A. Brad Truax; Activist for Gays, AIDS Victims

A. Brad Truax, the San Diego physician who helped bring respectability and political clout to that city’s gay and lesbian community, died there Tuesday night of complications from AIDS. He was 42.

Articulate, polite and politically savvy, Truax emerged during the last decade as one of the preeminent spokesmen for San Diego’s homosexual community.

“He was the first gay professional to become very visible and very active on behalf of various political agendas, generally involving human rights,” said Rick Moore, a San Diego gay activist and member of the gay San Diego Democratic Club.

Truax was a Democratic Party activist, serving as a delegate to state conventions. He was a founder of the United San Diego Elections Committee, a gay political action committee, and was president of the gay San Diego Democratic Club from 1981 to 1984.

As president of the club, Truax made a bold move in 1983 by switching party loyalties and backing Republican Roger Hedgecock for mayor. It was that decision, he later said, that helped put the homosexual community on the political map when Hedgecock won by a narrow margin.

A year later, however, that victory was tempered by a personal tragedy. While helping a local firm conduct research on acquired immune deficiency syndrome, Truax submitted a sample of his blood and discovered that he was infected with the deadly virus.

Truax kept it a secret, even while he was urging Hedgecock to form a mayoral task force to help the community brace for the epidemic. He was tapped to coordinate the task force, which was later consolidated into a county panel, and Truax dedicated himself to educating the public about AIDS while advocating local ordinances banning discrimination against its victims.

Eventually, Truax decided to disclose his condition, picking a dramatic moment for the revelation. On the eve of an AIDS rally in Washington, he told a local newspaper reporter why he would be marching with a group of AIDS sufferers at the nation’s Capitol.

Truax, a Pennsylvania native, moved to San Diego in 1975 after joining the Navy. He was a flight surgeon and diving medical officer at Miramar Naval Air Station but was discharged after two years because of suspicions that he was gay.

He began a private practice, and his subsequent leadership earned him an appointment to the county’s Human Relations Commission. He was listed by San Diego magazine as one of the 86 San Diegans to watch in 1986.