Subject: AID$ Czarina Zapped
From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 22 Mar 1996 13:12:34 -0500

AMERICANS FOR GAY RIGHTS
For Immediate Release                        Contact: Michael Petrelis
March 22, 1996                                        Ph. #: (415) 621-6267
                                              email address:
[email-masked]

          ACTIVIST ARRESTED FOR ZAPPING AID$ CZARINA;
 S.F. AID$ CONFAB = AID$ BUSINESS AS USUAL, CHARGE CRITICS

San Francisco--A member of the non-partisan advocacy group Americans for Gay
Rights was arrested yesterday for disrupting a speech by Patsy Fleming,
President Bill Clinton's coordinator for AIDS policies, during the 8th Annual
AIDS Update Conference, which concludes today.
    AIDS activist Michael Petrelis was arrested for "disturbing the peace"
 and "trespassing" by  S.F. police officers after he had spent ninety minutes
interrupting speeches by Fleming and other AIDS bureaucrats. The primary
issue Petrelis was demanding Fleming address was use of the Reality Female
Condom by gay men during anal sex. Currently, the device is not approved by
the Food & Drug Administration for gay male use, even though Reality, a
polyurethane pouch, has been shown in the past six years to be a more
effective barrier at halting HIV transmission than latex penile condoms.
    "I have tried the proper channels of communication to reach Fleming in
order to force her to make Clinton aware of the Reality condom. But Fleming
has remained silent about educating gay men about using Reality for safe
sodomy," said Petrelis, after his release from jail. "Fleming may take an
'AIDS business as usual' approach to her job, but for me, we don't have a
moment, or life, to lose when the issue is stopping HIV transmission in the
gay community."
    Fleming came under fire earlier this month when she released a report,
"Youth and HIV/AIDS: An American Agenda," which failed to mention the needs
of at-risk gay youth. Leading the charge calling attention to this omission
was the Los Angeles Gay Community Services Center.  According to the March
14th Bay Area Reporter newspaper, Darrel Cummings, a spokesman for the gay
center, believes "[t]he unfortunate part [of the report] is that the
recommendations that came out of the White House fail to provide any concrete
strategies for dealing with homophobia or with gay and lesbian youth."
    Americans for Gay Rights' most recent accomplishment was forcing Dr.
Mitchell Katz, director of the S.F. AIDS Office, to distribute Reality Female
Condoms to gay men at city health clinics.  Though Katz has not seen fit to
 include education about the proper anal use of the device for gay men, at
minimum, Katz has finally faced up to fact that gay males comprise 86 percent
of AIDS victims in San Francisco, which they contracted primarily through
unsafe anal sex.
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