WASHINGTON -- President Reagan's newly appointed AIDS commission was criticized Thursday by gay rights and AIDS victim advocates as being unqualified, too right-wing and even hostile to persons with the disease.
Ann McFarren, executive director of the AIDS Action Council, termed Reagan's panel selections 'wishy-washy, reactionary and unconscionable'
McFarren said Reagan 'bypassed hundreds of experts who have devoted their lives to every aspect of the AIDS problem in favor of quasi-political appointments.'
The commission 'as it now stands,' she said, 'is dangerous to the AIDS cause, since every delay means thousands of people will die.'
Conservatives, meanwhile, generally praised the choices for the panel, but sharply criticized the selection of one open homosexual, Frank Lilly.
Phyllis Schlafly, who heads the conservative Eagle Forum, said she hoped the panel would 'make recommendations to protect the uninfected from the infected.'
Sen. Gordon Humphrey, R-N.H., said he was 'very disappointed and upset' that Reagan had named Lilly to the panel. Humphrey said he was concerned that the naming of a homosexual to the panel may convey the message 'that homosexuality is simply an alternative lifestyle.'
'The practice of homosexuality is immoral,' said Humphrey. 'The consequences of that immoral behavior is AIDS, and not only AIDS for homosexuals, but AIDS for many innocent victims, including children.'
Particularly singled out for criticism by gay rights and AIDS victim groups were panelists Penny Pullen, an Illinois Republican legislator who sponsored controversial AIDS legislation last year; Theresa Crenshaw, a California sex therapist; Cory Servaas, editor and publisher of The Saturday Evening Post, who last year announced she had found a 'cure' for AIDS; and Cardinal John O'Connor of New York, whose ministry includes a hospital for AIDS patients and a refuge for AIDS victims but who has criticized homosexuality as immoral and has prohibited special services for gays.
They are among 13 people appointed by President Reagan to the Commission on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Epidemic.
Jeff Levi, executive director of the National Gay-Lesbian Task Force said he did 'not have high hopes for this commission.'
Levi said several of the appointees -- including O'Connor and Pullen - 'have been overtly hostile to those with the disease, and that is disconcerting.' He said the only open homosexual on the panel, Frank Lilly, 'will be excellent, but I'm afraid he'll be a voice in the wilderness.'
He added the panel includes 'no AIDS service providers, no practitioners who treat AIDS or do research on it and no AIDS educators.'
Richard Dunne, executive director of the Gay Men's Health Crisis organization, said that the panel 'appears to consist largely of people who know little or nothing about this very complex issue.' Illinois State Rep. John Cullerton, a liberal Chicago Dem?SnI!n'$5who opposed Pullen's AIDS legislation, said Pullen 'represents the far right end of the spectrum on the subject' of AIDS.
Another Chicago Democrat, Sen. William Marovitz, said Pullen 'has not exhibited herself to be a consummate expert in the field of AIDS.'
Pullen was active in both Reagan presidential campaigns. Her legislation, which passed the state legislature in June but has not become law, calls for mandatory state tracing of AIDS' victims sexual partners, pre-marriage testing for the AIDS virus, testing of all inmates upon entry, testing of all hospital patients between the ages of 13 and 55, and testing of sex offenders and intravenous drug users.
