AIDS Activists Released

After spending 73 days in a San Francisco jail, two aggressive AIDS activists have posted a reduced bail and are now free until their trial on numerous felonies and misdemeanors.

Protesters Michael Petrelis and David Pasquarelli were released last week after their supporters posted a combined $220,000 bond. Until then, the two had been held in lieu of $1.1 million.

Petrelis and Pasquarelli are accused of harassing, stalking and making criminal threats against public health officials, AIDS researchers and newspaper reporters. They have acknowledged making--or encouraging others to make--late-night phone calls using sexually explicit language, but they deny threatening anyone.

Among other things, they were protesting prevention campaigns that they believe stigmatize gay sex.

“It’s good to finally be free,” Pasquarelli said through his lawyer, Mark Vermeulen. “I look forward to presenting my case to a San Francisco jury, where I am confident I will be found innocent of these outrageous charges.”

Vermeulen predicted the trial would be held in late spring or summer.

Dozens of civil-rights and gay activists around the country have defended Petrelis and Pasquarelli, saying the charges against them are inflated and indicate the lengths to which prosecutors will go to squelch political dissent.

But many in San Francisco, including some AIDS prevention leaders, aren’t sympathetic.

“They’ve crossed a line no real activist would,” said Michael Lauro of AIDS Activists Against Violence & Lies. “They deserve to be prosecuted to restore a sense of safety every citizen in our city is entitled to.”

Before their Nov. 28 arrests, Petrelis and Pasquarelli expressed anger over reports from the city’s public health department, printed in the San Francisco Chronicle, showing syphilis rates on the rise among gay and bisexual men. They said they believed those statistics were concocted to collect more federal money for the city.

Pasquarelli is a spokesman for ACT UP San Francisco, a breakaway group not affiliated with the national ACT UP. The Bay Area group contends that AIDS is caused by the side effects of HIV treatment rather than the human immunodeficiency virus itself.

Petrelis, who is not a member of ACT UP San Francisco, disagrees with those views but shares the group’s belief that federal AIDS funds are being misspent on unnecessarily frightening and sexually graphic prevention messages.

Both men are HIV-positive.