Marty James; Gay Activist Aided Suicides

Marty James, the controversial gay rights activist who revealed on national television that he had assisted AIDS patients in committing suicide, has taken his own life after a long battle with the deadly disease. He was 38.

James died Christmas Day after taking sleeping pills at his West Hollywood home, his lifetime companion Steven Kanengiser told The Times on Saturday. Kanengiser said James “really held out until the end.

“He wanted to just fall asleep,” Kanengiser said, “but in the end the pain became unmanageable. The doctor made it clear that he would only be out of pain if he were unconscious, so he (James) finally did make the decision to take the pills.

“The doctor said he would only have lasted another week and that it would have been agony,” Kanengiser said, adding that he and several friends were present.

James gained national attention March 31, 1988, when he described on the ABC show “Nightline” how he had helped a friend suffering from AIDS end his life. James later said that over a five-year period he had helped at least eight men with the incurable disease to die.

The activist was also a subject segment on the CBS program “60 Minutes.”

Both the San Francisco and Los Angeles County district attorney’s offices investigated James’ activities but declined to file criminal charges. The prosecutors said they had no evidence beyond James’ statements, which alone could not be used to prove that any crime occurred. Some relatives of the young men who died accused James of murder.

Born in Santa Maria on Nov. 14, 1953, James grew up in San Bernardino and moved to Los Angeles in 1971.

When his mother died of Hodgkin’s disease, a protracted and painful death that he observed, James became a drifter and heroin addict. He gravitated to Hollywood, where he checked into a psychiatric hospital for methadone treatments to end his drug addiction, and became a gay rights activist.

In 1983, James co-founded the Los Angeles chapter of the San Francisco-based Shanti Foundation, which trains volunteer counselors to talk with AIDS patients. The word shanti is Sanskrit for “inner peace.”

“Compassion was his main strength,” a therapist told The Times in 1988. “He was one of the first voices to deal with how to live and die with AIDS.”

After serving as executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of Shanti, James left the organization in 1985 and worked as a private counselor on terminal illness and death. The Shanti group has adamantly divorced itself from his views on assisted suicide.

A private memorial service is scheduled for next Sunday. Kanengiser has asked that any memorial contributions be made to Project Angel Food, which assists AIDS victims.