Letter: Arrest Hurts Agency
Omaha World-Herald,
April 4, 2002
World Herald Square, Omaha, NE 68102
Fax: 402-345-4547
Email: pulse@owh.com
Nebraska was among the first states to develop a comprehensive education
and service agency when the AIDS epidemic was developing, and many of us who
have worked with HIV-infected individuals professionally and as volunteers
have been proud to be associated with the Nebraska AIDS Project.
The recent arrest of the executive director of that agency (March
23 World-Herald) is disturbing to me as an openly gay man. To portray the
agency as having an "outreach" program that includes the alleged
groping of an undercover police officer in a public park setting is ludicrous
and offensive. It only promotes the stereotype that gay men are sexual
predators.
Promiscuity runs rampant in both the gay and straight communities these
days. But an official of such an agency allegedly behaving in this manner, and
portraying it as agency policy and practice, is totally unacceptable.
I trust that the NAP board will better define acceptable behavior for the
leadership of that agency, whose work is still far from over and is needed
even more today.
- Dean E. Pierce, Omaha
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