More praise for Teddy Kennedy
S. R. Newport
are hard to find, but with Teddy, we had one By
CAHIR O'DOHERTY
,
Irish Voice Arts Editor
Published Friday, August 28, 2009, 11:35 AM Updated Friday, August 28,
2009, 12:07 PM
While Ted Kennedy's passing is being mourned by the nation, there's real
anxiety in the gay and lesbian community about who - and whether -
anyone of his stature will come along to replace him.
Real heroes are hard to find.
From the earliest days of the AIDS crisis Kennedy's advocacy on behalf
of the GLTB community was simply immeasurable. At a time when nearly
every elected official ran from the issue as fast as they could,
terrified of the political ramifications, Kennedy stood up, often a lone
voice in the senate, and he quickly became an unrivalled allay in the
fight against AIDS.
Let it never be forgotten that in the 1980's Kennedy battled the then
very powerful Jesse Helms, who wanted to see gay men housed in
concentration camps. Courageously, and at no profit to himself, he
fought every amendment that Helms dreamed up to block AIDS funding or to
menace and stigmatize gay people.
Remember too that throughout that low, dishonest decade President Ronald
Reagan refused to even utter the word AIDS until 36,058 Americans had
been diagnosed and 20,849 had died. It's impossible to think of another
stigmatized social group in America who would have had to die in those
kinds of numbers before a sitting President even acknowledged their
plight.
There was so much Reagan could have done. He could have stemmed the
homophobic rhetoric that flowed easily from so many in his
administration. Countless lives could have been saved had his
administration had responded quickly and compassionately with public
health and educational programs instead of judgmental silence or
outright contempt.
In contrast to Reagan, there was so much that Kennedy did do. First, he
made HIV/AIDS medicines available to everyone by creating the AIDS Drug
Assistance Program (ADAP). When Kennedy took over the leadership of the
Senate Committee on Health in 1987, he made AIDS the committee's top
priority at a time when there was still so much stigma surrounding the
disease, taking a political risk that few politicians of the period were
willing to follow.
And when Kennedy pushed for the Ryan White CARE Act in 1990, named after
the Indiana teenager who was expelled from his school when his tutors
leaned he had contracted AIDS through a tainted hemophilia treatment, he
did so not only because he believed in what he was doing, but because he
had come to personally know Ryan White. That act is still the largest
federally funded program for people living with HIV/AIDS. It sought
funding to improve availability of care for low-income, uninsured and
under-insured victims of AIDS and their families.
Had he done nothing else, Kennedy's advocacy on this issue alone
deserves a lasting monument.
Ubiquitous
>With Kennedy, 'justice for all' meant gays and lesbians, too
And you posted this off-topic article here because?
--
It's now time for healing, and for fixing the damage the Democrats did
to America.
S. R. Newport
Ubiquitous
> web...@polaris.net wrote:
>> birdp...@webtv.net wrote:
>>>With Kennedy, 'justice for all' meant gays and lesbians, too
>>
>>And you posted this off-topic article here because?
>
> With Kennedy, 'justice for all' meant gays and lesbians, too
That's nice. And you posted this off-topic article here because?
S. R. Newport
With Kennedy, 'justice for all' meant gays and lesbians, too? That's
nice.
-----------------------------------------
Indeed it is.