Randy Shilts Memorial
Anonymous Sender
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Pioneering gay journalist Randy Shilts was
mourned by thousands of people at a service Tuesday that was briefly
interrupted by pickets from a fundamentalist church.
The Rev. Cecil Williams delivered a stirring eulogy at Glide
Memorial Church, saying Shilts will live on through such work as the
best-selling "And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS
Epidemic."
"Yeah, the band played on," Williams said. "You were the drum major
who told us to turn around."
Shilts, a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle who began
covering AIDS before it had a name, died Feb. 16 of the disease.
Inside the church, a crowd of more than 1,200 spilled into the
aisles and corners. Among the mourners were public officials, newspaper
and publishing executives and Shilts' colleagues and friends.
Outside, riot-clad police stood guard over an additional throng of
mourners estimated at more than 1,500, who listened to the service on
speakers.
Many carried signs opposing the Rev. Fred Phelps, minister of the
Westboro Baptist Church and Library in Topeka, Kan., who had threatened
to disrupt the service.
Phelps and his followers demonstrated last month at the funeral of
President Clinton's mother to protest Clinton's stand on gays in the
military.
But Tuesday's protest fizzled in less than a minute. About a dozen
Phelps supporters arrived about 20 minutes after the service started,
carrying signs with such slogans as "Shilts in Hell."
The demonstrators were pelted with eggs and fruit amid a deafening
chorus of boos and quickly fled under a police escort in vans parked
nearby. It could not be immediately confirmed whether Phelps was there.
The mourners carried white or pink carnations and carried signs
urging tolerance.
"The judgmental philosophy they represent is totally contrary to
God's word and the whole founding of America," said Steve Martin, 36,
of San Francisco.
Shilts's 1987 book, "And the Band Played On," documented the spread
of AIDS, its impact on society, and the government's slow response to
the burgeoning crisis.
He also wrote "Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the U.S.
Military," and "Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey
Milk."
02/22 2012 Shilts remembered as pioneering journalist
SAN FRANCISCO (Feb. 22) UPI - Randy Shilts was remembered Tuesday as a
pioneering journalist who helped put the AIDS crisis on the national agenda
while an anti-homosexual demonstration outside his memorial service fizzled in
the face of counter-protesters.
Hundreds of people crowded into Glide Memorial Methodist Church to say
farewell to the author and San Francisco Chronicle reporter who died of AIDS
last week at the age of 42.
Outside the service, a protest organized by a minister from Topeka, Kan.,
opposed to homosexuality came to a quick end when his group of a dozen
demonstrators was met by more than 100 noisy lesbian and gay activists and 50
police officers who kept the two sides separated.
The Rev. Fred Phelps and his followers from the Westboro Baptist Church and
Library withdrew from the area in a matter of minutes.
Inside the church, mourners rose for a standing ovation when the Rev. Cecil
Williams informed them Phelps had left the area.
"Undoubtedly he was too uncomfortable with San Francisco," Williams said.
During the service, speaker after speaker lauded Shilts for his tenacity,
commitment to the truth and desire to make a difference as a journalist.
"Randy was both the voice of gay America and the conscience of straight
America," said Dr. Marcus Conant, a leading AIDS specialist heralded in Shilts'
much-lauded book on the deadly disease, "And the Band Played On."
Shilts was one of the first openly homosexual reporters on a major
metropolitan newspaper when he was hired by the San Francisco Chronicle in 1981.
He covered the unfolding AIDS crisis in the 1980s full-time for the newspaper
and helped put the issue on the national agenda with his articles and book.
Last year he once again won critical acclaim for his new investigative work,
"Conduct Unbecoming," an examination of homophobia in the U.S. military.
Leroy Aarons, president of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists
Association, said Shilts demonstrated to his peers that "you can be gay, cover a
gay story and be fair and responsible."
Several speakers encouraged mourners to remember Shilts by taking a more
active approach to finding better treatment and a cure for the AIDS virus that
took the author's life.
In one of his last interviews broadcast on "60 Minutes" last Sunday, Shilts
joked about his fatal illness.
"As a good piece of advice I can give your audience," Shilts said. "If you
have a choice between having AIDS and not having AIDS, don't have it."
In the program, Shilts was quoted as saying last month, "hopefully, history
will record that I was a hell of a nice guy and that people who have criticized
me are a bunch of fools and bimbos."