When President Reagan’s new AIDS Commission gets down to serious business, it should study an important package of newly-passed state legislation. Illinois lunged to leadership in the what-to-do-about-AIDS dilemma when Governor James Thompson signed several bills that were passed overwhelmingly by the State Legislature. The centerpiece of the legislative package is a bill to require the teaching of sexual abstinence until marriage as part of the Illinois Comprehensive Health Education Act. The bill’s sponsor, Representative John McNamara said, “Abstinence is the safest method of preventing disease, for one thing. And for another, it’s just plain common sense.”
Another of the bill’s supporters, Representative Penny Pullen, added, “I think it is entirely appropriate for students to be taught sexual abstinence, both as a protection against teen pregnancy and as a protection against venereal disease, including AIDS.” The Legislature agreed by overwhelming, veto-proof margins: 985 to 5 in the House and 54 to 2 in the Senate.
A second bill writes into law a strict regulation on blood labeling and testing, with confidentiality standards. This bill passed without a dissenting vote in the Legislature.
Governor Thompson signed a measure requiring all couples applying for a marriage license to be tested for AIDS. He also approved a bill ordering the public health department to trace the sexual partners of people who test positive for AIDS, which is a standard public health procedure, and to advise the contacts that they could be infected.
Other AIDS bills which Thompson signed include requiring the notification of school officials if students are infected with AIDS, and mandating that sperm banks and tissue banks test for AIDS.
When AIDS-related bills were first introduced into the Illinois Legislature in 1985, their sponsor found himself a lonely and unwelcome prophet. “You couldn’t find half a dozen members of the House who were seriously interested,” said Rep. Sam Vinson.
By 1986, the liberals in the Illinois Legislature were playing an aggressive political game. They accused conservatives of being “panic peddlers” with a medieval mentality, trying to frighten the general population into thinking the Black Death of the 14th century was about to attack the suburban middle class.
The American Civil Liberties Union became a major player in the legislative maneuvering when the ACLU’s legal director allied himself with the liberal director of Cook County’s AIDS treatment center. They argued that most proposed legislation would simply drive AIDS-infected persons underground.
Supported by the homosexual groups, the liberals made “civil liberties” the linchpin of their political strategy. They argued that mandatory testing and contact tracing reflected a tyranny of the majority against a minority group.
However, public opinion moved so fast in favor of strong measures to protect the uninfected that seventeen AIDS measures were sent to the Governor’s desk. The ACLU lobbyist admitted, “We had a deep underestimation of how strong the folks on the other side would be and how deep seated were the fears of the general population.”
One of the liberal lawmakers, Carol Moseley Braun, admitted to the press, “What we forgot was that education is a two-way street. We forgot that, as we continued to be perceived as protecting one group, there was a much larger group that had legitimate fears of catching a deadly disease.”
AIDS has reversed customary liberal-conservative roles. This time the conservatives are the ones who argue that the public health and safety require that government take strong measures to protect the general good.
One straw in the wind of how explosive public reaction can be is the way Children’s Medical Center in Dallas has been bombarded with telephone calls since it became known that a pediatrician is infected with the AIDS virus. The 44-year-old physician, Dr. Robert H. Huse, lost his 1,000-patient practice within hours after his former male roommate told the press that Huse has AIDS.
No one seems to know how fast the AIDS epidemic will spread through the general population, but enough has happened to give the general population a healthy fear of infection and lead to a demand for precautions. The new Illinois legislation is a good first step toward addressing this major public health problem.
