Washington Blade - May 22, 2009
Lou Chibbaro Jr.

An official with the Denver-based Gill Foundation, where McFarlane worked from 2003 to 2007 as executive director, said Monday that McFarlane's body was found by state police in a park in Truth or Consequences, N.M., in a remote desert setting that McFarlane often visited as an avid hiker.

"He was a great lover of the high desert," said Tim Sweeney, current executive director of the Gill Foundation, which provides funding for LGBT and AIDS organizations. "It was a place where he found peace and solitude."

McFarlane, 54, has been credited with helping to transform New York's pioneering Gay Men's Health Crisis, known as GMHC, into a highly effective private service agency for people with AIDS. His work with the organization in the 1980s helped the GMHC become the model for AIDS groups throughout the nation.

"The power of Rodger's many personal and professional accomplishments cannot be denied," said a statement prepared by McFarlane's friends and associates that was released Monday through the Gill Foundation.

"He was on the forefront of responding to the AIDS epidemic that ravaged our country -- and specifically the gay community -- in the 1980s," the statement says. "Before HIV even had a name, in 1981, Rodger set up the very first [AIDS] hotline anywhere."

McFarlane served from 1989 to 1994 as executive director of Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS, an AIDS fundraising and grant-making group. He was a founding member along with his domestic partner, Larry Kramer, of ACT UP New York, a protest group that pressured the federal government to do more to fight the AIDS epidemic.

During his tenure as head of the Gill Foundation, McFarlane took the lead in creating the group's sister organization, Gill Action, which advocates on behalf of LGBT causes.

A Navy veteran, McFarlane served as a licensed nuclear engineer who worked on strategic missions in the North Atlantic and Arctic regions aboard an attack submarine, according to the Gill Foundation statement.

"A gifted athlete, he was a veteran of seven over-ice expeditions to the North Pole," the statement says. "He also competed internationally for many years as a elite tri-athlete, and in 1998 and 2002, competed in the Eco-Challenges in Morocco and Fiji, where he captained an all-gay female-majority team."

McFarlane co-authored several books, including one with Kramer, "The Tragedy of Today's Gays." In 1993, he co-produced Kramer's play "The Destiny of Me," which was a sequel to Kramer's internationally acclaimed Broadway play "The Normal Heart."

"In a letter found with his remains, Rodger explained that he was unwilling to allow compounding heart and back problems to become even worse and result in [his] total debilitation," says the Gill Foundation statement.

"We know that Rodger was in a great deal of pain; already disabled in his own mind because he could no longer workout or do all of the outdoor activities he so loved.

"As his friends and family, we thought it was important that we communicate to the world that it has lost an amazingly wonderful individual who contributed so mightily to our humanity," says the statement.

In separate statements, officials from the Human Rights Campaign, National Gay & Lesbian Task Force and other groups mourned McFarlane's death.

"Rodger will always be remembered as a tireless leader who, throughout his career, set the LGBT movement on a straighter path to full equality," said HRC President Joe Solmonese. "In the darkest days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Rodger emerged as a hopeful leader who never backed down from a difficult struggle. His intense advocacy was only matched by his wit and good humor and our community will for generations be the beneficiary of his talents and dedication."
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