Gay And Lesbian Community Services Center

The Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center administered the wrong kind of penicillin to more than 650 patients treated for syphilis or who had reported having contact with someone known or believed to have the disease, a federal investigation has shown. That's more than twice as many patients as previously believed.

The L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center said Thursday that it has abandoned the use of a rapid oral HIV test introduced last year, saying that it produces too many false positive results. The announcement came a month after a major testing center in San Francisco, the UCSF AIDS Health Project, made the same decision. The Los Angeles center found 13 people in November who tested positive for HIV from the oral swab test, but follow-up tests showed that they were not infected.

The Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center alerted county health officials Friday that it has administered the wrong type of penicillin to about 300 people seeking treatment for syphilis over the past five years. Penicillin therapy is the mainstay of treatment for syphilis, according to county health officials, but different formulas exist. Clients at the Gay & Lesbian Center were treated with Bicillin C-R instead of Bicillin L-A, the trade name for benzathine penicillin G.

Lorri L. Jean, a self-described turnaround expert and nationally recognized gay rights activist, will return as chief executive officer of the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center this summer, a move intended to remedy its recent financial trouble. Jean, who oversaw the center from 1993 to 1999, will return in June when she steps down as executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the nation's oldest gay rights advocacy group. "I feel enormously excited," Jean said Wednesday.

Leaders of the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center--caught in an escalating controversy over competing AIDS fund-raiser bicycle rides--fired 60 employees Friday as part of a far-reaching reorganization. Operators of the 30-year-old Hollywood center said they face a $4.5-million budget shortfall, caused primarily by costs and confusion created by the launch of this May's San Francisco-to-Los Angeles AIDS/LifeCycle bike ride. Among the victims of the reorganization was center Director Gwenn A. Baldwin.

Bob Phibbs is still haunted by the advice he gave a confused young boy nearly 20 years ago. Gay, young and in the middle of an Irvine High School student-teaching stint, Phibbs said he panicked when approached by a senior who wanted to talk about being different from other boys. "I immediately opened the classroom door and got very scared," Phibbs said. "It was awful that I couldn't be honest. He obviously felt there was a kinship there.

Power tools are whining. Construction crews are hustling. Executives are hovering. The signs of an imminent opening are everywhere at 1125 N. McCadden Place, the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center's new satellite. The $6.7-million Hollywood complex, slated to open June 21, marks not only a major addition to center facilities, but an expanding role as well.

The debate: Why is leadership of the gay movement, once almost exclusively the domain of men, increasingly being taken over by women? Is it one result of the ravages of AIDS among males? Or does it reflect advances by the women's movement? Or does the change stem from gay feminists' insistence that they be included not just in one community or the other, but in both?

Lorri L. Jean, who led the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center through a period of growth and expansion, will leave the organization next year. After nearly six years as the center's executive director, Jean said Tuesday that she is ready for a break. "While these last six years have been filled with many fabulous memories, they also have been comprised of many 70- to 80-hour weeks," Jean said. "I don't feel I've been having the same level of inspiration and fire I used to. I'm a little tired."

An Oregon businesswoman has been named executive director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. Gwenn Baldwin, a management consultant at Dotten & Associates in Portland, will replace Lorri Jean as the center's director. Jean resigned in February after six years as head of the center, said Corri Planck, a spokeswoman for the center.