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​They Couldn’t Get It at a Pharmacy 100 Years Ago: Instead They Got Arrested

6/21/2016

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In June 1916 most women were unable to obtain birth control information – much less contraceptive pills, patches, or vaginal rings. Distribution of basic contraceptive guides was illegal in most jurisdictions. Such was the case in Portland, Oregon when Sanger visited the city as part of her first national lecture tour. After her first talk at a local theater, the all-male city council met in secret and prohibited the dissemination of Sanger’s Family Limitation pamphlet. A few days later local authorities arrested and jailed Sanger, local physician Marie Equi, and other supporters for distributing the guide. Portland was the only city on the tour to do so, prompting local attorney C.E.S. Wood to chide, “Portland is the most ridiculous of cites.” 

Today women in Oregon and California can pick up birth control prescriptions and products at their local drugstores without the time and expense of a doctor visit. Women in several other states can use smart phone apps or websites to obtain prescriptions from clinicians after answering personal health questions either online or by video. Products available include birth control pills, morning-after pills, patches and rings. There are variations for delivery or pick-up but a few outfits ship directly to a location women specify. 

The new “digital distribution” systems represent a considerable shift in access to reproductive information and products. So far, these new services have not met the fierce resistance of birth control and abortion foes. Birth control advocates recognize drawbacks with the easy availability via apps and the internet: many of the digital services do not provide insurance coverage for birth control products and many women cannot afford smart phones or internet access. But proponents hope that digital distribution will encourage more women to adopt effective contraception and thus reduce unintended pregnancies and the need for abortions. 

One early-adopter of the birth control apps told the New York Times: “It’s been for years going through these nonstop hoops of fire to get birth control…if I went through my normal physician and the referrals, I would be six months pregnant before I would get my hands on it.” 
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Sources: 

The New York Times (“Birth Control via App Finds Footing Under Political Radar,” June 18, 2016) mentions these digital sites for birth control prescriptions: lemonaidhealth.com  , Prjktruby.com , https://nurx.co. , www.virtuwell.com . Also available through Planned Parenthood Care clients in several Western states and Minnesota. 

“Portland Moral or Ridiculous?” Oregonian, June 21, 1916, 10. 

Michael Helquist examines Margaret Sanger’s 1916 visit to Portland, Oregon in “Lewd, Obscene, and Indecent”: The 1916 Portland Edition of Family Limitation” in the Oregon Historical Quarterly, Summer 2016. In the same issue, Helquist co-wrote with artist Khris Soden “Adventures in Family Planning” a history comic about Sanger’s arrest. (Both the article and comic can be downloaded here.

Helquist received the Joel Palmer Award for his article in the Oregon Historical Quarterly (Spring 2015) titled: “Criminal Operations”: The First Fifty Years of Abortion Trials in Portland, Oregon” (click for pdf download).

Helquist’s biography “Marie Equi, Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions,” published by Oregon State University Press, 2015 was named a 2016 Stonewall Honor Book for Nonfiction by the American Library Association. ​
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​Portland’s 1907 Rose Parade “A Triumph”: Marie Equi Wins Prize Months after Same-Sex Scandal

6/10/2016

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This Saturday, June 11, Portland, Oregon celebrates its annual floral extravaganza with the spectacular Rose Festival Parade. Portlanders and tourists will revel in the 109th observance of the pageant; the first started rolling in 1907 with decorated vehicles rolling along the 2 ½ mile route.   
 
Among the contestants were Dr. Marie Equi and her girlfriend Harriet Speckart. Months earlier the pair’s relationship was splashed on city newspapers over an inheritance dispute between Harriet and her mother. Equi was accused of seducing the younger woman – Harriet was in her 20s – in order to plunder the family’s riches. Newspapers suggested Equi wielded a “mysterious, hypnotic power” over Speckart. The pair weathered the storm of what today would be touted an “outing” of their lesbian relationship.
 
Here’s an excerpt from the new biography Marie Equi: Radical Politics & Outlaw Passions, published by Oregon State University Press:
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 “In June 1907, with the city bedecked everywhere with roses, Equi and Speckart participated in Portland’s biggest celebration of the year: the first Rose Carnival and Fiesta. The day before the parade, local gardeners donated tens of thousands of roses to decorate floats in the official festival colors – pink, rose, and green. On Saturday June 22, a few scattering clouds gave way to sunshine for the grand floral parade.
 
“Equi and Speckart, dressed in their finery, joined hundreds of other Portlanders who competed for awards in the parade. They took their position in the category of “Carriage and Pair” – a four-wheeled carriage pulled by two horses – with two other entries. They rode a loop through the downtown, all the time enjoying the cheers of more than one hundred thousand onlookers thronged on the sidewalks. Later that day the judges announced winners among the various entries and awarded Equi and Speckart second place and a fifty-dollar prize. What better outcome for their day together –and their public display of companionship – than recognition and applause.” 
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Doctor Who First Reported AIDS Encountered Criticism, Lost University Position

6/7/2016

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Six years after reporting the first cases of AIDS to federal health authorities (in June 1981), Michael Gottlieb MD was denied tenure at the UCLA Medical School amid criticism of his professional work and activism. I interviewed Gottlieb in April 2001 – 20 years after his AIDS reports heralded the start of a deadly global scourge. Below are excerpts from the interview. (My interview with Gottlieb five years after his 1981 report appeared as Part One in this two-part series, posted June 5, 2016 on my Politics and Passions blog at michaelhelquist.com).
 
PART TWO: 20 Years Later, AIDS Pioneer Reflects on Professional Conflicts
 
For Michael Gottlieb, AIDS brought a degree of celebrity when he became the consulting physician for Rock Hudson. When AIDS claimed the life of the famous actor, Gottlieb co-founded the American Federation of AIDS Research (AmFAR), the first truly national fundraising effort for AIDS treatment and research. He became a strong advocate for patient rights, and he supported community organizers on the local and national levels. He continued to see patients as part of his research and coped with their deaths. He also faced another reality: political resistance and unexpected consequences.
 
Years earlier Gottlieb had accepted a position at UCLA with hopes of improving the success of bone marrow transplants. Two days a week he saw patients with auto-immune diseases, rare immune deficiencies, and allergic conditions. The rest of his time he was doing research and teaching. But then AIDS changed his plans for a productive career of patient care, research, and teaching.
Denied Tenure at UCLA
Six years after he announced his discovery, Gottlieb was denied tenure at UCLA. His academic association was severed, and he no longer had access to the research facilities and teaching opportunities at his medical school. “The explanation was that my body of work did not merit it (tenure),” he recalled. He suspects more was involved. “I was an activist. I was probably a little too progressive on HIV issues for my medical school, and there were the inevitable academic political issues.”
 
In addition to co-founding AmFAR, Gottlieb also served on the board of directors for the new AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA), an organization developed by the gay and lesbian community. He was appointed the California AIDS Advisory Committee to assist the state health department with its AIDS prevention strategies. The work took him away from his laboratory and UCLA.
 
“When I was at committee meetings,” he explained, “I was criticized for not being on campus.” In his own defense, he added, “I had been very productive. I helped the institution establish a foothold in a new area (HIV/AIDS) for which they have received significant funding.”
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The original article featured Dr. Michael Gottlieb in 1986, photo Ken Rogers/Black Star.
 Today, in 2001, Gottlieb misses teaching and the active research work, but he is at peace with his early advocacy efforts. “I have no regrets for that contribution, and I am proud to have been association with APLA and AmFAR. However, if I had a chance to do it over again, I would be a little more cautious, maybe pursuing just 80% of those involvements.”

​Relies on Private Practice
Gottlieb’s loss of tenure led to a new path. He established his private practice in Los Angeles, and 85% of his patients were exclusively those with HIV.  Others presented with hepatitis C, other viral diseases, and general internal medicine concerns.
 
“In the pre-HAART (highly active anti-retroviral therapy, also known as the “AIDS cocktail” era, I can’t say that doctors’ prescriptions of therapy were any better than patients’ prescriptions. Doctors and patients played the same scenarios over and over again. You were there for your patients, and they knew that. You were holding their hands, helping them manage their fevers. It was a little like battlefield medicine, like working in a MASH unit, helping patients recover enough to send them out to do battle some more.”
 
AIDS Made Him Better Doctor
Today Gottlieb’s practice reflects the advances in AIDS treatment, and he notes the impact on his own medical practice.
 
“There’s no doubt that AIDS care made me a better doctor just as it did for nurses and other health care professionals. We all learned a whole more about the nature of compassion and the value of human interaction as a result of these experiences. We learned to appreciate life even more and to prioritize in your life for what was really important.”
 
Gottlieb also notes that patients approach their HIV care somewhat differently today, after years of personally researching every new experimental treatment.
 
“There is a little more reliance on doctors now that treatment is more scientifically grounded and now that therapy requires more fine-tuning of drug regimens. In the past, patients thought they had to stay on top of it all themselves; now patients seem to have given up some of that control over their care.”
 
Gottlieb said he also advises patients to not make HIV all-consuming in their lives, to not spend hours on end chatting over the internet about their condition. For himself, he stays current on vaccine development and gene therapy, and he participates in major conferences.  He also tried to help get the early AIDS drug AZT approved for neo-natal mothers with HIV.
 
Although AIDS brought him great opportunities to influence what he once called “the major health threat of the century,” it also presented setbacks and disappointments in his personal life. He has retained his passion for his life today. “I love medical practice, I love treating patients.” Gottlieb has fashioned in his own path. “I am content with that,” he concluded.
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​Pioneer Reported First AIDS Cases in 1981; I Interviewed Him on the 5th and 20th Anniversaries 

6/5/2016

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Thirty-five years ago today on June 5, 1981, the US Centers for Disease Control reported the first appearance of a new cluster of disease symptoms in previously healthy young gay men in Los Angeles. The CDC has been counting cases of the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) ever since. In the early 1980s I started covering the AIDS story in LGBT publications – nationally in The Advocate and in city newspapers across the country. I also wrote for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Ms. Magazine, and the American Medical News. On the 35th anniversary of this sobering event, I reflect on the 31 years that I have been living with AIDS. I also wanted to share two of my early AIDS interviews with the pioneer who first reported AIDS cases to the CDC. 
​

The researcher who reported his findings to the federal agency was Michael Gottlieb, a 33-year-old assistant professor at the UCLA Medical School. I interviewed Gottlieb on the occasion of both the 5th and the 20th anniversaries of the CDC report. Below are edited excerpts.

PART ONE: “Five Years after Report on AIDS, MD Assesses “Health Threat of the Century,” American Medical News, June 20, 1986

“Reporting it to the CDC and to the world – that was an exciting time. We had no sense of the eventual serious side of this epidemic. That’s sobering, but the early months were very exciting.” Michael Gottlieb had reported to the world something new in medicine, a rare opportunity for someone just starting his career. He had just completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford University, studying ways to prevent organ graft rejection. His field was the effect of radiation on the immune system. At UCLA Gottlieb intended to collaborate with the bone marrow transplant program. 
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“I was seeing patients two days a week, doing research, and teaching the rest of the time,” he recalled. He saw patients who presented with rare immune deficiencies and auto-immune diseases. “And then I encountered what we would later call AIDS.” 
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The original article featured Dr. Michael Gottlieb in 1986, photo Ken Rogers/Black Star.
Community physicians in Los Angles referred two patients with fevers of unknown origin and weight loss to Gottlieb in November of 1980. He diagnosed Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP), the killer disease that people with AIDS would come to fear most of all in the early days of the epidemic. When he saw a third case of PCP in a previously healthy man, “We knew we were on to something.” ​
“Even the First Cases Were Scary”
The excitement of the first report wore thin quickly, Gottlieb remembers. “Even the first cases were scary. There was an inexorable progression of disease, and we didn’t have any tricks to improve quality of life for patients. I began to get uneasy when we reported the initial five cases, but I really got scared when the case numbers hit 50.” 

A month after Gottlieb’s report, New York and San Francisco physicians noted 26 cases of Kaposi’s sarcoma in gay men. Now the CDC recognized a multi-centric epidemic not confined to one location and an outbreak that involved serious opportunistic diseases and cancer. 

Five years later there are now 20,000 cases of AIDS worldwide. Gottlieb noted the milestones that followed: French researchers and later their American counterparts discovered the AIDS virus in 1983 and 1984; AIDS awareness spiked with news of TV and film actor Rock Hudson’s AIDS diagnosis, and AIDS treatment centers developed in the country. 

Becoming One of Rock Hudson’s Physicians
Gottlieb became an AIDS authority in the years that followed his report, and he soon found himself thrust into the media spotlight when the physician of Rock Hudson asked him to consult on the case. Gottlieb emphasized that the tragedy of Hudson’s illness and death was the same as that of the 10,000 others who have died of AIDS. But he admitted that giving news conferences changed dramatically. “There were more microphones on the lectern than I had ever seen before.” 

Gottlieb has faced untold numbers of reporters during the last five years, and he has learned to choose his words carefully. But when he is asked what makes him angry about working with AIDS, his feelings surge to the surface.

“It makes me angry when AIDS is not taken seriously enough – when institutions fail to respond appropriately, when they play games of political convenience. I’m talking about the federal government and all levels of government. The lack of response is only going to make the problems worse,” he said. ​
Advocacy vs. Risk to Careers
He and his colleagues who are committed to bringing a speedy end to the epidemic face a common challenge: How much can you bite the hand that feeds you with research grants? “We push the system as hard as we can, and we look to where we can make a difference,” Gottlieb said. “They younger researchers particularly look to where they can advance knowledge toward a cure and effective treatments, balancing their advocacy against risks to their careers.”
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Photo Ken Rogers/Black Star
One year earlier Gottlieb joined Dr. Mathilda Krim of a New York based AIDS organization to form a fund-raising foundation, the American Federation of AIDS Research (AMFAR). (2016 note: For many Americans, AMFAR became known as an endeavor of celebrity Elizabeth Taylor). After its first year, AMFAR was ready to award more than $1 million in AIDS research grants. Gottlieb said he expected the federation to raise $10 million a year. 

Even in the early years, controversy and conflict hovered over every aspect of AIDS research, treatment, and prevention campaigns. Gottlieb became entangled in a dispute over appropriate images and language targeted to high-risk groups, especially when the materials were financed by local or federal government funds. He took an assertive, sometimes defiant, stand. “It is imperative to communicate risks … with whatever language it takes,” he said. 

An AIDS Vaccine After Two More Years
What does Gottlieb think the next year holds for the efforts against AIDS? “In a practical sense we’ll see better drugs, more widespread drug trials involving more people, and significant progress toward a vaccine.” He estimated that a vaccine might be available in a minimum of two years. 

For his own future, Gottlieb hedged, saying only that he expected to always be involved with AIDS with an emphasis on experimental therapies. “I’m going to pursue that work in an environment that gives me the greatest degree of daily satisfaction, and I can’t tell you more than that, he said.  “What I am comfortable with is knowing that what I am doing is right.” ​​

COMING Tuesday, June 7
PART TWO: Dr. Michael Gottlieb Reflects on 20 Years of the AIDS Epidemic, Being Denied Tenure at UCLA and His Regret About Not Being More Cautious With Advocacy 
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MARIE EQUI "deserves wide readership and much debate"

6/5/2016

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Professors, Teachers, Students: 
For Your Consideration

Marie Equi: Radical Politics 
and Outlaw Passions

Michael Helquist
Oregon State University Press, 2015 
ISBN 978-0-87071-595-2

2016 American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book 



“Undergraduate students in my Women’s History course loved Michael Helquist’s book about the fiery and uncompromising radical physician Marie Equi. His balanced, gracefully written, and accessible study introduces students to the Progressive era, suffrage movements, the IWW and workers’ struggles, the Red Scare, women’s social and political networks, and women’s health issues and illegal abortion.”
Laurie Mercier, Claudius O. and Mary W. Johnson Professor of History
Washington State University, Vancouver


“Meticulous archival research…A splendid contribution to both feminist and lesbian history.”
Bettina Aptheker, Professor, Feminist Studies Department
University of California, Santa Cruz


“Helquist is particularly drawn toward Equi’s relationships with other women, both romantic and political, with strong results for both the narrative and our understanding of how these connections enabled and sustained an unconventional life …This biography deserves wide readership and much debate.”
Oregon Historical Quarterly

“An important contribution to scholarship on female-female sexuality in the Progressive Era … most histories of homosexuality during this period focus on relationships between men.”
Committee on LGBT History
American Historical Association

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Michael Helquist 
Winner of the 2016 Joel Palmer Award, Oregon Historical Quarterly 
MarieEqui.com  
michael.helquist@gmail.com

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​“Prepare to Die, Workingman”: Activist Lesbian Marie Equi Disrupts Monster War Preparedness Parade in Portland, Oregon

6/3/2016

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On this day 100 years ago – June 3, 1916 – Portland, Oregon staged its largest ever parade with 15,000 to 20,000 people organized into one long enthusiastic column that marched through the city’s downtown streets. They massed together in support of War Preparedness in a time when the hostilities in Europe threatened to draw the US into what would become World War I. It was a time of unity with the thrill of shared purpose and resolve. But not for one Portlander.
 
Dr. Marie Equi, a physician and radical activist, was known by many to be a “lesbian” although the term was not in common use. She believed preparedness was a ploy to rack up profits for capitalists and oligarchs, ready to reap rewards from the US entering the war. Other Portlanders objected to the national fervor for war readiness, but none took their protests into the streets.
 
In the early evening Equi steered her automobile into the parade route. She had mounted an American flag at the front of the vehicle but strapped on its sides were banners that warned, “Prepare to Die, Workingman – JP Morgan & Co. Want Preparedness for Profit – Thou Shall Not Kill.”  She rolled into the march behind the local bar association, a group known for its preparedness fervor. The mix was combustible.
 
Quick and fierce, the marchers attacked. The attorneys struck first, yanking the banner from Equi and striking her with it. “I was scratched and bruised, and my hand bled,” she said. “They tore the banner to shreds and stomped on it.” At one point, a mob of fifty angry men surrounded and taunted her, yelling, “That’s what we do to your banner, now here’s ours.” The men thrust the American flag into her hands, daring her to rip it. Equi countered, “Your flag is no protection to me.” She put up a fight until the police intervened and arrested her and two of the men. They were later released.
 
Not for several more months did the US become a war combatant. Americans first re-elected President Woodrow Wilson in November 1916. Many, including Marie Equi, believed Wilson’s promise to keep the nation out of the war. He kept it until April 1917.
 
Sources
“Preparedness Is Cry of Thousands,” Morning Oregonian, June 3, 1916, 1.
Article based on excerpt from Marie Equi, Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions by Michael Helquist, published by Oregon State University Press, 2015.
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​Remembering Mark Feldman - One of the First Fifty Men in San Francisco Diagnosed with AIDS – Who Died Thursday, June 2, 1983

6/2/2016

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Thirty-three years ago today Mark Feldman of San Francisco died of AIDS complications. He was one of the first in the city to disclose publicly his diagnosis in talks and newspaper interviews and on radio and TV reports. He was the first to coin the term “person with AIDS” and thus rejected the identity foisted on him and many others of being “AIDS victims.” He also refused the less-offensive tag of being an around-the-clock “AIDS patient.” “I am a person, a person with AIDS,” he proclaimed. He would be neither a pariah nor a disease.

​In the six-and-a-half months he had before succumbing to AIDS, Feldman helped lay the foundation for what became an international People with AIDS movement. These PWA’s – the shorthand they used – demanded a voice in AIDS policy, treatment, and politics. Their perspective on the epidemic disease was one that needed to he heard.  Their efforts contributed to the activism that changed national and global health care and services.
 
Today I googled Mark Feldman to see what the internet now carried about him. I found an article from ten years ago by Dan Pine writing for the J Weekly.com, a publication covering the San Francisco and Bay Area Jewish community. Titled, “How AIDS Battered One SF Synagogue: A 25-Year Retrospective,” it begins:
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Mark Feldman (l) and Michael Helquist at a 1982 reception in the Green Room of the San Francisco War Memorial Building. Feldman sometimes wore a gold crown to counter the stigma often encountered by a person with AIDS.
Mark Feldman had the world on a string. 

He was young, gregarious, and smart. As director of admissions at New College, his career was on the ascent. As a co-director of publicity for Congregation Sha’ar Zahav, a largely gay and lesbian San Francisco synagogue. He was an emerging leader in the local Jewish and gay communities. 

So synagogue colleagues were dumbstruck when Feldman announced at a board meeting he had come down with the “gay disease.


​The year was 1983. The term AIDS had not yet become widely known. And no one then fully understood what had descended so lethally on the gay community. But Feldman knew that he was facing a grave illness, and when he succumbed a short time later at age 31, he became the first Sha’ar Zahav congregant to die of AIDS.
The American Journal of Public Health of October 2013 addressed the early AIDS activism that Mark Feldman and several others helped establish. “Only Your Calamity: The Beginnings of Activism by and for People with AIDS” notes: 
AIDS activism by and for people with AIDS, distinct from gay activism responding to the threat of AIDS on the behalf of the whole community, started as a way of resisting the phenomenon of social death.  Social death, in which people are considered “as good as dead” and denied roles in community life, posed a unique threat to people with AIDS.​
Thirty-three years ago I struggled with the pain of losing someone who, over the course of several months in 1982/1983, I had come to care for deeply as a friend, a boyfriend, and a lover. Today I celebrate the life of Mark Feldman.
 
Sources:
  1. http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/29476/how-aids-battered-one-s-f-synagogue/
  2.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3780739/
  3.   “AIDS and Grief: A Personal Experience,” COMING UP! (the San Francisco-based lesbian/gay monthly), September 1983. Available in the archives of the San Francisco Public Library and the GLBT Historical Society of San Francisco.
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