Dear Editor:

I must once again take exception to your adolescent attitude expressed in your editorial regarding safe sex in our community bathhouses. Your mockery of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors was worthy of a 13 year old pimple faced rebel. I believe as community leaders, you and the editorial board continue to fail the community.

Agreed, making laws against unsafe sex is ridiculous. Agreed, it is an individual’s constitutional right to put themselves at risk for HIV. But why must this community continue to condone such behavior almost to the point of deifying some of those who have died of a preventable disease? Yes, you should expect the staff of a bathhouse to make random condom checks. Is it not your expectation that the staff not allow “shooting up” in the orgy room? It is unfortunate that long ago, gay activists, representatives and media did not expect or at least advocate the strict guidelines in the L.A. Board of Supervisor’s new regulations.

“Government has no right to dictate how two consenting adults have sex…” you wrote, yet this is the same government you expect to provide expensive healthcare and costly medications for the same adults consenting to HIV infection. And then on behalf of those adults, professional fundraisers will ask me for money, community organizations will ask me for time, James suffering from lypodystrophy will ask me for compassion, and you will ask what I did for World A.I.D.S. Day.

I have spoken with you for a year now discussing the responsibility of gay media regarding unsafe sex in the community. I have never represented myself as anyone other then a community member, and I have never represented myself as a reporter working for any publication. I have said I am working on a free-lance piece regarding the 2200 Club and what I believe to be surrounding issues of hypocrisy amongst business owners, city officials, community “activists” and the media.

The horrendous conditions of the former Mustang Club have been well documented. However, along with serious management problems, the club had only one working sink, no working urinals, and a spicket used for attaching a douche hose next to one of the only two working toilets. F Street Corporation was responsible for the pluming spending $19,000 to repair a systemic problem the contributed to the overall unhealthy and irresponsible atmosphere. I believe there are some relevant questions: Is Alma Vasic responsible for her property and should she have acted years ago when her business property first became tweeker heaven? Is it appropriate for a City Commissioner or the Chairman of the Chief’s Advisory Board, a gay or Latino activist whose opinion is sought after by “school board members to mayors, governors to presidents,” to continue to promote Ms. Vasic as a responsible A.I.D.S. aware and A.I.D.S. concerned adult business owner? (Insert nearly hysterical Ramirez Murray here.)

“We’ll be damned if anyone is going to tell us how to have sex!!!” “You’ll” be damned either way…

Kevin McCarthy

Dear Editor:

I was offended by the tone of Nicoles most recent column. I think it is time for GLBT to reconsider giving this blohard a pulpit to preach her hatred and selfaggrandizing dribble about who the bitch has had lunch with recently and how important she is(at least in her own admitted over large healthy ego)

I used to advertise in GLBT but do not any longer because to do so only supports giving Nicole a page to write on. I am offended that Nicole calls any of us who disagree or dare to write to the editor idiots.

Nicoles column is called “Conversations...”. Well a conversation is usually two sided or more, but Nicole seems to think that a conversation should only include her words with no dissent. Any of us common folks who are not Activists with 35 years of experience do not have her column to write in so we send letters to the editor when we disagree which it is our right to do in America.

Nicole should take her own advice, if she does not like the letters to the editor then she does not have to read them, but to try to stomp out any dissent and define any disagreeing opinions as stupid and written by idiots is over the top even for Nicole.

Also professionally speaking I would implore readers not to use Nicoles column as toilet paper, I am too busy with my practice to have to care for the reactions I would expect to mens backsides if they were to come in close contact with Nicoles column. A more appropriate use would be to line the bottom of a bird cage.

I would think that instead of forming a support group for those who dare to disagree with Nicole and have the guts to say so, all of we who disagree with Nicole should just unite and inform the publisher and advertisers of this paper that we will not support them if they support Nicole.

Nicole of course has the right to print whatever opinions she chooses,(I for one hunger to know who she lunches with so I can inflate my opinion of how important she thinks she is) but that does not make it Right to try to silence dissent or disagreeing opinions any more than it is right to blow up trailors in Arizona.

I will continue to read the GLBT and continue to write when I disagree with Nicole. We are a diverse and proud community and thankfully have the right to disagree and speak our beliefs, and in fairness I expect that Nicole’s activism years ago helped to secure us this right, but she has become so selfabsorbed and worn out from patting herself on the back that she has forgotten that we are in America and have freedom of speech and opinion.

Dennis E Mayer M.D.

Dear Editor:

Well I do not hook up online a great deal but am often dismayed by reading the various profiles knowing full well that a lot of the guys who are posting are doing so with disclosing their status but still wanting to have bareback sex. I am very up front about my status and have been for the last 15 years of being positive. I was lied to back then and had unprotected sex with a man whom I later learned was well aware of his status. So yes I was angry with him for his betrayal but also upset with myself for not doing what I should have done to protect myself. So who is responsible? I feel we are all responsible for our own actions and the best advice I can give to anyone who is wanting to have sex with someone who they do not know is to just go with the assumption that everyone is positive that is the only way I know of to be sure you are safe. But that still leaves the guys who insist on having it bare no matter what may happen but that is yet another story for another editorial.

Ron Mosher