Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 6, No. 34, Ed. 1 Friday, December 22, 1989 Page: 3 of 32
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Action Alert
This Week
NEWS...........................................
AIDS Memorial held at City Hall
Plaza; Action request on TDH fund-
ing regulations.
OPINION
Getting rid of the holiday blues —
advice from Sister Dana Van iquity
of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.
CALENDAR
Events scheduled over the next ten
days; AnnouncementsLetters:
Obituaries.
FILM
Apartment Zero' director Martin
Donovan interviewed; Review of
‘Apartment Zero, ’ which opens Dec.
26 at the inwood Theater.
SPORTS 18
A survey of the 1980s in gay and
lesbian sports — a decade of building
and growth.
BOOKS 24
Akbar andJeff — America's favorite
male couple get a book of their own.
GOSSIP 28
'Twas the night before Christmas, and
all hell broke loose!
T A L L A S
VOICE
THE COMMUNITY NEWSPAPER
FOR GAY AND LESBIAN DALLAS
©1989, VOICE PUBLISHING CO.. INC.
521-3230
521-3239
ADVERTISING
EDITORIAL
Robert Moore
Dennis Vercher
ADVERTISING DIRECTOR
EDITOR
Tim Self
Tammye Nash
ACCOUNT EXECUTIVE
EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
John Bode
GRAPHIC ARTIST
Lauren Ramsay
Heda Quote
Jerry Garrett
Lee Lynch
Allen Smalling
Ivor Davis
Steve Tracy
Steve Warren
Cliff 0’Niell
Dell Richards
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS
Gabriel Vangelys
James Crook
PHOTOGRAPHER
CIRCULATION
New York Times Syndication Sales Co., Inc.
SYNDICATION
Don Ritz
CONTROLLER
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DALLAS VOICE
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DALLAS, TX 75219
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safe return.
The Gay Urban Truth Squad sponsored the third annual AIDS
Memorial Wednesday night at City Hall Plaza. More than 150 people
braved the freezing weather to chalk outlines and light candles in
memory of the more than 1,200 AIDS death in Dallas County.
Food supplies up for now,
but TDH act causes worry
OFFICIALS SAY FOOD SHORTAGES INEVITABLE IN SPRING AND SUMMER
By TAMMYE NASH
lients of the AIDS Resource Center’s
Food Pantry are not going to go hungry
at Christmas even though the Texas Depart
ment of Health refused last week to allocate
grant funds to the Resource Center. As a
matter of fact, according to the Center’s Client
Services Manager David Heller, the Food
Pantry is bursting at the seams with donated
food items right now. But the lack of funds
could be a very serious problem in a few
months, he warned.
“We’ll get a ton of food this month. People
are very generous in donating food during
the holidays. But that food will run out, and it
will have to be replaced,” Heller said. "People
have to have food to eat all year 'round. That
doesn’t change from one month to the next.
But we don’t get donations all year ’round.”
AIDS Resource Center Executive Director
John Thomas agreed that “the real effect of
not getting the grant money comes into play
next spring, through the summer and into the
first part of the fall. That’s when donations of
food drop off, and the pantry’s shelves will be
fairly empty. We were asking for that funding
so we could keep the shelves Rill during
those months."
Thomas noted that the effect of the lack of
Rindingwill be “compounded by the fact that
there are a growing number of new cases of
people being diagnosed with AIDS, and the
fact that, thanks to prophylactic treatments
like pentamidine, people who have AIDS are
living longer.”
Heller said that the Food Pantry’s files
include the names of more than 400 PWAs,
and that the facility has “about 225 active
clients” who have used the pantry at least
once during the last six months. He estimated
that “We have between 110 and 120 visits [by
clients] each week, because not everybody
comes in every week.”
Once a week, Heller continued, the Food
Pantry buys “around 1250” worth of groceries
from the North Texas Food Bank at a cost of
11 cents per pound. The Food Group pro-
vides milk for the Food Pantry at a cost of
about 1250 per week, and the Pantry receives
about 150 worth of groceries a week by way of
a donation box at the Tom Thumb store on
Cedar Springs.
“During the summer, donations really drop
off, and there are lots of times this summer
when we had to go to the store to buy
groceries. We get in a double bind because
donations to us are down and at the same
time donations to the North Texas Food Bank-
are down, too, so they don’t have the gro-
ceries to sell us,” Heller said. “It got so bad
last summer that we had to go to the store
several times to buy food. There was one
really bad stretch when clients would come
in and the shelves would be actually empty.”
Thomas called the Department of Health’s
decision to cut the Resource Center out of the
grant awards a cowardly and wasteful deci-
sion. “The taxpayers of this state should be
appalled and offended that the state does not
use their tax dollars to deliver services more
efficiently,” he stated, noting that the Re
source Center — including the Food Pan
try — delivers more services per dollar “than
any other AIDS agency in this city, probably in
the state.
“For the state to ignore that is a waste of tax
dollars. Rather than deal with the public
health issues and the public health delivery
system in the most effective and cost-efficient
way, the Department of Health chose to roll
over and play dead for the religious extrem-
ists, which are really just a small handful of
people. That makes us the ones who have to
challenge their decision," Thomas said.
“What they would have done if they had been
good public health officials interested in
operating a good, efficient and effective pub
lie health system, was award us the grant
money, and then let that handful of religious
extremists be the ones to have to challenge.
That would have been the smart way to do it,
the way that would have made sure the
people got the services they needed in the
most cost-efficient way. I just don’t under
stand why they [ Health Department officials]
were so cowardly and wasteful.”
(Editor’* Note: The following action alert
was issued by Lesbian/Gay Rights Lobby
executive director Glen Maxey, and cads on
community members to pressure legislators
and Texas Department of Health officials to
reverse a recent interpretation of the law
regarding whether AIDS grant funds in the
state may go to "gay” organizations.)
NEVER IN OUR wildest Imaginations did we
think that bureaucrats at the Texas
Department of Health would buckle under
to a few homophobes to such an extent that
now funding for a majority of our
community AIDS organizations could be In
jeopardy.
Dr. Bernstein, Commissioner of Health,
has officially asked the Texas Attorney
General, Jim Mattox, for a ruling on the
following question: “Does Subsection
2.03(h) or any other provision of S.B. 959
require the department to exclude from
consideration an organization that has
homosexuals among its officers, board,
general membership, paid staff or
volunteers, merely because the individuals
are homosexuals?"
He prefaced this question by saying that
his own legal division has indicated that the
department cannot Include such a
restriction based on the “status" of a person
being homosexual. So why did he ask it?
He stated to the Attorney General that he
did so because it had been suggested in
some “comments” received by the
Department. Can you guess who made
these comments? You're right on the mark if
you guessed Austin's Rev. Mark Weaver and
his right wing fundamentalist cohorts.
tt getting a tew calls and letters from
those who would deny AIDS grants to our
organizations results in an official request
for an Attorney General's Opinion. It
certainly shows that Dr. Bernstein and his
associates will let our entire state's
response to AIDS be sabotaged by a few
fanatics.
I think It is time lor gay men and lesbians
and our elected officials to tel1 Dr. Bernstein
that Texans demand that he be a public
health officer, not a politician. By asking
this question, Dr. Bernstein wants the
Attorney General to “face the heat" with
Weaver and Rep. Brad Wright. And while we
wait for an answer, some AIDS service
groups have been denied funds (Including
funding fo the AIDS Resource Center in
Dallas to operate their food bank because
they are housed in the same building with a
homosexual group which promotes gay
rights).
Maybe Dr. Bernstein Is overlooking the
history of the epidemic in this state — a
historical record that points out that the
State of Texas and the Texas Department of
Health were years late in becoming
involved. The gay and lesbian community
shouldered all the responsibility of creating
these very agencies that are now under
attackl
If not overturned, these rules could deny
state funding to almost every group which is
now funded.
Some examples of the broadness of these
rules:
— Any funded AIDS group that refers a
client to the AIDS Legal Hotline operated by
the Texas Human Rights Foundation will
have “promoted illegal behavior" and lose
CONTINUED ON PAGE 5
3
THE OALLAS VOICE/DECEMBER 22 1919
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Vercher, Dennis. Dallas Voice (Dallas, Tex.), Vol. 6, No. 34, Ed. 1 Friday, December 22, 1989, newspaper, December 22, 1989; (https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth615822/m1/3/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, UNT Digital Library, https://digital.library.unt.edu; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.