In A Rage over AIDS

By Ed Magnuson

The shouting erupted as John Cardinal O'Connor began his Sunday-morning sermon in St. Patrick's Cathedral on New York City's Fifth Avenue. "You bigot, O'Connor, you're killing us!" yelled one protester. Others stretched out in the aisles or chained themselves to pews. As police tried vainly to restore order, the Cardinal cut through the din. "Does everybody care to stand and pray?" he asked. In response the parishioners rose and chanted the Lord's Prayer at the top of their voices. As the service went on, police arrested 43 demonstrators, and carried many out on stretchers when they refused to stand. Churchgoers who dodged the chaos in the aisles and made it ! to the altar to take Communion saw one protester take a wafer from a priest and throw it to the ground.

The sacrilegious scene at St. Patrick's was the latest in a series of increasingly militant demonstrations, many against the Roman Catholic Church, staged by AIDS activists and supported by abortion-rights groups. The New York City protest, in which 4,500 people also rallied noisily outside the cathedral, was largely the work of the Aids Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). The group claims to have 40 chapters in the U.S. as well as others in Paris, Berlin and London. Another AIDS protest group this month threw red paint on four Catholic churches in Los Angeles and left posters of Archbishop Roger Mahony labeled MURDERER. In San Francisco gay activists smeared handprints in paint and hung posters depicting sex acts in the Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption and the archdiocese chancery.

New York City's Cardinal O'Connor is a favorite target of AIDS and abortion- rights protesters. He is among the most outspoken of Catholic bishops in condemning homosexuality and opposing the use of condoms to prevent AIDS. He has also supported the obstructionist tactics of such antiabortion groups as Operation Rescue that block abortion clinics and harass their clients. "It's quite ironic that Cardinal O'Connor is so angry over this act of civil disobedience, when he has espoused a form of it himself," said Ellen Carton, executive director of the New York State branch of the National Abortion Rights Action League. The Cardinal offered an answer as he gave the benediction for the interrupted Mass at St. Patrick's. Said O'Connor: "I must preach what the church preaches, teach what the church teaches."

ACT UP's demonstrations are designed to shock. "We expect tempers to run high," says Jay Blotcher, an ACT UP spokesman. "We target Roman Catholicism because no other religion so energetically tries to influence public policy." Outside four Catholic churches in Los Angeles last week, ACT UP protesters offered free condoms and safe-sex pamphlets to parishioners. Members of the group have occupied drug-company offices to demand lower prices for AIDS medicines, chained themselves to a banister at the New York Stock Exchange, and staged same-sex "kiss-ins" at last year's Democratic and Republican national conventions.

Such tactics, activists contend, are the only way to jolt the public's fickle attention back to the AIDS epidemic. "A lot of the AIDS stories are old news, so we have to be enticing to make reporters cover them," says Pat Christen, executive director of the mainstream San Francisco AIDS Foundation. As for vandalism, ACT UP member Mark Kostopoulos declares, "It's easier to scrape off paint than raise the dead."

But even some ACT UP members felt that breaking up a religious service was going too far. "What happened inside the church is unfortunate," concedes ACT UP spokesman Blotcher. "It weakened our position somewhat." Indeed, the St. Patrick's invasion turned off New York politicians long sympathetic to gay causes. Governor Mario Cuomo termed the disruption "shameful" and Mayor- elect David Dinkins called it "counterproductive." ACT UP's angry protests risk sparking equally angry reactions.

With reporting by Joelle Attinger/New York and Scott Brown/Los Angeles