Gay Leader Reportedly Hospitalized for AIDS

Peter Scott, a prominent gay political leader in Los Angeles who quit his business last year to raise funds for AIDS victims, has been hospitalized for treatment of the disease, sources confirmed Tuesday.

The 47-year-old Westside political consultant, who was the first chairman of the city’s most powerful gay-rights group, has been under treatment in the immune suppressive unit of Sherman Oaks Community Medical Center since Friday. A spokesman for the hospital said Scott was in good condition.

Scott, a former chairman of AIDS Project/Los Angeles, has been on leave of absence as the group’s director of public affairs to serve as media director of the statewide campaign against Proposition 64, a measure sponsored by political extremist Lyndon H. LaRouche to require that the names of people exposed to acquired immune deficiency syndrome be reported to state authorities.

Friends Visit Him

Friends visiting Scott at the hospital Tuesday declined to confirm or deny whether Scott was being treated for AIDS, but said they may have some comment in the next couple of days.

Officials of AIDS Project, the support group for victims of the disease in which Scott has played a major role as a fund raiser, also declined comment.

However, sources in the “No on 64/Stop LaRouche” campaign, which Scott helped organize, said he has contracted AIDS, but they declined to discuss his condition.

Scott and actress Elizabeth Taylor organized the star-studded $1-million fund-raiser gala at the Bonaventure last Sept. 19, with proceeds going to AIDS Project/Los Angeles. Mayor Tom Bradley and former First Lady Betty Ford were honorary co-chairs of the event. One of the most poignant moments of the dinner was the reading of a message from the dying actor Rock Hudson, an AIDS victim, by his friend Burt Lancaster.

Scott was one of the founders and served as first chairman of the Municipal Elections Committee of Los Angeles, the powerful bipartisan political action committee formed in 1977 to battle for gay rights. In the same year, Scott and David Mixner founded Mixner/Scott, which became an influential political consulting firm. They sold the company to its employees last year.

Urged to Seek Office

Scott moved to Los Angeles from Texas in the 1970s, and quickly built a power base. Gay activists who had been looking for an openly homosexual candidate for the California Assembly urged Scott last year to consider challenging Assembly Majority Leader Mike Roos (D-Los Angeles) in the 1986 primary.

“I am ready to make the race provided I have the base of support out there,” he said in July of last year. “I am not ashamed of the fact that I am gay and I believe the gay community in the district will be a base for me.”

He later reconsidered and did not run for the post, but remained active in gay community political and fund-raising activities.