Despite Protests, Pasadena OKs Plan to Fight AIDS

Despite opposition from a handful of conservative Christians and Republicans, the Pasadena City Council on Tuesday unanimously approved an extensive plan to combat the spread of AIDS.

Its passage drew a standing ovation from more than 200 supporters, many of them gay activists and members of the AIDS activist group ACT UP/LA, who crammed the council chambers and spilled into an adjoining room.

“Twenty years ago I was a little drag queen in West Hollywood,” said transvestite Connie Norman, who wept before the council members. “I got a job and got off drugs because of this town. . . . This plan is once again Pasadena saying you are a citizen here and we judge you as a human being.”

The plan, the result of 18 months of work by the city’s AIDS Strategic Planning Task Force, recommends creation of an AIDS hospice and a drop-in social center, as well as sex education for teen-agers and distribution of condoms.

The plan also recommends that the city adopt employment rules to help people with acquired immune deficiency syndrome keep their jobs and health insurance.

Those three proposals drew the most opposition from a newly created Heterosexual Rights Advocacy Group and others opposed to the plan.

Paul Hrabal, an unsuccessful Republican council candidate this year, told the council that the plan “advocates the gay community’s political agenda” by teaching children that homosexuality is an alternative lifestyle.

Henry Cahan, another opposition speaker, said money spent on AIDS education would be wasted.

“If they have AIDS, it’s their own fault,” he said, adding that the disease was the result of “illicit, immoral, disgusting sex.”

Similar remarks were made by John C. Griggs, a member of the Confirmed Word Faith Center, and some local church representatives.

Such comments drew hisses from some AIDS activists who held up signs saying “liar” and “homo hater.”

Councilman William Thomson was concerned that the plan would violate government neutrality and asked if the city would be distributing condoms.

Jacqueline Stiff, the city’s health officer, could not provide an answer because she said the plan will be implemented by the Pasadena AIDS Coordinating Committee, a coalition of 30 community groups.

Pasadena social service agencies, nonprofit groups, hospitals and churches, in addition to the city health department, will work out details of the plan over the next five years, Stiff said. She added that the city now distributes condoms to consenting adults under a state-funded program.

“A lot of work is going on to implement this now,” said Tim Brick, committee coordinator.

In mid-July, Saint Luke’s Hospital will open an early intervention clinic to provide medical care and counseling for those diagnosed with the HIV virus, Brick said.

The plan is unusual, he said, because Pasadena is one of only three cities in California with its own health department and thus can more easily provide AIDS health care.

The City Council created the task force in January, 1990, to devise a community response to AIDS after discovering that the disease is the leading cause of death for Pasadena residents between 25 and 44.