March
13, 2002
WHO IS POLICING THE SEX POLICE?
Local Sex Police dance group censored at AIDS confab in Chicago
by Tracy Baim
The Bush administration's crackdown on sex-positive AIDS educational efforts had repercussions in Chicago last week, when the Sex Police, who perform for high schools, were not allowed to perform for adults attending an AIDS conference here.
The decision to cancel the performance of the troupe came from an executive committee of members from organizers of the Community Planning Leadership Summit for HIV Prevention. An estimated 1,500 AIDS educators from 65 community groups around the U.S. attended the event at the Hyatt Hotel on Wacker Drive.
The conference was organized by the National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) with funds from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC). The executive committee included NMAC and CDC representatives, in addition to people from the North American State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD) and the Academy for Education Development (AED).
Jim Pickett, an openly gay man living with AIDS, and a member of Chicago's HIV Prevention Planning Group, was on the Host Committee with several dozen other Chicagoans, and as soon as he heard the Sex Police were being censored, he organized a protest meeting Friday, March 8, during the conference.
Pickett, who has worked on the city's Faces of AIDS exhibit for nearly two years, was outraged at the decision to cancel the Sex Police over lyrics (including "We are the sex police ... we have a warrant for your sex") which have gone over fine for teenagers in Chicago public high schools for years. He and others believe that the move came in response to signals being sent from higher up...from the Bush administration...that the future of AIDS education will be an emphasis on "abstinence-only" and non-sexually explicit educational materials.
This "self-censorship" by conference organizers, several activists told Windy City Times, was probably meant to avoid an attack by the right wing and thus risking loss of future funding.
Not only were the Sex Police censored, but the title of a San Francisco ACT UP panel, "Community Review: Censorship or Quality Assurance," was also changed, even though the workshop itself was allowed to continue. And just last week, as the conference got under way, the CDC's website was also censored, with links to some youth education websites dropped.
AIDS agencies across the U.S. are in a state of fear as the government is starting audits which have a not-so-hidden agenda of finding not just potential financial problems...which everyone agrees is a good thing...but also finding "offensive" materials. Indeed, an inspector general has audited programs in San Francisco and some materials were deemed to be offensive.
The City of Chicago Department of Public Health and local agencies are gearing up for those audits...making sure that any materials connected to federal dollars have gone through the proper community review procedures. A special CDPH community panel has been in place for years, overviewing any materials financed with government money. Those materials have been "community sensitive," meaning more explicit for outreach to gay men, but what is unknown is whether government auditors will allow such messages to continue.
Citizens Against Government Waste, a right-wing group, recently released a report which gives credence to the fear that AIDS programs will be attacked. The report is calling for shutting down most AIDS care and prevention programs, according to Pickett, including the Ryan White program. If these audits do lead to censorship, AIDS educators fear a return to higher HIV transmission rates.
Already, however, the audits and threats of audits have led to self-censorship...which means the AIDS education message is being stifled.
'We will not be silenced'
"This is the climate we are in," Pickett said. He and others believe officials at the CDC and NMAC are quietly in support of the protests. In fact, on Saturday during the lunchtime plenary session, Pickett and others commandeered the microphone to voice their protests. As a result of the meeting of 20 people the night before, they made a statement including the following:
"The George W. Bush Administration wants to edit and tell us what we can say and what we can't say. Yesterday's performance by ... The Sex Police ... was pulled because of the words in their music. Our national partners who have organized this conference of HIV Prevention Professionals were nervous because of the frightening, chilling climate in Washington that is twisting our words and our programs, sensationalizing them into things they are not, even as we speak. ... WE WILL NOT BE SILENCED. ... W. doesn't want us to talk about condoms and accurate sexuality education. Abstinence is a choice, not a mandate. ... Needle exchange works. Over 70 scientific studies have demonstrated that. POLITICS, NOT SCIENCE. ... HIV and AIDS are letters that kill. We will not allow W. to be another."
The short interruption received applause of support.
But the two censorship incidents at the conference are just small examples of how the Bush administration's policies are being interpreted on the streets. AIDS activists who enjoyed unparalleled freedom under the Clinton administration feel they are now entering a new and frightening era. In the 1980s, much of the safer-sex and prevention models were community-based and community-funded. Under Clinton, many agencies became dependent on far more government support. And especially agencies from communities of color are heavily reliant on such funding. There are few alternatives for many of these agencies, which already are hurt by months-long delays in actually receiving the cash related to contracts.
Indeed, this fear is so strong that several AIDS educators at the conference only spoke with Windy City Times off the record. They fear their own agencies will lose funding...or they fear they will lose their jobs with the CDC.
Many of the appointees to the Bush AIDS council are on record as being supporters of abstinence-only education, including abstinence until marriage, which offers little room for same-sex discussions. There is also a dangerous dialogue about how condoms are not a good prevention tool...a way to belittle efforts to use condoms as at least one frontline tool to stop the spread of HIV.
"The CDC talks about needing community voices at the table and speaking the language of community," Picket said. "It seems to me that they want everyone's input as long as it is within these parameters."
Pickett and others say there needs to be a renewed call for activism. "We need to get our heads around what that will be. What we did in the 1980s and early 1990s will not work now. It needs to be reformatted for 2002," he said. "I don't know if tying condoms around federal buildings is what we need again, but we need to do something to break through all of this."
David Munar, associate director of the AIDS Foundation of Chicago, echoed Pickett's sentiments on needing a more activist response to these issues. Munar said it is important for AIDS agencies to become part of the national dialogue, by writing letters to the media, by contacting their elected officials, and paying attention to what the right wing is doing.
Alan Amberg of Diverse Communications, an AIDS educational media group, said the bigger question is why HIV is being singled out. "There are such huge issues going on in how healthcare money is spent. The states are taking tobacco money and spending hundreds of millions on nothing to do with tobacco. This is being targeted because they want to create an atmosphere of fear. We look at the people appointed to the presidential AIDS commission, and it's Nancy Reagan's 'just say no' all over again," Amberg said. "Groups will begin to censor themselves or remove themselves from the government pie."
"There are a lot of people who are concerned, but a lot are putting their necks on the line to do it," Amberg said, adding that he was impressed when department of public health people from cities and smaller towns stood up to voice opposition to the move toward censorship.
Community review
One CDC contractor, a gay man who wishes to remain anonymous, said the problems at the conference were just the tip of the iceberg. "This administration is doing an end-run ... While so much of the focus is on outside of the country, on terrorism, they are sneaking a lot of changes through the back door. These are the kinds of changes that the religious right in particular has been pushing for some time. We know for example that at this point the CDC has almost no information, printed materials, available left around safer-sex messages. I know there is a push to take references to male-to-male sex or frank discussions on sexuality out of the literature. When young MSMs [men who have sex with men] of color are targeted, to have frank and honest discussions around sexuality, not much information is now available. Many of the local health departments are relying upon the federal government, so you move down that proverbial iceberg, and the feds will dictate what local health departments can do."
This AIDS worker also noted that just as funding for efforts in high-risk communities of color was becoming part of the norm, "The Bush administration and the government are attempting to pull the rug out from under them. The communities of color feel like they are an expendable population."
"There is a need for a strong and solid return to advocacy and activism," this man said.
Lora Branch, director of the Office of LGBT Health for the Chicago Department of Public Health, and Christopher Brown, assistant commissioner with the Division STD/HIV/AIDS, Public Policy and Programs of CDPH, both said the city is making sure all agencies which receive funding go through their community standards panel.
"We have always had a community standards review panel, but we also rely on experts in the community and we are not so 'big brotherish.' Our panel has community folks and health department people. But we do want to make sure our stuff is in order," Branch said.
"I think it's a scary time," Branch added. "We are experiencing something that in my tenure I have never seen before. This rigid approach to prevention and treatment. The kind of auditing they are proposing is troubling. The CDC is really trying to put a positive spin on this...that we have nothing to hide. That's fine if we controlled the auditors. But they are not there to look for effectivemess, they are trying to evaluate using measures that are inaccurate. The prevention experts are the ones who should make decisions. ... A lot of groups will not see the impact until it comes to their front door...which will be too late."
"We clearly have a period of increased scrutiny and attention to HIV programs," said CDPH's Brown. "I don't see that as a fault of the conference. They are in tune with the level of scrutiny and are responding to it. ... I would like to see the federal government recognize the need for local review and control. They determine what is appropriate for that jurisdiction, and for populations within. For smaller communities, the local review process needs to be respected, and to take everything into context. What might be OK for gays in one area, is not the same for schools in the same area."
"There is a feeling like their hands are tied to do what they need to do to stem the spread of HIV," AFC's Munar said of AIDS agencies. "How can we move forward, when talking candidly about sex and drugs may not be viable? People also felt there was a lot of tension in the room at the conference...an elephant in the room and no one is talking about it.
"It is clear the CDC is being constrained. Scientists know what needs to be done, if they want to reduce new infections by 2005 in half [which is a stated federal goal]. But this won't happen if the environment does not allow the science to prevail," Munar said.
"Our role at AFC is to help facilitate the discussion about advocacy, to use these emotions to encourage people and agencies to communicate their concerns with elected officials, with the administration," Munar said. "Selling prevention to elected officials has always been hard. In the best case nothing happens. The most successful prevention efforts tend to be the most controversial. We talked [at the conference] about how people can channel this education into pro-active advocacy. To show the cost-benefits of prevention, and what good scientific prevention looks like. It's not just about philosophies, or points a view...we believe the science is pretty clear about what needs to happen to reduce new infections. It is science over politics."
"We need to take this opportunity to reinvigorate the community in advocacy. Prevention historically has not been well funded. This is not a new problem," he added.
Youth website censored
The two cases of censorship at the AIDS conference in Chicago were not isolated incidents. As the conference started here, there was news from Washington that the CDC was censoring its own website.
The Coalition for Positive Sexuality (CPS), a grassroots, all-volunteer sexuality education organization, denounced the CDC's and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's decisions to remove links to CPS's sexuality education website, www.positive.org.
On March 8, the CDC announced that it had dropped the link from the youth resources section of its website to www.positive.org. The USDA also intends to remove a link to www.positive.org from its www.cyfernet.org's "positive youth development" page. These actions follow a March 7 article in the conservative Washington Times that reported on the links and objections to them voiced in a letter to the CDC and USDA from the Physicians Consortium, a Pennsylvania-based group that advocates abstinence-only education programs. CPS called upon the CDC and the USDA to restore the links from their sites to www.positive.org immediately, as the site offers young people information regarding sexuality and the removal of the links was based on "misleading information."
A representative of Physicians Consortium quoted in the Times claimed the CPS site "borders on pornography" and "run[s] counter to sound public messages for young people."
"These allegations are inaccurate and biased," said CPS's David Schlossman. "The contents of CPS's website offer viewers clear, honest, and accurate information showing teens (and adults) how to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections, and unintended pregnancies. The site calls upon young people to treat one another with respect regardless of their sexual orientation or their choices about sexual activity. And the site tells teens to stand up for their rights. The Coalition for Positive Sexuality's materials foster teen's health and advance public health. CPS's materials educate, rather than titillate. Our site is frank, but if it resembles pornography, then so do anatomy textbooks."
CPS member Carl T. Wilson said, "The Washington Times article is rhetorically homophobic and anti-youth. The CDC and the USDA allowed right-wing scare tactics to bully them into removing progressive safe-sex and HIV prevention information from their sites."
CPS was founded in Chicago in 1992 by members of ACT UP, Queer Nation, the pro-choice Emergency Clinic Defense Coalition, and the feminist theatre troupe No More Nice Girls. The group has evolved into an independent, national organization. CPS also publishes a safe-sex-education booklet, Just Say Yes, a Spanish-language translation, ¡Di Que Sí!, and the Girl Germs poster series.