Virginia Apuzzo Speaks Her Mind

This archival interview took place in the offices of the then New York-based National Gay Task Force in 1983. Virginia Apuzzo was the executive director at the time. The interview was published in whole or in part in USA Today and the New York Native, a gay and lesbian weekly newspaper. The following is an excerpt from the interview.

Charles Michael Smith: What type of gay rights legislation do you want to see enacted?
Virginia Apuzzo: First of all, the issue of legislation unfortunately is one that is not clear and clean in terms of how we divide our responsibilities in the gay and lesbian community. Legislation on the federal level has traditionally been the jurisdiction of the Gay Rights National Lobby and I co-chaired that organization from its inception [in 1967] till [the spring of] 1978. But among those things that are on our legislative agenda right now is certainly all of the appropriations legislation that has to do with AIDS. And you see it's the nature of the American system that the budget gets presented and then the Congress approves the budget and then as we needed additional appropriations that emanates from the House and goes to the Senate for confirmation. So we have a legislation that relates to appropriations around AIDS. That's one category. Two, immigration. The National Gay Task Force has had immigration as one of its key concerns since we began. I think there are few people who realize the unfairness of immigration. A person like Elton John or Quentin Crisp can come into the country because they are of high notoriety and are successful and [have] acknowledged sexual preferences. Carl Hill tried to get into the country [and] did not bode as successfully.
The Carl Hill case was the case we just won out in the San Francisco Federal [9th] Circuit District [Court]. The Carl Hill case was decided in our favor that the federal government could not keep him out. That could conceivably be appealed. I'm not sure. We sent a letter to [U.S. Attorney General] William French Smith urging that it not be appealed and also urging that they take the rationale that was confirmed and affirmed by the courts and utilize that to look again at the question of immigration and how they might be much more realistic as far as we're concerned.
CMS: Describe the Carl Hill case briefly.
VA: Carl Hill was from the United Kingdom, Britain, and attempted to come into the country and had a button that identified himself as a homosexual and was stopped and was detained and we predicated our case on utilizing that button to keep him out and his homosexuality is a violation of First Amendment rights. You might also take note of the fact that in the State of California there was a Pacific Telephone case which was litigated and it was determined that coming out is a political act. That therefore the whole question of First Amendment to homosexuality is something we've got to look at very, very carefully. I think that we're in the embryonic stages of the federal government finally beginning to deal with that.
When homosexuality was considered a disease, the [U.S.] Surgeon General could have jurisdiction over saying the person could be kept out because he or she was mentally ill. That's why people have to understand why the American Psychiatric Association and its [statement that homosexuality was not] an illness was so important. It was because the federal government could no longer predicate its argument against [allowing homosexuals into the country] on that argument.
CMS: How active will you be at the Democratic Convention in San Francisco next year?
VA: Very active. It's not just the Democratic Convention. The proper question is, if I may, how active will the gay and lesbian community be in the presidential election in 1984? That's the larger question because we have gay Republicans.
CMS: Does association with the Democrats hurt gays?
VA: No. No. I think that it's important that the gay and lesbian rights movement recognize that our diversity also includes Republicans, Conservatives, Libertarians, Independents. We're in every conceivable political party. My sense is that to the extent that gays and lesbians talk across party lines about the issues that concern us and that's important.
CMS: Is AIDS the biggest issue in the gay community?
VA: No. I think AIDS occupies a lot of our energy and our time but you must understand some things that putting AIDS in its context it certainly has commanded our undivided attention. But we lose 2,000 gays and lesbians a year to alcohol-related deaths. We are suffering from the same health care problems that the rest of America is suffering whether it's Alzheimer's disease or diabetes or hepatitis. We lose people every year to hepatitis. I think what AIDS ought to underscore for us is the dismal state of health care in America today. Sure, my consciousness has been raised through AIDS but my consciousness isn't fenced in by AIDS. AIDS ought to get us to think about all other issues.
CMS: Do you feel the government has done enough to solve the AIDS epidemic?
VA: No, obviously I don't. I've been yelling at them for about a year now. I think government is reactive government. That's probably my chief complaint. It's reactive. It walks an inch and you have to push it to say "That's not the mile, that's an inch." Government only reacts to pressure. So there's the necessity to keep that pressure escalated.
CMS: Has the press informed the public adequately about AIDS?
VA: The press has made a lot of headlines about AIDS. But one area that I would like to see the press look at is the worried well. Do you know what it's like for gay men who have fear all their lives about their sexual identity and having come to grips with that now have to fear their sexuality? That fear is a frantic fear. We've got a problem around stress and AIDS that hasn't begun to be dealt with. There's also some young men with AIDS who have stabilized their condition I think there ought to be more attention to that so that a person who gets diagnosed today doesn't feel like the only outcome is death. The third thing I don't think the press has paid enough attention to is [the fact that] there are 144 women with AIDS. We never read about those women. 54 percent of that group fall in no known risk category.
CMS: What are lesbians doing to fight AIDS?
VA: [There is] a program in which the lesbians in San Diego called Blood Sister donate blood so that gay men who could no longer give blood or were refraining from giving blood would not be left vulnerable. I'd like to see that catch on a lot more. There's a group called Women's AIDS Network nationally that's set up to deal with our concerns about AIDS, It's not exclusively a male phenomenon. But certainly women have been involved in this issue. I've probably talked more about AIDS than just about anybody around nationally.
CMS: Has AIDS strengthened gay solidarity?
VA: I think unfortunately the human being and the community of human beings do come together closer when there is a catastrophe. I think the gay community has done an enormous reassessment of how important it is to itself and to each other.
CMS: Writer Dennis Altman, on a radio show, said that he can't understand any gay or lesbian joining the military. What are your thoughts?
VA: People say that to me all the time. And that's my personal opinion. But we live with certain socio-economic realities in this country and for some people going into the military is a step up. We have to be about choice, about affording people the choices in their life. I wouldn't subscribe to the military but for some people it's the only way out of the situation. We can't judge other people's decision. We can only support them in their choices.
CMS: What did you think of Village Voice writer Anna Mayo's article about federal AIDS research?
VA: I think it ["Grandstanding on AIDS," Voice, November 1] was a homophobic article and it was a sexist article. It was also an article that seemed much more concerned--I think Richard Goldstein answered the article well this week in the Village Voice ["Acquired Mayo Deficiency Syndrome," November 8]. I think it was an absurd article. If Anna Mayo feels that I treated the federal government unfairly, then I would hope that where she feels the federal government treats gays unfairly, she will be equally as volatile in her response to them. But clearly it doesn't bother Anna Mayo that the federal government is the largest single discriminator against gay people and lesbians around. It doesn't faze her at all. The article was a trashy article. It was. I stand by it. If I had an opportunity to do it again, the only way I would alter it is to be more emphatic in my tone.
CMS: Mayo wrote: "[Congressman] Walker (R-Pennsylvania) tried to pin Apuzzo down on her charges of homophobia. Walker asked her--since she had gone on record with such very serious charges--to please name names and identify specific incidents of antigay discrimination in the health field so that he could personally see to it that such discrimination did not continue."
VA: She said I sputtered and I squeaked and if anybody knows me, they know I never squeaked in my life. When I want to say something, I say it pretty out front. The question of institutional or systemic racism or sexism or homophobia is not a ludicrous response. It is a response that underscores the fact that when something like racism or sexism or homophobia is so deep-rooted, people have it as part of the baggage that they carry with them, their perspective, everything about the way they see these populations is viewed by that underlying prejudice. That is my statement and I stand by that statement. And if there are gay people and lesbians who feel that the federal government is not homophobic, well, fine, let them step forward. But in dealing with this issue as in dealing with every other issue, I found institutional homophobia to be a major part of the resistance on the part of the federal government, just as I have found institutional racism and institutional sexism to be the determination in why things are not functioning at a more rapid rate in dealing with issues.