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Michael Petrelis: 
A Pioneer of AIDS Activism

ichael Petrelis, one of the earliest AIDS activists, was a co-founder, along with New York's Marty Robinson and Bill Bahlman of The Lavender Hill Mob, a forerunner to ACT UP.

Out for Good, a gay history book by two New York Times reporters, says of Michael Petrelis that in the mid-1980s he'd once played a pivotal role developing a grassroots activist movement. His actions often become mainstream news stories, frequently because he is at odds with gay and AIDS leaders.

Like a good agitator, Petrelis has championed causes and issues that would have otherwise gone without attention, had he not brought media and community focus to a host of concerns. He journeyed twice to Japan to secure justice for the brutal murder of U.S. gay sailor Allen Schindler.

He's organized boycotts against Miller and Marlboro products because their parent company, Philip Morris, was the largest corporate donor to Senator Jesse Helms. Not to mention boycotts against Florida orange juice when growers hired Rush Limbaugh as a spokesperson, and the Coors Brewery for its donations to antigay think tanks.

Courting controversy, Petrelis was named by The Advocate as "America's Nastiest Activist" for his political efforts. Keeping a watchful and statistical eye on the issues, Michael's commentaries have been quoted regularly in the mainstream press.

Indefatigable, he has exposed moneyed AIDS villains, among whom helists the executive director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Pat Christian, because she receives a $210,000 annual salary at a time when thousands of people living with HIV and AIDS need housing subsidies.

An earlier web site of his, the www.accountabilityproject.com, was launched to provide patients and the public with IRS Form 990 tax returns from AIDS service providers. Needless to say, the AIDS industry views him as an adversary.

Michael Petrelis is still considered--as he was in the mid-1980s-- a movement radical, one who has proved adept at keeping today's AIDS profiteers uneasily on their toes.
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Jack Nichols: Michael, the history book, Out for Good, written by Adam Nagourney and Dudley Clendinen, says that intense rivalries existed in 1986- 1987 when ACT UP was getting off the ground in Manhattan. What did you think of the book and the people in it?

Michael Petrelis: The book had a "we weren't there" quality that showed through and was a detriment to capturing our modern American homosexual history. I didn't like being called "pudgy" in the book and felt a bitterness from the authors toward many of the activists’ characters in its pages.

My friend and co-founder of The Mob and ACT UP, deejay Bill Bahlman, was described dismissively as "a string bean." I hope other books are written about this important time in our history by journalists who were there because Out for Good was as dry as toast.

Jack Nichols: I dumped a scathing review on Out for Good, partly because of the childish way its authors described many pioneers' unflattering physical characteristics. They were very unkind to Marty Robinson's memory and his important activist work.

Michael Petrelis: Marty Robinson was an integral part of the NYC movement in the 1960s and Nagourney and Clendinen didn't interview him before he passed away from AIDS. As Times reporters I don't think either writer can grasp the importance of street activists like Marty. Too much of the book focused on mainstream accomodationist leaders, and radicals were dismissed.

Jack Nichols: You're famous for keeping the media aware of how certain AIDS moguls--the heads of major support groups from San Juan to San Francisco itself--have used significant AIDS funding to finance their own trips to exotic vacation areas, etc. What have been some of the major controversies you've entered about these junkets and the like?

Michael Petrelis: Without question, the AIDS fraud scandal in San Juan is at the top of the list. In the early 1990s administrators at an AIDS institute diverted $2.5 million in Ryan White Care Act money away from direct services like medicines and food. The funds instead paid for political campaigns and luxury cars.

Despite years of complaints from patients and their advocates in Puerto Rico, the U.S. Congress ignored the AIDS fraud. Prosecutors eventually brought charges against the bureaucrats, and after lengthy trials, half a dozen people have been convicted and sentenced to jail. My sense is that this case is just the tip of the AIDS corruption iceberg.

Jack Nichols: You recently got royally under the skin of the San FranciscoHealth Department when it seemed to deliberately inflate its statistics purporting to show that AIDS was on the rise among gay men in The City. What tipped you off to the implications of this lie?

Michael Petrelis: Years of collected research, annual AIDS reports, monthly STD reports and minutes from the San Francisco Ryan White and HIV prevention councils showed contradictory information. For example, the April Ryan White council minutes show Dr. Willi McFarland, the city's AIDS epidemiologist, made a presentation about the endemic levels of HIV here. Endemic means flat or stable. So in April we are at endemic rates of HIV infection, but by late June McFarland was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle alleging the city had surged to "sub-Saharan African levels of HIV transmission."

To his credit, McFarland back away from such allegations after many questions were raised about his research. Unfortunately, his earlier quote had already traveled around the world three times. But the questions about the HIV numbers in San Francisco have not gone away and there is much skepticism about the motives of AIDS authorities.

Jack Nichols: Why do you think the Health Department officials gave out these false statistics? As I recall they were picked up by both of San Francisco's major newspapers and then the phony statistics were parlayed into newspapers afar.

Michael Petrelis: It seems to come down to money. San Francisco has received millions of federal dollars based on number of AIDS deaths, under the old way of appropriating for care and prevention services. But Republicans in the House have proposed basing funding on number of HIV infections, particularly living cases. I think the health department inflated the HIV rates when they did because millions of dollars in federal funding was at stake.

If the HIV infections in San Francisco are indeed truly climbing, I would be the first to say get more money for prevention programs. But the health department must recognize the "voodoo epidemiology" nature of its HIV allegations. It appears as though the only way we will know the real number of HIV infections is through HIV names reporting.

Jack Nichols: There are, it seems, plenty of folks still dependent on the funds distributed by Ryan White Care Act. Especially in the boonies. What do you think about the general level of decent usage made nationwide by people who administer these funds? They pay for the medicines that many uninsured people lack, for example, right? But what else? Is there another side?

Michael Petrelis: The bloated AIDS industry in San Francisco receives twice the amount per patient in Ryan White funding than any other city. As you can imagine, the industry is very interested in keeping that money flowing. At the same time, AIDS patients and newly infection HIV positives in states like Kentucky and Oklahoma languish on waiting lists for AIDS medicines and care.

If both the House and Senate agree to pass the version of the Ryan White Care Act that mandates more equitable distribution of federal funds based on new cases, than more money would shift to the boonies.

Frankly, San Francisco AIDS bureaucrats could easily offset relative minor reductions of federal funds if they scaled back their high six figure salaries and lavish spending habits. We are blessed here with private funding streams like the AIDS Walk and California AIDS Ride to supplement federal money. In order words, we could survive a cut in Ryan White money through help from AIDS benefits that happen all the time here.

Unlike Kentucky where you don't have a wealthy gay community concentrated in one neighborhood used to opening the checkbook to donate money.

Jack Nichols: Wouldn't the public's awareness that AIDS funds are much mismanaged tend to work mischief in Congress and elsewhere among those far-right zealots who favor eliminating Ryan White and AIDS funding altogether?

Michael Petrelis: We should be worried the funds are mismanaged and not reaching AIDS patients, which hurts them. If Congress had mandated more accountability and scrutiny of what happens to AIDS money when it reaches the local level, maybe we wouldn't see fraud like we do in Puerto Rico.

If the question is keep quiet about the AIDS fraud or try and end the
corruption, with Congress paying attention to efforts to clean up the AIDS industry, I say let's go with the latter. After all, the mismanagement is detrimental to the survival of patients.

Jack Nichols: You have been known to be allied, if I'm not mistaken, with other AIDS dissidents and yet you do not share their "denialist" views about HIV. Am I correct? Tell me how you differ from them. How do you regard the importance or non-importance of their anti-HIV efforts?

Michael Petrelis: I believe HIV is the cause of AIDS, but I am friends with members of ACT UP San Francisco. They don't think HIV is the cause of AIDS and despite our differences on these causal issues, we have worked together on a few matters. I do think everything about AIDS in America must always be re-evaluated, including the cause, and ACT UP San Francisco through dramatic tactics is getting media to examine their views.

I found last year when I proposed a bathhouse ballot initiative to reopen the baths that ACT UP San Francisco was the only group willing to gather signatures every day on the streets. The AIDS industry felt their decision to close the baths was made in 1984 and the prohibition should stay in place. Even though the health department lacked evidence showing bathhouses spread HIV, officials maintained baths were bad.

Well, San Francisco is supposedly facing sub-Saharan levels of HIV and the baths have been shuttered for more than 15 years. How can we experience a surge of HIV when there are no baths? Logic says we should examine HIV prevention in light of such allegations, but the only folks really saying and demanding a debate about HIV, its cause and spread, and prevention efforts in San Francisco is ACT UP. Someone has to hold the AIDS industry accountable for its actions.

Jack Nichols: You haven't burned out after all these years of AIDS activism. Can you briefly tell Gazette readers how you see the larger history of AIDS issues as matters have unfolded since you became active?

Michael Petrelis: I am too much an optimist to burn out. Besides, I have lived through the worst of the AIDS crisis and am so happy to be alive. In a way, so much has not changed. We are still debating the cause, how to treat HIV, ways to stop it, how to pay for prevention and treatment, etc. I see cycles of attention to key issues, like bathhouses in San Francisco, ebb and flow, but never really go away. Just like the concerns about federal funding and accountability.

All along since AIDS hit the gay community in 1981, we have demanded more and more money from the government. That hasn't changed and I think Congress and taxpayers are asking what the billions of AIDS dollars have bought the country when AIDS fraud grows more widespread and HIV prevention in San Francisco, if you believe the allegations of sub-Saharan levels of HIV, is failing. Tough questions without easy answers.

Jack Nichols: You’ve been a longtime advocate for the reopening of the baths in San Francisco. As I recall, in the past, some of the nation's best known baths, at least, became also some of the best AIDS awareness centers anywhere, making condoms available, holding safe-sex demonstrations, emphasizing health and fitness generally.

I, myself, have never been convinced that a person desiring sex is at greater risk at the baths than he is when, after a few drinks, he takes someone home from a bar. Especially since the old baths offered safe-sex education as a front lobby affair. Safe sex is safe sex, after all, and it can be practiced or not practiced anywhere.

What are your views on the baths? What impels you to ask the authorities to get them opened again?

Michael Petrelis: Honestly, I am sick of traveling to either Berkeley or San Jose to enjoy the pleasures of a bathhouse. Both Bay Area cities have great baths and if you go you will run into so many men from San Francisco! I want to reopen the baths in San Francisco because I prefer the privacy of cubicles to the circus-like atmosphere of sex clubs here.

Even though there are wash up facilities at sex clubs, I want full showers, hot tubs, dry saunas, steam rooms, rooms with doors. And let's not forget about safe sex information and plenty of water based lubes to use with penile and anal condoms.

By the way, neither Berkeley nor San Jose is experiencing surging rates of HIV, especially among gays. Yet, San Francisco which doesn't have a single bathhouse, is alleging out-of-control in terms of its infection rate. I think there is a connection to be made here.

Jack Nichols: Barebacking. Big interest in it is shown on the Internet. What is your view of this phenomenon?

Michael Petrelis: Sex without condoms has always been with us and always will. We recently have outed two men in San Francisco paid by the Centers for Disease Control to run HIV prevention programs with the message of a condom every time for every sex
act. These CDC prevention workers, Keith Folger of the Stop AIDS Project and Vince Gaither of the HIV Prevention Planning Council, were telling other gays to always use rubbers, but Folger and Gaither were advertising on bareback web sites.

I think individuals should make their own decisions about safe sex and how to practice it. However, I have a problem with the CDC paying gays in San Francisco to preach one message, but practice something else entirely.

I don't think anyone wants to consciously contract any STD, including HIV. I never believed those stories about so-called "bug chasers." Seems to me a lot of queer academics needed something new to write about and they fueled many of the stories about this supposed phenomenon.

Jack Nichols: Who are you voting for in the presidential race this year?

Michael Petrelis: Why, Ralph Nader, of course! I have never bought the argument of voting for the lessor of evils. I want to help build a third party in this country because the Democrats and GOP are really opposite sides of the same coin. I will grant you Al Gore is moderately better than George Bush, but that is not enough for me to pull the lever for Gore.

When gay Democrats bring up Nader's "gonadal politics" quote of 1996 as a way of saying he is not our friend, I chuckle. See, I remember in 1992 raising the issue of how Clinton as Arkansas attorney general in 1977 allowed a queer-specific sodomy law to be enacted. Yet, gay leaders in 1992 said Clinton would be gay friendly if we elected him. Why was Clinton's rotten gay record as governor deemed acceptable, but one little quote from Nader is not?

To me, the answer is how our leaders are beholden to the Democratic Party, by and large.

Jack Nichols: But isn't that just throwing away your vote?

Michael Petrelis: Not at all. My vote always count and is never tossed into the trash. Actually, my vote for Nader counts many times over. First, it counts for Nader. Second, it counts as vote against Gore. Third, it counts against Bush. Sound to me like my vote is three times, at least.

So much of Nader's activism over the decades has helped bring about equality in housing, banking, social services, environmental law and consumer protections, that I proudly will cast my vote for Nader as a gay AIDS activist.

Jack Nichols: Any last thoughts to provoke our readers?

Michael Petrelis: Yes. Visit my new web site, www.AIDS-Statistics.com and learn what current epidemiology shows about AIDS in America. I have gathered the latest AIDS statistics from all 50 states and the District of Columbia, all on one easy to navigate web site. You might be surprised to learn what is happening in AIDS diagnoses.

Finally, fight to let Nader into the presidential debates. If there is one thing I have learned in my years as an activist, it is that when the powers that be want to keep you out of a debate or meeting it is because they fear you and your ideas are too challenging to the status quo. I see the same thing happening with the so-called independent commission running the debates.

Just like we need more sunshine shedding light on the AIDS industry and its many problems, we also need Nader and the Green Party to bring more openness to our government and political system.

READ JACK'S COLUMN FROM LAST WEEK

 Jack Nichols is Senior Editor at GayToday www.gaytoday.badpuppy.com. Jack Nichols is also the author of Men's Liberation: A New Definition of Masculinity (Penguin); Welcome to Fire Island: Visions of Cherry Grove & the Pines (St. Martin's Press); and is co-author with Lige Clarke of I Have More Fun With You Than Anybody (St. Martin's Press); and Roommates Can't Always Be Lovers: An Intimate Guide to Male/Male Relationships (St. Martin's Press)

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