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Sen. Elizabeth Dole: Next, Let's Name A Child Welfare Bill After John Wayne Gacy

Jul 16, 2008
By .
Politics & Current Events, Technology

Via Shakesville, I see that Senator Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) has suggested renaming a pending bill in honor of recently deceased Senator Jesse Helms. The bill appropriates money to help other countries fight diseases including AIDS; it was previously called the "Tom Lantos and Henry J. Hyde United States Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act of 2008."

Helms was the senator who said things like this:

Jesse Helms, the man who in 1987 described AIDS prevention literature as "so obscene, so revolting, I may throw up."

Jesse Helms, the man who in 1988 vigorously opposed 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."

Jesse Helms, the man who in 1995 said (in opposition to refunding the Ryan White Act) that the government should spend less on people with AIDS because they got sick due to their "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct."

Jesse Helms, the man who in 2002 announced that he'd changed his mind about AIDS funding for Africa, but not for American gays, because homosexuality "is the primary cause of the doubling and redoubling of AIDS cases in the United States."

Elizabeth Dole, shame on you. The notion of naming an AIDS prevention-funding bill in honor of Helms is a sick and contemptible joke.

Last 5 posts by Ken

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  1. Andrew  •  Jul 16, 2008 @1:19 pm

    Them's politics.

    Sure, Helms impeded the fight against AIDS for many years, and was a bigot until the very end. But his 2002 decision to support massively increased global AIDS funding (engineered by Bono, weirdly enough) was a critical moment for the issue in Congress — it signaled to other conservatives that it was OK to get behind this fight.

    Tacking his name onto the current bill serves a similar purpose — it reminds conservatives in Congress that America's leadership in the fight against AIDS emerged from both sides of the aisle. It's important to keep reaching out to those conservatives, because if they decide to actively campaign against AIDS funding, billions of dollars in life-saving aid could vanish. (In fact, the current bill was held up for weeks by a small group of conservative Senators, until today's votes finally put it back on track.)