Physician’s Honesty Is a Positive Statement

Three paragraphs into your Jan. 15 profile on Dr. German Maisonet (“SCLC Honors Physician to the Poor”), he was quoted about how he tried not to be a “mixed-up gay kid.” Not meaning to downplay the significance of his great efforts in treating and educating the poor about AIDS, I was also touched by his forthrightness about his sexuality.

In this time when AIDS has so crippled the gay civil rights movement that such opportunistic infections as bigotry and hate crimes are on the rise; when police raid a valley bar on dubious charges; when a city in Orange County makes anti-gay discrimination, in effect, legal; when more and more teens have turned runaway out of sexual-orientation confusion and find few positive role models, Martin Luther King’s SCLC acknowledges a gay man whose worth is judged on his kindness, generosity, compassion and human spirit.

Dr. Maisonet shows us that not only can one be gay and proud, but that a gay can be a powerfully positive contributor to a society that so desperately needs every one of its honorable and humane souls to stand tall.

Thank you, L. A. Times, for amplifying this man’s contributions. Thank you, Dr. Maisonet, for being a hero.

ANDREW O’BRIEN, Los Angeles