Wachs Says AIDS Law Criticism Is Cooling Off

Councilman Joel Wachs, author of the city’s landmark law banning discrimination against AIDS victims, sifted Monday through a stack of phone messages and letters full of reaction, most of it negative, to the controversial ordinance.

“Look at this one,” Wachs said in an incredulous and angry tone. “The ones I hate the most are the ones that say, ‘They deserve it, they’re being punished.’ That’s the opposite of the Judeo-Christian ethic I know of to care about people.”

Wachs, a council member since 1971, has received much publicity lately because of the new city law that prohibits employers, landlords, businesses and medical facilities from discriminating against people afflicted with acquired immune deficiency syndrome. Blood banks and sperm banks are exempted.

The ordinance also allows employers to fire or discipline people with AIDS under certain circumstances, for instance when a food worker has open sores that could be a public health danger.

Tide Begins to Turn

As the man behind the law, Wachs, 46, finds himself in a swirl of emotional responses to the legislation. Although gay leaders have heralded the law, mail and phone calls to Wachs’ office were heavily against it, Wachs said. Only Monday did the tide begin to turn, when opinion was running 50-50, he said.

Last week, opinion phoned or mailed to his office was 3 or 4 to 1 against the law, Wachs said Monday. He pointed to letters, some neatly typewritten, others angrily scrawled, with epithets like “liberal wacko” among the printable names he was called.

“I know I’ve suffered with my constituents,” said Wachs, who represents North Hollywood, Studio City, Sherman Oaks, the Hollywood Hills and parts of Highland Park. “I think if you took a poll in my district, you’d find my popularity is probably not at its peak.”

“But I think, ‘So what?’ What the hell is the worth of being in office if I can’t do some good? Some say, ‘You’ve lost my vote; it’s against the law of nature. . . .’ If they’re not going to vote for me because of that, I’m just not going to have their vote.

“This issue means a lot to me, and I’m not going to back off because people are saying bad things about Joel Wachs. Let them. A lot of people who objected feel differently after we talk to them.”

Although a few of those who disagree with him have made threats, Wachs said, “the majority of people are not responding that way. They have public health and safety questions, and it’s a matter of becoming educated.”

People are responding so strongly to the AIDS ordinance “because you’re dealing with sex and death and, in some people’s minds, religion” Wachs said. “It’s pretty hard to find a more controversial combination.

“We’ve gotten good, reasonable kinds of questions from people who want to be informed about AIDS and the ways you do and do not expose yourself to it,” he said, adding, “It’s brought the bigots out of the wall.”

After he appeared on a television show to discuss the disease that has plagued large numbers of homosexual men, one viewer wrote to Wachs and the interviewer and asked, “By the way, are you guys one of them?” said Wachs, a leading advocate of gay rights. “I say, aw . . . forget him, the man wrote this ugly letter, an absolutely ignorant letter.”

His or anyone else’s sexual orientation is “an irrelevant issue. AIDS is not a gay issue.”

Even if there is a negative political reaction to the law, “I have to also believe people in the end will respect” his stand, Wachs said. “I don’t think the judgment today in the heat of things is necessarily the judgment tomorrow, but I’m willing to go with whatever it is.”