Columns

Letters to the Editor

TO THE EDITOR: Dan Savage's recent attack on Gay City reveals both a transparent personal bitterness and a thoroughly reactionary view of HIV prevention ["Butt Out," Dec 16]. He argues that the government should only fund the most basic form of AIDS prevention. Ironically, this kind of simplistic view of prevention is precisely what we founded Gay City to challenge.

Gay City's "revolution" in the mid-'90s was not about duping government funders, as Savage cynically suggests. It was about redefining HIV prevention in America. Up until that time, a narrow public health view prevailed: one that saw prevention primarily in terms of testing, condom distribution, and safe sex information. From its outset, Gay City has held that effective prevention needs to be more than that. Gay men are more than disease vectors. We are whole people who make decisions about sex in a complex world. Only by addressing the whole person and confronting root causes can we hope to sustain community-wide health behavior changes.

True to that vision, Gay City offers programs that tackle HIV head-on, such as our HIV-negative support groups, the recent forum on barebacking, and our media campaign, "We're All in Bed Together." Some of our activities confront topics closely related to HIV-prevention, like drug and alcohol use, communication skills, and STDs. Other Gay City groups and events address underlying issues like self-esteem, intimacy, spirituality, and racism.

The holistic model that Gay City pioneered has now been adopted by many of the world's most respected AIDS organizations. Extensive program evaluation data show significant changes in participants' knowledge, skills, attitudes, and motivation for safer sex. Dr. Alonzo Plough, Director of Public Health for Seattle and King County, has praised Gay City for effectively addressing what he calls "the social determinants of health."

It's true that Gay City hasn't stopped all HIV transmission in Seattle. It's impossible to know how many infections we've prevented. I do know that we've engaged tens of thousands of gay men in something vital that provides education and support, gives meaning and a sense of belonging, and perhaps most of all, hope for the future. Gay City will continue to do what we do best: promoting health, empowering gay men, and building a stronger gay community. The ultimate measure of any revolution is not its ability to tear down the existing system, but to build something better in its place.

John Leonard, Executive Director, Gay City Health Project

DAN SAVAGE RESPONDS: In 1995, John Leonard argued that Seattle needed a new HIV-prevention organization because standard HIV prevention -- testing, condom distribution, and safe sex information -- wasn't working. Leonard's proof? Rising HIV infection rates. Leonard's defense of Gay City -- we can't know how many infections Gay City has prevented -- was made in 1995 by the Northwest AIDS Foundation in defense of their own HIV-prevention efforts. At the time, Leonard dismissed NWAF's we-can't-know argument as a lame attempt to keep the money rolling in. Five years later, Leonard advances the same argument.

But by John Leonard's own standards -- circa 1995, at least -- Gay City has failed as an HIV-prevention organization. It has, as I pointed out in my story, succeeded as a gay social service organization. While some of what Gay City does is HIV-related, one would expect a social service organization serving gay men to address HIV. But it doesn't follow that public health money should be used to fund Gay City's non-HIV-related programs -- the ski trips, kick ball games, film festivals, book discussion groups, drag classes, etc., that make up the vast majority of Gay City's programs -- simply because Gay City manages, from time to time, to talk to gay men about HIV.

As I wrote, I don't believe Gay City, for numerous reasons, should be taking public health money. Interestingly, Leonard chooses not to address one of my primary objections: One out of four children in the United States has no health insurance, while at the same time gay men in Seattle enjoy social lives subsidized by public health dollars. Perhaps Leonard doesn't address this issue because even he can see that, on this point, there is no defense for Gay City. And why should public health dollars -- hundreds of thousands of them -- be spent on efforts to "build a stronger gay community," when they aren't available for similar efforts to build a stronger lesbian community? Or Asian community? Or Republican community? Or African American community?

While gay men are not disease vectors, Gay City's attempts to redefine "HIV prevention in America," by "addressing the whole person and confronting root causes" of unsafe sex, hasn't resulted in "community-wide health behavior changes." Again, HIV-infection rates among gay men are up. The ultimate measure of any revolution may be its ability to "build something better," but Gay City's revolution has not managed to do that. In 1995, Leonard pointed to rising HIV infection rates as proof that NWAF's education efforts were a failure. Don't rising HIV infection rates in 2000 prove the same about Gay City?

EDITORS: Why not a public library that looks like a public library? [Culture Wars, Eric Fredericksen, Dec 23.] Seattle has a city hall that looks like a third-rate office building (it is), and a courthouse that looks like a shithouse/tenement (inside and out). The county building appears to have been fashioned out of Kingdome leftovers.

All cities worthy of the [term] have buildings that do not mask their function; e.g., New York and its public library, or San Francisco and its city hall. Seattle [will] only achieve "city" status when it has worthy public facilities, not the eyesores it now has. Whattaya say we just build a library that looks like a library?

Jim Newkirk, Denny Regrade

DEAR STRANGER: The blurb about efforts to reroute SeaTac flight paths was sadly mistitled ["Upper-Class War," In Other News, Alexandra Holly-Gottlieb, Dec 23]. The conflict might seem to be an "upper-class war," but if the so-called Split East Turn proposal is implemented, the big losers will be the decidedly non-upper-class residents of the Rainier Valley. Surprise, surprise. Should this change be put into effect, southbound planes from SeaTac would execute their eastward turns over the Rainier Valley at a much lower altitude than currently occurs over Leschi -- a full TWO THOUSAND FEET lower. That's HALF the altitude of current fly-overs in Leschi.

The study at SeaTac which produced the Split East Turn proposal fails to consider the airplane noise already in the South End from Boeing Field (with as many flights per year as SeaTac!) and from the Renton Municipal Airport. The lakeshore neighborhoods' claims that the Split East Turn would distribute area airplane noise more "fairly" are ludicrous. As a Rainier Valley resident who was thrilled to find a tiny, barely affordable house in the city which was not directly adjacent to a runway, I'm furious that these decades-old flight plans could be changed. It's maddening that The Stranger, like other media outlets, is focusing on the conflicts of moneyed neighborhoods, and failing to see that the less well-off South-Enders are getting dumped on. Again.

Angie Kantola, Rainier Valley

STRANGER: Thank you, Mr. Mudede ["Bubble City, Charles Mudede, Dec 23]. Even while the Seattle metropolitan area luxuriates in non-subsidized, high-wage businesses that are doing well, our politicians put both knees to the ground for the hospitality industry. What Mudede doesn't mention is the insidious underpinning of the entire convention business. Convention travel and entertainment expenses are deductible from personal and business income taxes. That should amount to about a 30 percent savings to the attendee or, looking at it another way, a substantial tax subsidy.

Kieth Nissen, via e-mail

EDITORS: I have no major quarrel with Kathleen Wilson about women in music ["Where the Girls Are," Dec 23]. However, I'd just like to point out to Wilson (and all of those betrayed lesbians who project their sexuality onto others) that Ani DiFranco NEVER SAID SHE WAS A LESBIAN! She's had some songs about women, some songs about men, and some even (gasp!) about both of them. God forbid she might be bi! While I agree that she's lost some of her musical and political ingenuity, I'm tired of the arguments focusing on her sexuality.

Erin Doherty, via e-mail

GOIN' POSTAL!