Does Liddy Dole have a sick sense of humor or what?
I just can't believe that Sen. Liddy Dole is petitioning to get the Senate to name a global funding bill to fight AIDS after Jesse Helms, one of the most bigoted homophobes in our Senate’s history.
Helms was so full of hate, and famous for his ignorant comments about HIV/AIDS. In 1987 he described “AIDS prevention literature as ‘so obscene, so revolting, I may throw up‘”...and in 1995 he argued that "the government should spend less on people with AIDS because they got sick due to their ‘deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct.’”... in 1988 he fought the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS research bill, saying, "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy."
Sadly, the Reagan Administration embraced this kind of ignorance, and many people hold Ronald Reagan responsible for adding to the early AIDS death toll by his INACTION on the pandemic, which directly led to the deaths of many people who never practiced homosexuality in their lives...not to mention the children. People who received the virus through blood transfusions...like tennis legend Arthur Ashe, as well as thousands of others.
But it was Helms' ACTIONS -- fighting tooth and nail to kill every bill to fund research-- that surely hastened the demise of many thousands of Americans.
Yes, it must be said that at the end of his career he came around to supporting AIDS funding in Africa...but that was too little too late.
When you think about it, there is something ironic in putting Helms' name on a bill for a disease he spent most of his life demonizing. I don’t think he would be in the least bit “honored” to have a bill funding HIV/AIDS prevention named after him. Just the fact that he would be incensed by it is reason enough to go ahead and do it. It's almost like a final one-fingered-salute.
BTW, in the credit where credit is due department:
I agree with what Sen. Joseph Biden said about President Bush's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR -- "I am often critical of the president's foreign policy and his aid programs, but the President of the United States, George W. Bush, deserves great credit. If the president did nothing else in his administration, this is justification enough for his legacy to be looked back on favorably because of the phenomenal and dramatic impact this initiative has and will have on the rest of the world."
Finally...one thing he did right.....
