Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1999. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Bay Windows - Local News, July 1, 1999
Loren King, Bay Windows staff
Dr. Stephen Boswell, director of the FCHC, said the "carefully designed" brochure will remain available in "targeted areas where men who have sex with men congregate."
no known membership or contacts, objected to the flyer was that it received its funding in part from the state Department of Public Health (DPH). Mothers Against Pedophilia put photocopies of the brochure into the mailboxes of Beacon Hill legislators.
Jean McGuire, director of the DPH's AIDS bureau, said it turned out that this particular education campaign began in 1997 and was funded through the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). However, she stressed, "nothing has changed" with regard to the DPH's commitment to AIDS education and awareness, including explicit material if communities and organizations determine that is what is needed. "We fully support communities making their own decisions about what works," she said.
Boswell said that after a meeting on June 25 between both groups, they are in agreement about continuation of the FCHC's safe-sex education effort. "There is no disagreement between FCHC and DPH. We agree 100 percent that this is a public health issue and needs to be dealt with," Boswell said.
"Efforts began under the previous administrator (David Mulligan) and those efforts continue. We have an adroit Governor as well as an adroit [new DPH Commissioner Howard Koh]. Nothing has changed under the new administration."
Boswell added that few on Beacon Hill had ever heard of Mothers Against Pedophilia and the group's outrage over the brochure did not have much impact on high-ranking officials. "Our legislators and governor have consistently risen above that ignorance and have been able to separate public health from politics," he said.
McGuire agreed. "There's been a history of people trying to cause problems over HIV materials. But the record of the State House and this department has been clear and I don't expect that to change. There has been a long-standing commitment," she said.
The AIDS Action Committee (AAC), the state's largest AIDS service organization, has faced objections to sexually-explicit material in the past, but it has circumvented the issue in recent years by funding its material privately, not with public funds, said Chris Wittke, AAC's HIV prevention manager. SEXTRA, a safe sex magazine, was distributed with the satiric disclaimer that it was produced, "without one penny of National Endowment of the Arts money" as a joke, said Wittke.
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