‘Discovering’ Sports

Re “U.S. Program Offers Gays a Safer Way to Socialize” (Dec. 13): I am surprised at the usually well-informed Times printing so poorly informed a story as David Haldane’s about the sports program being sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control as “an attempt to combat the AIDS epidemic.” This story tends to promote the absurd stereotype that most of the 25 million gay men and lesbians in this country spend all of their time in gay bars.

If The Times and the CDC weren’t wearing blindfolds and earplugs, they would know that for many years there have been a myriad of local, national and international gay and lesbian softball, tennis, volleyball, swimming, bowling, and other sports leagues with literally hundreds of thousands of members.

The United States National Cancer Institute tried to steal the credit for the discovery of the virus that causes AIDS from the French Pasteur Institute. Now the Centers for Disease Control is “discovering” sports as an antidote to AIDS. The CDC would best serve the taxpayers and world health by expending its energies and resources on trying to find a vaccine to prevent AIDS and the means to treat and cure this terrible disease.

HERB KING

Vista