Gay man, lives on Capitol Hill, could use an HIV test. The description probably covers half the guys walking down Broadway at any given moment. Let's say you already know this, along with a few other things:

You know that gay men account for the overwhelming number of new HIV infections in the Seattle area. You know that Capitol Hill is the center of this city's gay universe. You know that more than one-quarter of the HIV-positive people in this country are unaware they have the virus. You know that when people do know they are HIV-positive, they are less likely to spread the disease. If you knew all this, and you cared about gay men's health, it wouldn't be long before you said: Somebody needs to open a free HIV testing clinic on Broadway.

In fact, people have been saying this for years. But only now, more than two decades into the AIDS epidemic, has it finally happened. Earlier this week, backed by nearly $120,000 in state and federal funds, Gay City Health Project opened a free HIV and STD testing and counseling clinic in a small storefront at 1513 Broadway Avenue, sandwiched between the gay dance club Neighbours and the vintage-clothing store Atlas.

Gay City executive director Fred Swanson calls the clinic "the future of gay men's health," and in a sense, he's right. The future of gay men's health depends on turning back rising gay HIV rates here and around the country, and it will be difficult to do this without more gay men knowing their HIV status. To this end, the new clinic will offer rapid HIV testing, a popular new technology that gives results in about 20 minutes, instead of the seven days it took to get HIV test results in the past.

Rapid testing has huge potential to increase the number of gay men who know their HIV status, and its arrival on Broadway is great news for the future of gay men's health. But in addition to the future of gay men's health, something else is riding on the success of this new clinic: the future of Gay City Health Project.

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Gay City spent much of last year under fire from The Stranger, Public Health- Seattle & King County, elected officials, and some of its own board members--and for good reason. The organization running Broadway's new testing and counseling clinic is the same organization that for years failed to warn gay men about Seattle's rising gay STD rates, adopted a winkingly permissive attitude toward high-risk sexual behavior at a time when it should have been telling gay men to stay safe, and either didn't realize or didn't care that six years of rising STD rates meant rising HIV rates.

The man in charge of this new clinic, Swanson, is the same man who last year refused to endorse a common-sense gay community manifesto calling on gay men to behave more responsibly in the face of rising HIV and STD rates. The Gay City staff members who are going to be administering HIV tests and counseling gay men at this new clinic are part of the same brain trust that came up with "Murder in the Dark," a disastrously ill-conceived Gay City event that encouraged young gay "sex-club virgins" to hang out at the gay sex club Basic Plumbing.

Murder was supposedly going to be about safe sex. But the idea of a publicly funded gay men's health agency encouraging young "sex-club virgins" to start hanging out in sex clubs (which are hubs of STD transmission) made no sense, and public health leaders rightly leaned on Gay City to shut Murder down. It turned out to be a very good thing Murder was canceled; two young gay men later came forward to say Gay City's 2002 Murder was a sex-club recruitment party at which free passes to Basic Plumbing were handed out, porn was played on TV monitors, guys blew each other, and a Gay City staffer gave a brief safe-sex talk but also apologized for it, saying that it had to be done "for granting purposes."

So while Swanson, in a recent e-mail announcing the opening of the new clinic, bragged that Gay City has always been "masterful at adapting to community needs and responding to change," there was precious little evidence of mastery last year. As the Murder flap was playing out, public health officials were deciding how much public HIV-prevention money to give Gay City for the next two years. And last November public health officials decided the answer: None. They took Gay City off the public HIV-prevention dole for the first time in Gay City's history, shocking an organization that had been used to getting a free pass from public health leaders.

The loss of funding led to calls from within and without Gay City for Swanson to be fired or resign. According to a source familiar with the events, Swanson survived at least one attempt by the organization's board of directors to push him out, and board members have resigned in despair over the direction of the agency under Swanson.

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So heading into this year, Swanson needed some good news. And through a lucky convergence of events, he got it: The Seattle Gay Clinic, which used to have the contract to offer free testing and counseling to gay men on Capitol Hill, realized that very few gay men even knew the clinic existed. The Gay Clinic had been housed at the offices of the low-cost Country Doctor clinic on 19th Avenue East, and did a good number of free tests (500-600 a year), but its directors "recognized that they had a small board that really didn't have a lot of energy to put into promotion," said Frank Chaffee, HIV/AIDS program manager for Public Health-Seattle & King County. To raise the profile of the testing and counseling operation, the Gay Clinic decided to close and designate Gay City as its successor agency. Around the same time, a storefront became available on Broadway, a trial of rapid HIV testing in Seattle ended with good results, and presto: The Gay City Health Project Wellness Center was born.

The question now is whether Swanson will be able to seize the opportunity he has been given--an opportunity to redeem his troubled organization by doing real HIV-prevention work (testing and counseling, as opposed to excuse making and sex-club promoting), and doing it well. Having last year refused to support a manifesto's calls for HIV-positive men to disclose their status to sex partners, will Swanson's agency now be able to run a clinic that is required, under state protocols, to encourage men who test positive to disclose? Will the Gay City staffers who thought up Murder in the Dark be able to counsel gay men to practice safe sex without excusing the counseling as being "for granting purposes"? Will an agency that has consistently refused to draw lines between acceptable and unacceptable behavior be able to draw those lines when the rules of running this clinic demand it?

Chaffee says he is confident Gay City will be able to do this, and points out that staffers involved in the clinic have undergone extensive training. There is something wonderful in that image: Gay City staffers, who last year were running sex-club events, being reeducated, taught phlebotomy, record keeping, and sane counseling techniques. It almost makes one... hopeful.

But not overly hopeful. The health department will be watching, monitoring Gay City to make sure it runs the clinic in accordance with appropriate standards. If Gay City can't do this, its funding won't be renewed. And we'll be watching, too. After all, two extremely important things are at stake: the future of gay men's health, and the future of an HIV-prevention agency that simply cannot justify its existence if it cannot do this right.

Free, anonymous testing for HIV, syphilis, and gonorrhea is available to walk-ins or by appointment at the Gay City Health Project Wellness Center, 1513 Broadway Avenue, Tuesday through Friday 3:30 pm to 8 pm and Saturday 1 to 5 pm. For appointments or more information: 206-860-6969 or www.gaycity.org.