Bishops Address AIDS Ignore Rights

“US. Roman Catholic bishops have
taken a small step toward confronting
AIDS, but have yet to address the fact that
lesbians and gay men have legitimate civil
rights,” according to Frances Kissling,
president of Catholics for a Free Choice
upon the release of the latest issue of Con-
science, the bimonthly newsjournal of the
organization.

The special issue on AIDS and the U.S.
bishops examines the U.S. Catholic Con-
ference administrative board’s recent
7,700-word document on AIDS policy, and
reactions from the U.S. media, theologians,
bishops and Dignity, the national organiza-
tion for lesbian and gay Catholics and their
supporters.

The newsjournal also looks at the so-
called “Trojan Wars,” the bishops’ debate
on the issue of condoms. The debate was
sparked by the USCC document’s qualified
approval of mentioning the use of condoms
among the various AIDS preventative
methods in sex education classes. The
document spurred the first public rift
among the bishops on sexuality in two

Forconfidenfial

AIDS
Information

 

decades—since the controversy about the
1968 encyclical on use of “artificial birth
control,” some observers say.

The policy paper’s recommendations
include a call for Catholic institutions, such
as schools and hospitals, to keep persons
with AIDS employed or in school as long as
possible.

Cardinal John O’Connor of New York
led the conservative bishops’ attack in a
public criticism of the policy paper in the
New York Times. O’Connor, whose re-
marks are included in Conscience, has
called the policy paper “a grave mistake”
and declared that he would not follow the
guidelines. He is a member of President
Ronald Reagan's AIDS commission.

In a possible victory for O’Connor and
other conservatives, last week the USCC
announced that all 300 bishops will review
the AIDS policy at their June meeting in
Collegeville, Minn. Observers believe the
meeting may produce an even more conser-
vative AIDS policy statement.

Over the past year, lesbians, gay men
and their supporters have gathered monthly
at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City
to protest the anti-homosexual church pol-
icy of the Vatican and the New York arch-
diocese. A

Catholics for a Free Choice is a national
educational organization that supports the
right to legal reproductive health care espe-
cially to family planning and abortion. It
also works to reduce the incidence of abor-
tion and to increase women’s choices in
childbearing and child-rearing through
advocacy of social and economic programs
for women, families and children.

. For more information, or copies of the
issue, call Janice Hughes at Catholics for a
Free Choice at 202/638-1706.

 

May 1988

Come Out ,Come
Out in October!

by Heather Wishik

Beginning this October 11 a National
Coming Out Day will be held annually. The
theme of this year’s day will be “Take the
Next Step.” This means if you are out to no
one but yourself, come out to someone safe;
if you are out to friends but not to family,
perhaps that is your next step; if you are out
and an activist, perhaps civil disobedience
is what's next. Whatever it is, each individ-
ual will be encouraged to take her or his
personal next step. The date was picked to
commemorate the 1987 March on Wash-
ington. As with the “Great American
Smokeout” sponsored annually by lung
associations, National Coming Out Day is
expected to be an annual event, with each
year having a slightly differing theme or
slogan.

The idea for the National Coming Out
Day emerged from many people who at-
tended the March on Washington. At a
brainstorming meeting of activists from all
over the country held recently outside
Washington, D.C. and called “The War
Conference (because they are making war
against us)”, the decision was made to
begin having a coming out event that could
be individualized and organized locally,
but that would have national impact and
share a common date and theme.

Coming out is viewed as essential if
lesbians and gay men are to achieve full
civil rights and if homophobia is to end. So
long as most lesbians and gay men are
invisible to the majority of society it will
remain difficult to have an effective politi-
cal voice and to make social values change.
An analogy between a person of color
“passing” as white and a lesbian or gay man

  

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