwinnett and Paulding counties.

The billboards first went up three weeks ago with just the images but the “we are gay” messages were added last week. According to official traffic counts, more than 8 million people will see the billboards during July.

A second wave of billboards is expected to go up in October in suburban and rural communities throughout the state. Bowen said many of the locations were picked using polling data from last year’s election that showed low levels of support for GLBT issues.

Over 18 months, billboards are planned in 38 of Georgia’s 159 counties. The campaign, funded by private donations, also will feature television and print advertisements.

Other billboards feature a firefighter with the phrase “I protect you … and I am gay” and a female doctor with the phrase, “I care for you … and I am a lesbian.”

Bowen said the people featured on the first wave of billboards are from out of the state, but that future signs will picture residents of the communities where the signs are placed.

Members of some conservative groups who pushed last year’s amendment barring same-sex marriage in Georgia see the campaign as a political ploy.

“I think it’s just one more step in their agenda to try to mainstream their lifestyle,” said Sadie Fields, executive director of the Christian Coalition of Georgia. “I’m certainly not going to question their stated motives, but I don’t expect their political agenda to stop.”

But supporters say the campaign is more about winning friends than winning votes.

“It’s just about people,” said David Greenberg, a spokesperson for the campaign. “The more people get to know gay people, they realize that we really are just people with similar issues just wanting to have a happy life like everyone else.”

AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) – Supporters and opponents of a new state law outlawing discrimination against gays and lesbians have raised more than $200,000 between them in preparation for an anticipated referendum in November on whether to repeal the law.

Backers of the repeal effort have thus far raised more money, but supporters of the law have more cash on hand.

The Christian Civic League of Maine and the Maine Grassroots Coalition have raised $117,826 through political action committees and all but $3,800 has already been spent.

Maine Won’t Discriminate and Equality Maine reported $83,071 in combined contributions and still have more than $32,000 in the bank.

Jesse Connolly of Maine Won’t Discriminate said his camp hopes to amass “millions” of dollars for the campaign; Michael Heath of the Christian Civic League has said his side probably will spend less than $500,000.

Opponents of the gay rights law have mounted a “people’s veto” campaign that would send the measure to referendum. Heath’s group said it collected more than enough signatures to force the vote, but the state has yet to certify the petitions.

Douglas Sukeforth of China was the biggest contributor to the repeal supporters, giving a total of $47,000 to the two PACs.

Sukeforth, the former owner of Mid-State Machine Products in Winslow, said he believes upholding the gay-rights law would pave the way for legalizing same-sex marriage, which he opposes.

Supporters of the law insist there is no link between gay rights and marriage rights.

The biggest contributor to the Maine Won’t Discriminate PAC was the Human Rights Campaign of Washington, D.C., which donated $22,250. Other large donors included Karen Stray-Gunderson of South Portland, Lyndell Wishcamper of Freeport and Jane Begert of Cape Elizabeth, each of whom gave $5,000.

KALAMAZOO, Mich. (AP) – A Bangor attorney has, for now, dropped her federal lawsuit that sought to strike down Michigan’s constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

Michigan voters approved the amendment with November’s passage of Proposal 2.

Jessie Olson filed the suit June 8 in U.S. District Court in Kalamazoo and listed herself and her life partner, Tabitha A. Flatau, as co-plaintiffs. They claimed the amendment to the state constitution violates the equal-protection clause of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

Olson filed a notice of voluntary dismissal June 20, according to court documents. She said she would reopen the lawsuit if the American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan loses a similar suit it filed in state court in March.

A federal court rule allows cases to be reopened without prejudice after being dismissed one time, she said.

The decision to drop the suit was made after talking and working with Michigan ACLU officials, Olson said.

The lawsuit said the amendment to the state constitution is stripping away job benefits such as health insurance from homosexual and unmarried heterosexual domestic partners, and their children.

Going into the election, opponents of Proposal 2 said they worried about its possible effect on domestic partner benefits for unmarried couples.

On March 16, Attorney General Mike Cox said the amendment bars local and state governments, in future labor contracts, from designating gay partners of employees to receive health and retirement benefits also given to spouses. He wrote in an opinion that the city of Kalamazoo’s policy of offering benefits to same-sex partners violates the amendment.

Five days later, the Michigan ACLU challenged Cox’s opinion in a still-pending lawsuit filed in Ingham County Circuit Court. Those bringing that suit include 21 same-sex couples – including Kalamazoo city employees, workers at state universities and employees at various state agencies and departments – and a Washington-based AFL-CIO group, National Pride at Work, that backs gay rights.

CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) – A new political group, called The White Peoples Party, whose goal is to eliminate affirmative action and other government programs that help minorities, is trying to form in Nevada.

The organization has filed with the secretary of state’s office as the first step for qualifying to have candidates on the 2006 ballot.

Republican and Democratic parties “pander to the minorities,” says Michael O’Sullivan, head of the party that won’t allow Jews or minorities to join. He anticipates a lot of criticism, but said politicians have been catering to blacks, Hispanics, gays and other minority groups.

Allen Lichtenstein, counsel to the ACLU of Nevada, said there’s nothing illegal about creating the political party – but federal and state law prohibit it from keeping out minorities and Jews.

“It is not going to fly,” said Lichtenstein. “It [the political party] has to be open to all qualified voters.”

To qualify as a political party, the organization must gather 7,914 signatures or 1 percent of the number of people who voted in the three congressional districts in the 2004 election. The signatures must be submitted by Aug. 11, 2006.

Directors of The White Peoples Party include O’Sullivan as chair, Duane Vick as secretary and David Thomson as treasurer. All are from Las Vegas.

O’Sullivan is a member of the Las Vegas chapter of the National Alliance, a white separatist group that paid to have a “Stop Immigration” billboard put up in Las Vegas earlier this year.

Lichtenstein said if O’Sullivan and his group want to help the white race, “it should help the state and citizens create a multi-ethnic society and leave bigotry in the past where it belongs.”

But Lichtenstein also said he would defend the right of the party to operate – providing it doesn’t discriminate against non-whites and Jews as party members.

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – The Oregon National Guard would be allowed to resume advertising in the magazine of the Oregon State Bar Association, despite the military’s position on gays, lesbians and bisexual service members, under a recommendation made by a bar advisory committee.

Such advertising was temporarily banned by the bar board in April, after concerns about conflicts with the bar magazine’s policy that prohibits its advertisers from employment discrimination.

The policy requires employers buying employment ads not to discriminate in hiring on the basis of race, color, religion, age, sex, military status, national origin, handicap, family status or sexual orientation.

Now, committee members are recommending that the bar, which licenses and regulates Oregon lawyers, add a sentence exempting the military from its nondiscrimination policy.

The military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, created in 1993 under the Clinton administration, prohibits the questioning of soldiers about their sexual orientation and requires the discharge of soldiers who acknowledge being gay or engaging in homosexual activity.

The bar bulletin has published ads from the Guard once or twice a year for the past five years at a cost of $30 each, said Paul Nickell, the bulletin’s editor.

Nickell said bar members were conflicted about the issue, balancing the value of inclusiveness on one hand and the right to advertise, or speak one’s mind, on the other, he said.

The full 16-member board will vote on the recommendation at its next meeting Aug. 19 in Klamath Falls.

Maj. Mark Ronning, Oregon’s full-time Guard judge advocate, said he was “all in favor” of the vote and eager to resume ads in the bar bulletin.

During the hearing, Ronning testified that a bar ban on military advertising would greatly reduce the ability of soldiers to receive legal defense in trials and help with other legal matters.

The military, which he said is “filled with gays,” does not take a stand on the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, which “Congress imposed on us.”

GREENVILLE, S.C. (AP) – A Spartanburg County man has been sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to knowingly exposing others to the virus that causes AIDS.

Michael Sullivan pleaded guilty to exposing two people he met on the Internet to HIV.

Sullivan learned he had HIV in 1995. Sullivan had relations with two partners over a three-year period ending last summer. He eventually told both people about his status.

Sullivan’s sentence requires him to serve three years probation after completing jail time. He is also barred from using the Internet during his sentence, except for work.

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) – The state Supreme Court has granted a fast-track review of the effort to recall Spokane Mayor James West, who is embroiled in a sex scandal but has refused to resign.

The decision by the Olympia-based panel is considered a victory for recall proponents, who hope to put the measure before voters as soon as November.

The court unanimously decided that West should file briefs opposing the recall no later than July 28, and recall supporters should file motions and briefs no later than Aug. 5, with a reply from West due by Aug. 15.

No date for oral arguments was set.

In late June, a Superior Court judge ruled that a recall effort – which contends West used his public office to improperly offer internships to young men for his own personal gain – could proceed.

West appealed to the high court, and recall leader Shannon Sullivan then asked the Supreme Court for an accelerated review.

Recall proponents would need to gather 12,600 valid signatures from city residents to get the proposal on the ballot, and West’s lawyers have said they doubt that could occur in time for the Nov. 8 general election.

“As attorneys for Mayor West, we’re pleased that the appeal has been expedited in a manner that permits both adequate time for comprehensive legal briefing and oral argument to the court,” lawyers Bill Etter and Carl Oreskovich said in a statement.

Sullivan, an unemployed Spokane mother, also praised the decision.

“I’m pleased that the wheels of justice are turning,” she said.

She began the recall campaign after The Spokesman-Review newspaper on May 5 began publishing articles alleging West used his e-mail to offer an internship to someone he thought was a teenager in a gay online chat room.

The newspaper also published allegations West sexually harassed a young man who had been appointed to the city’s Human Rights Commission and that he sexually molested two boys in the 1970s.

West has denied molesting boys but acknowledged having relations with adult males. He denied impropriety in the city’s intern program. West has not been charged with any crime.

A former Republican leader of the state Senate, West is also the subject of an FBI public corruption inquiry.

West has ignored calls for his resignation from the City Council, area business groups and the state Republican Party, leaving recall the only option for removing him from office before his term expires in two years.

Sullivan contends that failure to schedule the election this year would cause public relations and financial hardships for Spokane. West’s lawyers said the city faces no such crisis.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) – The American Civil Liberties Union and the state’s attorney general are making similar legal arguments in asking a judge to turn down the Legislature’s request to intervene in a major gay rights case.

They are on different sides of the dispute, but both agree the Legislature has no legal grounds to fight the lawsuit aimed at getting the state to pay for health care benefits for the partners of gay and lesbian state employees.

Republican lawmakers have hired the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian advocacy group that fights gay rights, to represent their interests in the case even though they were not named as defendants in the lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of eight state workers and their partners.

Pending before Dane County Circuit Judge David Flanagan is the Alliance Defense Fund’s request to intervene on behalf of the Legislature, which argues the debate is one for lawmakers to decide, not the courts.

Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager and the Wisconsin Department of Justice are defending the state against the lawsuit, which claims the state’s refusal to offer the benefits violates the Wisconsin Constitution’s equal protection clause.

Because gay and lesbian state workers cannot get married like their straight colleagues, the benefits policy discriminates against them, the lawsuit claims.

In separate legal briefs, Lautenschlager and the ACLU used similar arguments in urging Flanagan to keep lawmakers out of the case. Flanagan set an Aug. 11 hearing on the matter. The lawsuit was filed against the state agencies that employ the workers and another department that runs the state’s benefits program.

Both sides said the dispute is not about the Legislature’s ability to set social policy and make budgets, as Republicans contend, but rather is a constitutional question best decided by the courts. They said lawmakers’ claims that providing the benefits would be costly are exaggerated, and Lautenschlager can be trusted to defend the state’s interests even though she supports domestic partner benefits.

Allowing the Legislature to intervene also would delay the case and allow other groups to join, including a coalition of local governments that announced plans to try to intervene out of concern about the potential costs of providing benefits, they argued.

Glen Lavy, a lawyer for the Alliance Defense Fund, said the agreement between ACLU and Lautenschlager lends support to conservatives’ view that the Democratic attorney general cannot be trusted to defend the state.

“She is on the same side as the ACLU ultimately,” he said in a telephone interview from Scottsdale, Ariz.

Lautenschlager, in her brief, called such claims “at best highly speculative conjecture, at worst an irresponsible allegation. … Regardless of what her personal opinion might be, her interest is in fulfilling the duties of her office, which includes defending the constitutionality of statutes,” she wrote.

The gay rights battle has roiled Wisconsin politics ever since Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle proposed in February spending $1 million over two years to allow the University of Wisconsin System to provide such benefits to gay and lesbian workers.

UW schools say they are losing key administrators and professors over the policy, and UW-Madison is the only school in the Big Ten conference not to offer the benefits.

The Legislature’s budget committee rejected the plan, with key GOP lawmakers saying they could not offer additional benefits at a time when the state faced major spending cuts.

The ACLU quickly filed its lawsuit, which seeks health insurance for domestic partners of gay state employees, access to family leave so they can care for a sick partner, and the ability to convert sick leave credits to pay for a partner’s health insurance upon leaving state employment.

Gay rights supporters say the costs would be minimal and a convenient excuse for anti-gay legislators.

Alliance Defense Fund’s Lavy acknowledged his group wanted to get involved because it believes recognizing domestic partnerships undermines traditional marriage and is an incremental step toward legalizing same-sex marriage.

The issue is likely to come up in the 2006 races for governor and attorney general. Both candidates for the Republican gubernatorial nomination have tried to tie Doyle to the ACLU, and ads aired by a conservative group suggested the governor wanted to raise hunting and fishing fees to pay for gay and lesbian benefits.

A constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between a man and a woman also may appear on the November 2006 ballot if both houses of the Legislature approve it one more time.