Marland with the AS THE WORLD TURNS writing team. "Our job as storytellers isn't to say what's right or wrong; our job is to deal with issues as they affect people."

"But as the story started unfolding 1 found I wasn't sleeping well," continues Marland. "I felt we might end up doing exactly the opposite of what we wanted to do. If Hank got AIDS, the message I would be sending out to Middle America is that every gay man who comes into your midst is going to be a victim or carrier of AIDS. I didn't know how to get out of it because we were on a course. My writers felt the same way. Well, we had established very openly and very honestly that Hank was in love with Charles, his lover. Charles was a great love: honest, strong, compassionate. So I thought, what if Charles becomes the victim?

We can still deal with the horror of AIDS from Hank's point of view without sending the message that every gay man is going to have AIDS, get it, give it or carry it. The reason you didn't see Charles till the end was I always felt seeing him would turn a lot of people off. I felt that maybe we would be hitting the audience too hard the first time out. Maybe next time or maybe when we bring Hank back, if we bring him back, we can go that extra step."

Breakdown Writer John Kuntz says that what was surprising for him was how different the story became from how it was originally conceptualized. "We all sort of assumed that this was going to be a gay story and a story about AIDS, but as we began writing it, it became a story about the other characters' reactions to Hank. The characters revealed much more of themselves in the way they responded to Hank and somtimes what they revealed triggered other story lines."

Marland believes that the different reactions characters had to Hank were appropriate for who they were. "I felt that Paul, for example, had it in his background to be resistant, especially since Hank's homosexuality was kept from him and because Paul's hangups with his father, and his needing to lash out at something. Andy's acceptance of Hank wasn't immediate and I loved the way Scotty DeFreitas played it. He played it as very confused and off-balance. Then as he got to know Hank and was able to talk to him more openly, it changed."

No matter how well the story was accepted there were still fears on the part of the writers. "I was afraid that if we didn't do the story as well as we hoped we could, it would be a turnoff and discourage other soaps and daytime writers to include gay characters in their casts," explains Marland. Adds John Kuntz: "The only thing I said to Doug when he first brought up the story was that I hoped however we did it, we would break stereotypes, such as all gays are effeminate, or hairdressers or promiscuous."

"We've now heard from a lot of producers and writers at other shows," says Doug Marland, "who say, Thank God you did it, now maybe we can do it.' But if we've only done that, shown that there are stories to tell, there are interesting relationships to deal with and the world isn't going to turn their sets off, then we've accomplished something. I don't have a single regret in telling this story

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