LaRouche Backers Qualify AIDS Measure for Fall Vote

An initiative backed by followers of Lyndon LaRouche that would put pressure on health officials to quarantine thousands of AIDS victims and others suspected of carrying the virus qualified Tuesday for the November ballot, making California the first state to test the emotional impact of AIDS on voters.

The measure, which has been denounced by health officials and the California Medical Assn., would redefine AIDS as an infectious disease--like measles or tuberculosis--and authorize state and county health officers to use their wide powers, which can include quarantining, to control the activities of victims and carriers.

According to some analyses, the initiative would force blood testing on anyone suspected of bearing the HTLV-III virus that causes AIDS, require that the test results be reported to state authorities, and bar the thousands of people with positive results from working in schools, restaurants and the health field.

Just how sweeping the provisions would be is open to interpretation. The attorney general is preparing a detailed legal analysis, but LaRouche spokesman Brian Lantz said Tuesday that the initiative was written to flatly bar suspected AIDS carriers from attending or teaching school or working in restaurants.

Opponents said the pressure will be great on local health directors to impose quarantines, and by some readings of the initiative such drastic steps could be required under a clause that says officials “shall” take all actions available.

Most scientists do not believe AIDS can be transmitted through the air or by casual contact. Most experts contend that steps like mandatory testing and making results public are unnecessary and could help spread the epidemic by making people afraid to seek tests or medical help.

The secretary of state’s office announced Tuesday that the sponsors--two LaRouche followers--had submitted more than the 443,219 voter signatures needed to qualify for the ballot. The initiative will be officially certified today.

Opponents, who have been organized into a group called Stop LaRouche by leaders of the state’s gay community, said Tuesday that they hope to raise $3 million to $4 million to defeat the initiative. The list of opponents already made public includes the California Nurses Assn. and the Conference of Local Health Officers, which represents the state’s 58 county health directors.

“It serves no public health or health-care purpose at all,” said Mark Madsen, an official of the California Medical Assn.

Gay leaders are planning for a heated campaign that could surpass the 1978 defeat of the Briggs initiative, which would have barred gay public schoolteachers, as a rallying point for homosexuals across the country. The Briggs campaign marked the beginnings of several of the influential gay political organizations in the state, and veterans of the Briggs fight are planning the anti-LaRouche strategy.

‘United as a Community’

“This is much further-reaching than the Briggs initiative,” said Bruce Decker, chairman of the state AIDS Advisory Commission (appointed by Gov. George Deukmejian) and temporary co-chair of Stop LaRouche. “We are united as a community.”

Acquired immune deficiency syndrome is a viral disease that weakens the body’s immune system, leaving victims vulnerable to tumors and infections. As of June 1, 21,302 people in the United States had been afflicted and 11,645 had died.

In addition, an estimated 1 million to 2 million people in the country have been exposed to the AIDS virus and may be able to transmit it through high-risk sexual activity or through their blood. Most are not expected to develop symptoms, but federal officials predict the national death toll will reach 175,000 by 1991.

Most U.S. victims have been homosexually active men or intravenous drug users, although the disease has been transmitted through tainted blood banks and from infected parents to their children.

LaRouche is a political extremist who rose to new prominence this year when two of his followers won key Democratic primary elections in Illinois. Another LaRouche follower was the apparent winner in an Orange County congressional primary, but a recount is being conducted.

‘Leading Political Issue’

LaRouche backers say the intent of the initiative is to stop the spread of an epidemic that they describe as “worse than the Black Death” that devastated 14th-Century Europe and Asia, “a disease more deadly to mankind than a full-scale thermonuclear war.” Moreover, LaRouche followers say AIDS is “the leading political issue” of the times.

Secretary of State March Fong Eu in May warned the initiative’s two sponsors, Khushro Ghandi and Bruce Lutz, to stop “harassing” petition signers and making false claims in gathering signatures. Eu said she had received numerous complaints about the LaRouche organization’s tactics.

Los Angeles City Councilman Joel Wachs, author of the city’s anti-discrimination law to protect AIDS victims, joined the campaign to defeat the LaRouche-backed initiative Tuesday by denouncing it as “a despicable initiative that poses the greatest single threat to civil liberties since Nazi Germany.”