Bay Windows - Local News, April 12, 2001
Peter Cassels, Bay Windows Staff

Gay and lesbian advocates also point to the nomination of an evangelical Christian to head the White House Office of Personnel Policy and religious Right adherents to key positions in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as indications that the administration is the most conservative in history.

The White House announced April 9 that Scott Evertz, 38, of Madison, Wisc., will become the nation's first gay AIDS czar and that he will head a restructured AIDS office. Said to be close to HHS Secretary and former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, Evertz is president of the state chapter of the Log Cabin Republicans (LCR) and was one of a dozen openly gay party members who met with Bush in Austin, Texas, during the presidential campaign.

Asked to comment on the appointment, Kevin Ivers, a national LCR spokesperson, instead referred Bay Windows to a statement on its Web site, which reported that Evertz met with then-candidate Bush in April 2000 and played a key role in a July meeting with LCR Executive Director Rich Tafel and Thompson on a successful LCR effort to insert language on national AIDS policy into the Republican Party platform.

A Roman Catholic, Evertz has been a fund-raiser for the Wisconsin Right to Life anti-abortion group and a Catholic AIDS ministry. His current job is with a Lutheran foundation for the aging. As a volunteer, he worked with Governor Thompson on legislation providing hospital visitation rights for gay and lesbian partners. He also raised funds for AIDS clinics in the state and a mission hospital in Kenya. In 1994, he ran unsuccessfully for the Wisconsin Legislature as an openly gay Republican candidate.

Instead of capitalizing on the historic appointment on a gay person to head the AIDS office, the White House declined to discuss Evertz's sexuality or its significance in either politics or policy, living up to Bush's repeated campaign statements that he would not consider an individual's sexuality in making appointments.

Evertz will head a restructured AIDS office. Instead of reporting directly to Bush as his predecessors in the Clinton administration did, he will report to Margaret LaMontaine, the president's domestic policy adviser. He will be a member of the White House Domestic Policy Council, according to an administration official.

The new office will have a staff of four, including Evertz. Sandra Thurman, Clinton's AIDS czar, headed a staff of nine. The office will include one staff member from the State Department and another from HHS. Secretary of State Colin Powell and Thompson will head an AIDS task force that Clinton created. Evertz will be a member. Inclusion of the State Department marks an expansion of the AIDS office's scope and structure to focus on the increasing seriousness of the epidemic in countries such as Africa, India and those in Eastern Europe.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) praised the appointment, but expressed concern about funding in the Bush adminsitration's new budget. According to the HRC, the president's 2002 budget requests $1.8 billion for the treatment and care of people with AIDS through the Ryan White CARE Act, the same amount Congress provided this year, which the organization called insufficient. And, the HRC points out, the budget does not take into consideration the rising cost of treatments, including the expanding arsenal of expensive drugs used to combat the disease.

While welcoming the Evertz appointment, NGLTF Executive Director Elizabeth Toledo noted that although Bush's proposed budget significantly boosts spending for international HIV/AIDS efforts and for research into a vaccine for preventing HIV, his proposals for treatment and prescription drugs for AIDS patients who receive Medicare payments are ``disappointing."

Reaction to the Evertz appointment contrasted with alarm activists had expressed to Bay Windows over the appointment of three representatives of the religious Right to key positions in the Bush administration.

Bush has nominated Kay Coles James, an evangelical Christian with ties to the Family Research Council (FRC) who opposes affirmative action and abortion rights for women, as director of the Office of Personnel Management.

If confirmed by the Senate, James would oversee enforcement of Executive Order 13087, signed by Clinton, which bars employment discrimination against civilian gays and lesbians in the federal government.

Activists also are concerned about the nomination of Claude Allen to be the second in command at HHS as deputy secretary and Wade Horne as HHS assistant secretary for family support. As press secretary to U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms in his 1984 campaign against then-North Carolina Gov. Jim Hunt, Allen criticized Hunt because of his ``links with the queers," according to NGLTF spokesperson David Elliot. Horne, says Elliot, is a leader of the National Fatherhood Initiative, which contends that feminism and the gay-rights movement are to blame for displacing men for heads of households. ``His group says that a family must have two parents," Elliot told Bay Windows. ``One has to be a man and another a woman or you've got a dysfunctional family."

James as White House personnel policy adviser ``is not just the fox guarding the hen house; it's the fox eating the hens," Elliot said. ``She's a wolf in wolf's clothing." He pointed out that James is dean of Regent University, which is headed by television evangelist Pat Robertson, and has been a board member of the National Right to Life Committee and Focus on the Family, which he described as the most powerful anti-gay group existing today. Its annual budget of more than $20 million is larger than that of the Christian Coalition.

Elliot contends that nominations such as these ``that fly in under the radar screen" are as worrisome as highly visible cabinet nominations: ``These are the folks who are going to implement policy."

He labels the Bush administration as the most conservative in history, ``more so than Bush's father and even Ronald Reagan."

In an interview, HRC spokesperson David Smith said the group also is concerned about the James nomination: ``Clearly, she is going to be the chief human resources individual and that is obviously a position that has the potential to do harm. We're hoping that her views on matters of concern to our community can be explored in the confirmation process."

While expressing concern over her nomination, Leonard Hirsch, president of the 4,500-member Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Employees of the Federal Government, does not believe James is in a position to derail enforcement of the executive order, the future of which is uncertain.

``The good news is that the policy has been out for a few years," Hirsch said in an interview. ``She should not be particularly involved. The avenues in which to implement it have been vetted for a number of years and at this point should be sufficiently below her level, unless she was put in with the mandate to change it."

Hirsch said his organization's sources in the White House and its allies in the gay community indicate there are no plans to overturn the executive order. ``On the other hand, they haven't said it out loud and that is the key point. It appears that they are trying to play to both of their constituencies here -- the far Right, which does not want to hear GLBT affirming language in any sense, even in terms of non-discrimination in the workplace, and those in the GLBT world who worked assiduously for Bush's election and clearly did that with the expectation that their support would make the administration recognize that they had a constituency that they needed to take care of."

Hirsch said he agrees that the Bush administration is the most conservative in history: ``There's no comparison between this administration, even Reagan and Bush I. It is far more conservative, far more anti-government in more than rhetoric, far more anti-gay in terms of where these people are coming from. In terms of GLBT discrimination, I do not think we will see a shift in terms of workplace conditions and harassment, but I don't think we're going to see a very supportive or engaged administration."

Other sources contacted by Bay Windows interpreted the Evertz appointment as a shell game aimed at trying to show the Bush administration is moving toward the center while still trying to satisfy its core of conservative supporters.

``It's a classic trick on the part of Bush, saying, `Look, we have a gay person in this position,'" observed Larry Kessler, executive director of the Boston-based AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts. ``Evertz comes from basically church-based industries. He's Catholic and has been in a relationship for seven years, but I don't think he will be out there talking about safer-sex or harm-reduction campaigns. I'm not jumping up and down here. He could prove us all wrong, but I'll wait and see. The biggest fear was that they were going to eliminate the office completely. We have a glass here, but whether it is half empty or half full I don't know. It may be on the half empty side."

While Kessler acknowledges that it is important to address the epidemic's devastation in other countries, he warns, ``We should be under no illusions it is over here. So many people are resting on their laurels. We have a double-edged sword. We want to make sure prevention initiatives and campaigns continue to work in this country, yet we must work in Africa because it might change its character there and create a pandemic with a whole new virus we have no clues about."

He noted that Evertz' position on the organizational ladder will be two rungs down from that occupied by Sandra Thurman in the Clinton White House. Thurman, he pointed out, sat in on the daily morning briefings with Clinton and had his ear.

``It's a setup, because even if this guy is really good and wants to do it all, he's not going to be able to. Things take so much time in Washington and there are so many protocols. To get anything done, you really need good talented staff who can do some of that advance work. I'd call him a relative lightweight. His career has not been AIDS activism. It has been in development. He is basically a fund-raiser. That is about his only claim to fame."

Cindy Jordan, deputy director of the National Stonewall Democratic Federation, said she believes the Evertz appointment is ``a step in the right direction" but that there are ``some glaring concerns: The office is horribly underfunded and Bush is cutting funds, especially on the domestic front. He says there is more for fighting AIDS in Africa, but he hasn't said anything about funding here at home, particularly for gay African-American men."

Jordan said she is also concerned that the administration is not acknowledging Evertz' sexuality. ``It certainly doesn't come anywhere near what the Clinton administration did by appointing more than 150 gays and lesbians and was proud to say it."

She contended that the Bush administration ``deliberately muddies the water" and the Evertz appointment is an example: ``He's a Catholic guy who's pro-life. It's a back-handed compliment. It's liking saying, `Here's your openly gay person, but he is nowhere near in line with the majority of the gay community.'" She said she wants to know what his convictions are as a Catholic. ``As a lesbian, it is important à that he doesn't support a woman's right to choose."

She concluded by referring to an LCR message that sexual orientation is not the end-all and be-all. ``Well, if orientation is not the end-all and be-all, then Evertz is not a good appointment."

Others were more conciliatory. ``I think we need to give the administration a chance," Smith of HRC emphasized. ``That Evertz has close ties with Tommy Thompson speaks volumes. Thompson has expressed a desire to have a federal response to AIDS, both internationally and nationally. We understand Thompson had a lot to do with this appointment and that says something about his commitment, which is welcomed."

Elliot of the NGLTF pointed out that Evertz should not be faulted because of his faith. Calling the appointment ``historic," he did say the organization strongly disagrees with the Catholic Church's anti-abortion position. ``But the question is, are we going to use that as a litmus test in each and every instance, even when the job in question has little to do with reproductive choice? It's important not to stereotype a person who is Roman Catholic as being against using safe-sex measures just because they happen to be pro-life. Not all Roman Catholics in this country agree with the pope."
01/04/12
BY010401

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