work.
Instead the response must be a rull-scale public health campaign based on Cean forthright factual information, free of called 'moral' solutions.
AIDS is both a medical scourge ana an excuse lor a reactionary offensive aimed primarily at gays women on lne ground thal the only 'safe sex heterosexual and monogamous.
to AIDS is medical not moral. What is needed is a huge scale public health campaign aimed chiefly at giving the clearest possible information on the means by which it is transmitted, simple preventative steps, and where help is available.
This information should be particularly made available to young people in schools, where a whole generation reaching adolescence in mosphere of fear and ignorance about AIDS. Alongside material in schools there should be a HuLe public advertising campaign on the television, radio, public transport and bill boards.
Government funding should provide free clean needles to drug users, and free contraceptive sheaths should be available easily accessible outlets like chemists shops. Screening should be freely and voluntarily available, not just at clinics for sexually transsomething about the issue of AIDS last week. Any action against AIDS had been held up for five years because the government and press attempted to present it as a 'gay killer', a 'judgement of god', and let several hundred people die as they tried to bolster their reactionary and idiotic system of morality. Now the campaign is still not remotely effective enough because an attempt is being made to fit it into a right wing system of morality which will not Emitted diseases, but at all clinics, and through your doctor.
Above all the couragement of openness about sexuality, and the accompanying freedom of informanon is une biggest step that can be taken to prevent the mushrooming spread of the illness.
Instead, , the long overdue action by the Tories will be based on spending the minimum of money, CHLIC paign in the framework of the old message of Moral Rearmament, the only 'safe' DEA ID 10 SCA This reactionary 'moral' position has prevented the every stage development of the AIDS epidemic.
In the first phases of the epidemic, both in the USA ana nere. It was largelv gar men habitual drug users who became infected and unis gulaca ine sellstyled 'moral majority's response. According these moral rearmers society had no reponsibility as sufferers had brought it on themse ves' punishment on the wicked.
A vicious homophobic campaign was whipped up on the basis that gays were plague carriers a campaign that had a real im pact. Concrete intormation about how the disease is spread was withheld to back this up. This campaign never reached the peak in both unstoppable and irreversible.
In the face of these developments, the apartheid regime finds itself with no alternative but to because by the time the epidemic was beginning here Tea dimensions were already dramatically clear in the States. DuL the USA homophobia has begun infect CYCL - in New York this summer I was warned Lo sleel cicar or nistopnel Street unless 'you want get AIDS by someone who should have known better.
Such ignorance and prejudice is unforgivable with 10 per cent of New Yorkers infected, but even with this evidence the American media still presents the ilInes as a gay-killer rather than the generalised killer it really US government still like to present gays as the cause of the epidemic, rather than its own inaction.
After a period of attempting to justify inactivity, while hundreds of gays were allowed to die, the expidemic forced some health authority action in the US. In Britain for the first two three _years of the epidemic the only serious WOlK relation to the disease has been carried by charities chiet v sustained by the gay community itself, like the Terence Higgins trust. This has played a magnificent role in disseminating information about prevention to the gay community, supporting sufferers, and campaigning for greater government action.
Even when the governHealt department had been forced to admit that action was necessary. the decisive steps were again inhibited, and prevented, by the anti-gay, anti-sex lobby. This time the problem' the 'moral majority' faced was how to ciculate explicit information in schools in advertising, without Let the legitimate. world further increase their support for SWAPO and the people of Namibia in their struggle to iberate their country from apartheid colThe AIDS virus HTLV-III undermining Halula Cons lucky anon! the Mary Whitehouse/Victoria Gillick brigade, without undermining its own anti-gay wallarsis and without directly contradicting attack Labour educational authorities for stepping up the The Tories new answer is to ensure that the entire scope of sex education in schools. message it spreads will be couched in the 'safe sex = no sex' tramework. and the lauding of heterosexual, monogamous relations not only moral, but healthy too. There will the minimum of explicit inforFrontline ther rica all.
Africa. into a rout.
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Oliver Tambo President ANC mation about precisely which sexual activities increase the danger of crossMUCCLION because al would mean explaining that such activities actual v exis! outside of smutty jokes and levered imaginations.
So the Tories' answer Will be quite simple. it 1s avoiding ottending, the 'moral' right, , by failing to шаеаке une rull-scale in formation campaign that is in particular failing to take this information schools where young people engaged in their first sexual experimentation are both at risk in reality and are most susceptible to rumour and Lesbian and Gay Rights, the Campaign for Homosexual LIC National Council Civil Liberties and which was attended by Lieutalive 0 people attended launch meeting of the cam the campaign wi campaign will highlight the many different ways in which the civil and criminal law, and the way in which they are implemented discriminate against lesbians and gay men.
Lesbian and gay
sexuality is against the half-truth about how the ilIness is spread.
Alongside this failure the government is continuing to step up its anti-ga campaign, and introduce a sharp and particularly nasty racist element by blaming black people the African continent who are currently suffering the most widespread epidemic of the illness anywhere the world. The most recent part of this has been the threat to introduce visa and special immigration controls visitors from West Africa Ine lones belalea, and completely wrong type of, of AIDS is totally insufficent to nave any real impact. The campaign must continue for effective campaigns including the necessary® funding for research into a cure. . There must be a public health campaign aimed at all sections of society that it totally free from so-called moral TICS CHON both from the point of view of the extent of the intormation thai is given, and the advice on what action to take.
al the notion that it is the victims of the disease who are the villains in society has to be determinedly fought. This will mean rejecting the notion that AIDS should be notifiable disease, defending the right to work of AIDS sufferers, and opposing the introduction repressive measures against both gays and West Africans. There must be full medical and social support for the victims.
The evidence from the USA is now overwhelming that a decisive and tactualt clear campaign by the government could prevent the explosive development of the disease in this country. The Tories have made it election to push for the next parliament to enact legislation for lesbian and gay rights The next two national planning meetings of the campaign are on valuraa. 6 December in London and Saturday 10 January in Manchester. Speakers from the campaign can be arranged from Room 221, 38 Mount Pleasant, London WCIX OAT. Jan Parker and Jamie Gough Legislation for Lesbian and Gay Rights clear that they have no intention of taking this step, chiely because of their reactionary so-called morality. In fact the only imallowing thousands of people to die for the sake of appear ances about sex.
Reactionary governcapable of learning fron nistory. When gonorrhe developed as a 19th century plague, the first to sutter were the prostitutes, SO nothing was done. Then the troops began to suffer so they inspected the pro'clean' and only the could operate When babie began to die the clinics were established, CULE Was sought, and information was posted in public conveMCles one the scourge was stopped. Why do to wait for babies to die?
The issue is the same as with abortion traception for young people Those who aen having to stop wat men having them tney did ensure thousand abortions. dinose millegal abortions. Those, like who tried to prevent contraception be LIle available without • pa rental consent would no have stopped sex between people, • but they would thousands of unwanted pregnancies lives the figures produced this week show a dramatic increase in preg nancies among the under court case. Those who attempt to impose their reactionary anti-gay, right wing sexua morality on AIDS will literally kill tens of thousands of people and already have done.
dispute started. At the rally Derek Robinson, who was himself sacked wie Converone Longbridge BL plant ap•calcu I01 suDOUl 'What we need to do here' he said 'is go out to meone warned with Borderway and ask products. What we need in the trade union move ment is solidarity - sim ple but very important.
Borderway owner, Mr Nemashangi had closed the factory for the day of the mass picket. Then, later in the week, he ditched his 18 scab
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