Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 16, 1993 TAG: 9306160269
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: Medium
"We are very pleased at what happened today," Dr. John L. Clowe, outgoing AMA president, said of policy-makers' decision to add the words "sexual orientation" to the group's nondiscrimination bylaw.
"There are many physicians in this country who feel they have been denied a place at the discussion in the [AMA] House of Delegates, in the house of medicine itself," Clowe added at a news conference after the vote at the AMA's annual meeting.
The House of Delegates had wrestled with the issue for five years. Opponents argued that the 297,000-member AMA never has refused membership to gay doctors.
But in testimony at an AMA hearing Monday, several homosexual physicians said they fear disclosing their sexual orientation to colleagues. They said many gay patients also fear revealing their orientation to physicians.
"We've all experienced homophobic comments in the doctors' dining room," said Dr. Matthew Brennan, a resident at the University of Chicago Medical Center.
Benjamin Schatz, executive director of the gay-oriented American Association of Physicians for Human Rights, said the vote Tuesday acknowledged that gay physicians are an increasing force in medicine.
Clowe emphasized during debate Tuesday that "we are not condoning any lifestyle at all," and said the bylaw change would prevent the issue from returning year after year.
In other matters, AMA delegates adopted without discussion a resolution to support legislation that would ban smoking in prisons and jails and reaffirm a commitment to smoking-cessation programs in correctional facilities.
Bill Wordham, a spokesman for The Tobacco Institute, an industry trade group, said the decision wasn't surprising, but he questioned its wisdom.
"After smoking bans [enacted previously in jails] . . . a black market has flourished. In some cases, prison workers have had to be disciplined for smuggling," Wordham said by telephone from Washington.
The AMA delegates also adopted without discussion a resolution to support the elimination of all advertising for alcoholic beverages on mass transit systems.
by CNB