Interview

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(continued)

James Hartline speaks out on vice in San Diego

In the middle third of the interview, Hartline spoke about his activism in curbing stem cell research. The following four paragraphs pick up at the end of the stem cell discussion, where, essentially, he compares local churches’ denial in supporting stem cell research to the gay community’s denial of immorality...

It’s the same thing with the gay community. They use the same tactic. Rather than take a cold look at what may be true to what I’m saying, they want to marginalize me because they don’t want to believe it.

It’s easier to go after the messenger than it is to self-scrutinize and take action.

That’s the same thing with the AIDS epidemic and these people who defend these bath houses that I tried to shut down. They know people are doing drugs. They know people are dying. And yet they keep them open.

You know who the worst people who’ve attacked me over the bath houses are? People working in the medical profession, in the HIV education arena. They say that the bath houses need to be open because they provide educational opportunities for people who aren’t open about their homosexuality. They’re a place to reach a lot of people at one time. That’s their justification.

There might be some merit to that, don’t you think?

No. That’s like saying, “Let’s sell cigarettes in the hospital, so that we can get all the smokers together while they’re there and provide them with literature about cancer.”

It doesn’t hold water. I know what goes on in those places. If people are dying, you need to shut down the place, not keep it open to educate people.

Most of the people who go in there are high. They’re not going to listen to anything about education anyway.

For the record, are you celibate?

I’ve been celibate,…but I don’t know why San Diego Magazine said I was a eunuch.

You said you have been celibate. Does this mean that you are celibate?

I am. I haven’t had sex in almost six years.

And how about clean and free of drugs?

Same thing. Both stopped at the same time because they kind of got buried together. Once one stopped, the other stopped.

How is the homosexual community destructive to San Diego?

Let’s take the pornography industry, for example. You have people that are promoting that industry on an advisory board to the police department, which is supposed to be regulating the industry. To me, that’s very corrupt. The police chief has an LGBT advisory board, and on that advisory board are people that are promoting the porn industry.

Nicole Murray-Ramirez is on that board, and that individual promotes pornography and does contests to judge people’s penis sizes. How can you have that person advising the police chief?

He’s influencing how the police chief thinks and then the police don’t enforce the law in the porn shops.

I have a lot of sources high up in the political arena. I know for a fact that Toni Atkins has told the police department to stay out of the bath houses. So the police department does a pretty good job staying out of the bath houses. They’re still open.

We know there’s illegal activity going on. We know there’s drug dealing going on. I spent years in those places. I got strung out on drugs in those places. People put a needle in my arm in those places, and I’d never even seen that stuff before.

The vast majority of people who go into those places are either high or having sex with someone who’s high.

If you’ve got such a blatant criminal enterprise going on, how is it that the police would stay out?

The police department gets its pay raises from where? From City Council. In order for the police department to get pay raises, it’s got to have those City Council members to vote on it. So, if you’ve got someone on City Council who says, “I want you to stay out of the bath houses,” then you’re actually asking the police department to look the other way from criminal behavior.

In exchange: “Give us our pay raises, now.”

Member of the police department have told you this?

[Nodding] High up. It’s not the vice’s responsibility to go in there. And yet, they used to go in there.

You’re devoting an equal amount of time to heterosexual and homosexual related vice?

I’d say the vice issues are a small portion of what I focus on in the totality of my time. The first thing I do when I get up in the morning is read the Bible and pray.

I don’t get up first thing in the morning and think, “Oh, yeah, I gotta go get me some homos!” That doesn’t even cross my mind.

Are you happy?

I’m at peace. That’s more important than being happy. I have a lot of pain in my body. It’s painful for me to sit here.

How’s your health?

It comes and goes. It’s not great. I think part of it is, I just have to avoid stress. I don’t sleep well. That’s not good.

It’s not fun having a lot of people shoot arrows at me all the time, so that makes me more unhappy sometimes. But I still have peace because I feel the presence of God around me.

What gives you happiness right now?

My favorite time of the day is when I first get up in the morning and read the Bible. That makes me happy. I just don’t find that many things in the world that are that interesting to me. When I was younger, I used to like to go to the movies a lot. Now, I don’t even care about that anymore.

You lived a life of homosexuality and sin and are now taking a strong stance against these things. How would you answer those who call you a hypocrite?

First off, they don’t understand why I am taking a strong stand. They say things that absolutely are not true—that I have a vendetta now because I got infected with AIDS. I don’t even think like that.

One thing about a Christian: If you’re driven by revenge, you’re not a Christian.

There are people that are going to hate me. There may be people that kill me in the process. They’ll just get so sick and tired of me, they’d like to see me removed.

What do you think of “Brokeback Mountain?”

I think it’s a political movie. That’s all it is. They didn’t find typical people involved in homosexuality to play the roles. They found two stereotypical good-looking heterosexual actors to play the roles, to send the message that it’s acceptable to mainstream America.

I have no intention of seeing the movie, but from what I gather it’s not one of the great artistic feats of cinematography.

What would you say about homosexuals who are in a long-term monogamous relationship and don’t abuse substances?

What does the Bible say?

I don’t know.

You don’t know?

I don’t know.

Why don’t you read it and find out.

Okay.

…No matter what I say, people are going to justify what they’re doing. The reality is this: It all comes down to whether people are going to be honest.

From a scientific point of view, sodomy is destructive to the body. That’s a scientific fact. It destroys tissue. It creates inflammation.

You could say that about heterosexual sex.

Correct. However, sodomy is not the main act in heterosexual relationships. In homosexual relationships, it is.

When a woman loses her virginity, many times the hymen is torn.

But that tissue is meant to be torn. The anal area was never meant to be torn.

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Larry Knowles is the editor of Vyuz San Diego. He can be reached at lgkiii@vyuz.com.