Subject: Gay Health Groups File Suit Against U. S. Officials
Date: Published: 10/21/88 50 lines
Source:  Wall Street Journal.  Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. 

    Gay Health Groups
    File Suit Over Funds
    Against U. S. Officials
    ----  
    By Betty Wong
    Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

    NEW YORK -- Five gay health groups filed suit against top
 federal health officials, alleging that an appropriation bill
 that restricts funding for AIDS education violates the
 Constitution.
    The plaintiffs name Otis R. Bowen, secretary of Health and
 Human Services, and James O. Mason, director of the
 Atlanta-based U. S. Centers for Disease Control.  The suit,
 filed in U. S. District Court in Manhattan, seeks unspecified
 damages and asks the court to declare that enforcement of the
 section of the bill that restricts funding would be
 unconstitutional.
    Officials at both agencies were unavailable for comment.
    The plaintiffs allege that a section of the Labor-Health
 and Human Services Appropriations Bill, or the Helms
 Amendment, for fiscal 1988 violates the First and Fifth
 Amendments.
    The plaintiffs, which receive or seek federal funding for
 acquired immune deficiency syndrome education and prevention
 programs, are the Gay Men's Health Crisis, Hetrick Martin
 Institute and Fund for Human Dignity, all of New York;
 Horizons Community Services, Chicago, and San Antonio Tavern
 Guild AIDS Foundation, San Antonio, Texas.  They challenge
 some provisions as impermissible and discriminatory
 restrictions on their speech.
    The suit says the amendment states that no funds from the
 Centers for Disease Control "shall be used to provide AIDS
 education, information, or prevention materials and
 activities that promote or encourage, directly, homosexual
 activities."
    The complaint also says the amendment requires that all
 AIDS educational materials "emphasize abstinence from sexual
 activity outside a sexually monogamous marriage."  The
 plaintiffs allege that the act penalizes infractions by
 cutting future federal funding.

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