LAGUNA BEACH : 4 Churches Agree to Sponsor AIDS Rites

After years of grappling with the issue, four churches have agreed to sponsor a nondenominational memorial service for AIDS victims, organizers said Monday.

The Laguna Beach AIDS Education Task Force is celebrating the move by the churches and the Feb. 11 ceremony as a milestone of community awareness, said member Frank Newman, a representative from the City Council-appointed Human Affairs Committee.

“There was resistance because some clergy people thought that if they were seen speaking about AIDS, it could be construed as political,” Newman said. “I think they had confused the issues of the disease and its prevention with the idea that they were condoning homosexuality or promiscuity.”

Newman and others sitting on the 25-member task force said that although area churches have offered private counseling to area AIDS victims and their families, they rebuffed the idea of a memorial service when it was first brought up in 1987.

“In the past, we couldn’t get the support of the religious community,” said task force member Steve Peskind, executive director of Laguna Shanti, an AIDS-oriented outreach program. “But in the last year, some key clergy people decided they weren’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer.”

Organizers credited the Rev. David Beadles of the Laguna United Methodist Church with persuading other churches to broaden their affiliation with AIDS issues. Beadles could not be reached for comment Monday.

“There was no leadership in the ministerial community to pick up the ball and run with it until (Beadles) came along,” Laguna Beach Councilman Robert F. Gentry observed.

According to county records dating back to 1980, Laguna Beach has had 158 AIDS cases and 95 resulting deaths as of Dec. 31. The city of just over 26,000 now has the highest per-capita number of AIDS cases in the nation, according to Karen Jones, who chairs the task force.

“The churches are trying to repair all the death and dying in this city,” Jones said. “They didn’t used to see AIDS as their problem, but now they are reaching out.”

Larry Coulter, an associate pastor at participating Laguna Presbyterian Church, said that churches previously had shied away from holding memorial services because they were approached individually.

“We weren’t going to be a part of it unless it was a communitywide outreach,” Coulter explained.

The service is scheduled for 4 p.m. at the 400-seat Neighborhood Congregational Church, 340 St. Ann’s Drive.