Dear Editor:

There is no question that I often find myself on the other side of politics in the gay community. In fact, to the gay community’s detriment I think, there is really no alternative voice to the quite liberal views that are so often written and talked about in gay papers and magazines. I find that sad, but when I read that James Hartline was running for office I shed that sadness and rejoiced at the miracle of his cure from AIDS.

For years Hartline has been on a religious crusade to cleanse from the city all things he finds objectionable. I differ with Hartline on the ability to go from gay to ex-gay and in some of the positions he has taken – he must be right about divine intervention. Surely his announcement of his candidacy was also an announcement that he no longer requires his public subsidy to live on because only someone that can work the full-time job of running a political campaign and, if successful, working one of the most stressful jobs at city hall must be free of disability. I took exception on my program over a year ago when Hartline’s religious advocacy was being done at public expense. Apparently that is okay under the law because nobody I contacted said that religious work, no matter the hours, would disqualify someone for disability income. But, now that Hartline is cured I think we should all know when he stopped receiving public assistance. It would only be conjecture on my part, but I assume that Hartline has already indicated to those who pay him that he was cured of AIDS and is able to work full-time. Without question Hartline’s cure is good news (Gospel if you forgive the pun) and people who have AIDS and the taxpayers who so graciously paid the bills for his protests, press releases and self-promotion should know when his ability to work full-time began. I know I’m not a voter in the district, but with news like this – I want to be the first to consider changing my religion. Being a Jew is great, but if AIDS can be cured to the point where someone can work, well, I have a testy spine injury that I’d like some intervention with.

I do wonder one thing. Why was there no press release about this miraculous event? I know I may be ignorant as a Jew about the miracles of Christianity, but you’d think this would be a big deal. Just as big as protesting businesses, bigger than a fight about religious symbols on county seals and certainly bigger than whether or not a store sold naughty things. All important issues, but this is a miracle and I only want to know when the welfare payments stopped because surely someone wanting to control the public purse would not be one to take money from it when he was self-admittedly capable of full-time work before the announcement of his candidacy. Would he?

Steve Yuhas

www.gaylesbiantimes.com/?id=9890

Dear Editor:

For your piece: “AIDS dissidents: blinded by pseudoscience or asking the right questions?”

A fine and unbiased report indeed and as far as I know the first attempt at this story (in an unbiased manner) that I can remember in specifically gay and lesbian news. You are to be commended for your bravery. Please don’t let the stanch supporters of the current prevailing hypothesis get under your skin. They love to support their ridiculous claims with religious like fervor and when confronted resort to ad-hominem attacks and appeals to scientific majoritarianism.

When people start becoming aware by the means of fair and balanced reporting, such as yours, people can make better informed and/or sound decisions regarding their health care, which could very well mean the end of suffering due to the long term (prescribed for a lifetime) use of highly toxic Anti-HIV drugs and cocktails. People do die from them.

Thank you GLT! Please don’t let this issue go away. There is a whole plethora of research, which one can delve into, such as “AIDS AND THE VOODOO HEX,” By Matt Irwin, Feb. 2002

Brian Carter

www.gaylesbiantimes.com/?id=9919

Dear Editor:

I would like to congratulate Pat Sherman on the excellent article on alternative theories of AIDS in your June 7 issue — and your publisher, Michael Portantino, and editor, Russell O’Brien, for having had the guts to print it. It’s a refreshingly balanced piece, and except in the quotes from mainstreamer John Moore it’s blessedly free from the usual insults and ad hominem attacks against those of us who have become convinced by logic, reason and common sense that AIDS is a long-term, multifactorial breakdown of the human immune system and is not caused by HIV or any other single infectious agent. I met with Sherman for an hour and a half while he was researching the piece, and I’m glad he followed the most significant piece of advice I gave him: to interview credentialed scientists on both sides of the controversy instead of making it look as if all the “experts’ are on the HIV=AIDS side of the debate and only a few grass-roots activists without scientific experience or training are on the other.

What’s amazed me as a journalist and activist on this issue for 15 years is the vast gap between the expressed certainty of the mainstream that the evidence for HIV as the cause of AIDS is “overwhelming” and how scanty the evidence actually is. There are plenty of aspects of the HIV/AIDS model that simply don’t make logical or rational sense, including:

Why is a positive test for HIV antibodies presumed to mean that you have an active infection and will get AIDS and die prematurely, when for all other viral diseases antibodies mean immunity?

Why are condoms said to protect against HIV transmission when, in the great herpes scare of the early 1980’s, people were warned that condoms would not protect them against herpes — caused by a virus larger than HIV?

Why are HIV antibody-positive test results in the U.S. equally distributed between men and women, when AIDS diagnoses are 75 percent men and 25 percent women?

Why is AIDS in Africa, whose symptoms, diagnostic criteria and epidemiology are completely different from AIDS in the U.S. and the developed world generally, said to be caused by the same virus and treatable with the same medications?

My one quibble with the article is the quote from Peter Duesberg about why AIDS originally struck in the U.S. among Gay men, particularly those living the “fast-lane lifestyle” of heavy recreational drug use, multiple sex partners, frequent infections with genuine STD’s and antibiotic treatments for them, and other risk factors for immune suppression. Having interviewed Duesberg and talked to him several times on these matters, I think this quote was wrenched way out of context. It’s always astonished me that Duesberg is considered a homophobe for saying only 2 percent of the Gay male population, not all of it, was ever at special risk for AIDS. But this is a minor blemish on an otherwise excellent piece, and I congratulate you for publishing it.

Mark Gabrish Conlan

www.gaylesbiantimes.com/?id=9919

Dear Editor:

As one of the three Gays (I have been out since 1969) who is running (so far) for the 3rd Council seat, I feel your editorial on ex-gay, present homophobic James Hartline, skittishly avoided the real issue.

That this race is going to be an all-out brawl.

With Todd (and the socialites) and Steve (the political wonks) and me (with the working-class stiffs) facing the plodding but decent John Hartley; this self-hating, fool, Heartline, will be the clown to the real issues facing our city.

Today’s politicians have become, for the most part, squabbling creatures of self-interest. They lack vision, have forgotten how to imagine, prisoners of their own mendacity and greed. They pander to despair and fear, thumping the virtues of selfishness and looking out for number one, reducing collective existence to its most banal aspects. And, that’s just the straight ones!

I, for one, expect no one to vote for me or against me because I am Gay. Rather, I would hope that they look at my vision for a better San Diego, study my platform for change, listen to the debates, ponder the future and vote their conscience.

Rocky Neptun

www.gaylesbiantimes.com/?id=9890