Reform a ‘health aid’

Press, 14 March 1985, Page 1

Reform a ‘health aid’

PA Wellington Assertions by the member of Parliament for Invercargill, Mr Norman Jones, that legalising homosexuality will increase the spread of A.I.D.S. have been disputed. Wellington’s Lesbian and Gay Rights Resource Centre said if the laws banning homosexual acts between adult males were repealed, a prevention campaign for A.I.D.S. would be easier to implement.

The centre’s administrator, Mr Philip Parkinson said yesterday that under

the law, Government health authorities found it difficult to liaise with “gays” — the main risk group for A.I.D.S. — because they were legally criminals.

Mr Parkinson said that in the United States, 31 states each had between 10 and 600 cases of A.I.D.S. In 13 of those states homosexual sex was legal and in the rest it was illegal.

Ten other states in which “gay” sex was legal had less than eight cases each — two states in which “gay” sex was legal had no cases at

all, he said. Homosexual activity occurred everywhere, whatever the law said, Mr Parkinson said. Three overseas A.I.D.S. experts who had visited New Zealand last year all agreed that homosexual law reform was essential if the deadly disease was to be combated effectively, he said. The Government member for Wellington Central, Ms Fran Wilde, successfully introduced in Parliament last Friday, a private member’s bill to reform the laws on homosexuality.