Board Ignores Logic on Public Health Issue

The Orange County Board of Supervisors continues to lag behind other urban counties in its financial commitment to public health. Last Tuesday the board also showed a hardhearted and hardheaded shortage of sensitivity and common sense when it rejected a proposed ban on discrimination against people with AIDS, a ban that other urban counties have wisely seen fit to enact.

Reacting to emotional but illogical protests from an organized vocal minority, a divided board made not only a bad decision but a potentially harmful one to public health.

The proposed measure came out of 18 months of study by the county’s HIV Advisory Committee and was supported by doctors and the county’s public health officials. It was directed at a critical public health problem that thus far has taken 614 lives in the county. Its intent was to encourage people to seek care to help reduce the risk of spreading AIDS.

The proven wisdom of that approach, and the fact that AIDS discrimination is far too common a reality, was lost in the hearing. Protesters displaying their fear of AIDS and prejudice against homosexuals were able to shift the emphasis to gay life styles from the real issue of public health.

Leading the protest was Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton), the county’s most outspoken homophobe, who once made the absurd claim that people with acquired immune deficiency syndrome emit a spore that causes birth defects.

Last Tuesday, Dannemeyer shot from the lip again, contending that the anti-discrimination ordinance could mean that blood banks would be forced to accept contaminated blood. He was corrected by the county counsel, who restated the fact that the proposed law covered only discrimination in employment, housing and county services.

Still, Supervisors Don Roth, Roger Stanton and Gaddi Vasquez ignored the medical advice, health officials and the HIV committee’s strong conclusion that the ordinance was necessary to help reduce the spread of AIDS and overrode the votes in support cast by Thomas Riley and Supervisor Harriett Wieder. Roth, Stanton and Vasquez said they believed existing state and federal laws already protect people with AIDS from discrimination.

It is true that there are such laws, but procedures for filing under them take so long that sometimes the victims of discrimination contract the disease and die before their cases can be heard. A local ordinance would allow people with discrimination claims to pursue them immediately. And it would send a message that the county was not going to tolerate people being fired, evicted or denied jobs, housing or services because of their illness.

Instead, AIDS will be driven further underground as people fearing discrimination will avoid seeking diagnosis. And, as some proponents of the ordinance believe, this will prompt even more discrimination against residents thought to have AIDS-related illnesses.

Orange County now is the only urban area in the state without an anti-discrimination ordinance to protect people with AIDS. The supervisors cannot continue to turn their backs on the problem by hiding behind the lame excuse that other protection exists. They must demonstrate the political courage and good sense to make the right decision. The prejudices paraded at the county hearing were evidence enough for the urgent need to pass, not reject, the anti-discrimination measure.