No alter ego or alternative handle here, Sundogg, just another individual with an opinion. I'm glad Bush named a gay man to head the national AIDS office and that the responsibilities of the position are increased, too. I hope they found someone who is up to the challenge.

The one article I read is not promising: Evertz himself implies that kissing Bush's ass when he visited candidate Bush with other LG Repubs in Texas last year might have made all the difference in getting the job ("my partner's daughter campaigned for you in the WI primary!"). But I suppose an ass-kissing middle American publicly gay man in the administration is better than none at all. I don't know Evertz's qualifications beyond his immediately past jobs as a fundraiser for AIDS nonprofits in WI. I know that he went to Marquette and has worked with Catholic nonprofits and gay Catholic groups in the past. This, too, does not make me very comfortable, though I admire and respect many Catholic clergy and lay people (I was raised Catholic). The problem is that the Catholic Church hierarchy in the USA and overseas has had an official policy of prohibiting, opposing and/or discouraging promotion of safe sex and condom use as cornerstones of sound public health policy. These policies are exactly those that have helped gay white men in this country arrest the spread of HIV in their subgroup. The Church's active opposition to this cornerstone of public health policy in the age of AIDS has not made fighting the spread of HIV and easier and arguably has cost more than a few lives.

I hope Evertz has been able to negotiate that obvious tension between Catholic authority and public health mandates with skill and confidence in his previous jobs without compromising his integrity. Let's see how he does in this job, which is a massively greater and more complex responsibility.

I think Colin Powell's personal interest in addressing Africa's epidemic of the disease may have helped preserve this office generally, because apparently the new administration previously had thought to eliminate it.

This administration is only a couple of months old. I've expressed my deep concern about its tax cut proposal and environmental positions in other posts, without suggesting that anyone who disagrees with me leave the Republican party or betray their personal political beliefs, in fact without calling into question anyone's politics but the President's. I'd just like to hear rational arguments in favor of the administration's actions, including more information about why this particular gay man is the best choice for this job. So far I've heard very few arguments in support of Bush's specific policies and proposals, just a lot of name-calling, mud-slinging and personal invective against some of us who've argued against some of the Republican party's positions.