The homosexuals put on an impressive street demonstration estimated at 200,000 persons, in Washington, D.C. on October 11. A couple of days later, the events inside the Senate and House chambers were even more dramatic in telling a different story, but somehow that news wasn’t given the same level of newspaper and television coverage.
On October 14, the Senate was considering the $129 billion Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Appropriation Bill for fiscal 1988. In a major expansion of federal concern about AIDS, the bill earmarked more than $946 million for AIDS research, prevention, information, and education.
Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) proposed an amendment which said that taxpayers’ money should not be made available to the Centers for Disease Control to provide AIDS education, information, or prevention materials and activities that promote or encourage, directly or indirectly, homosexual sexual activities. The Helms amendment further stated that education, information, and prevention activities paid for with federal funds should emphasize abstinence from sexual activity outside of sexually monogamous marriage (including abstinence from homosexual activities) and abstinence from the use of illegal drugs.
To show the need for his amendment, Helms explained that the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Inc., received $674,679 this year from the Federal Government to produce educational materials. The application papers for this grant (now made public under a Freedom of Information request) spelled out in detail the specific pro-homosexual educational activities for which the money would be used.
In seeking this large amount of federal funding, the Gay Men’s Health Crisis, Inc., stated that it would use this grant to “generate gay consciousness and a positive sense of gay pride,” to combat homophobia, and to counteract myths regarding male and female sexuality and gender roles, e.g., heterosexuality is superior to homosexuality.
The grant application stated that of particular import is how to deal with the denial and fear of AIDS, homophobia, and fundamentalist religious belief that AIDS is God’s curse. The grant proposal bragged that the organization distributed posters and fliers to protest the Supreme Court decision regarding sodomy laws.
Most of the content of this federally-funded “education” to homosexuals is too indecent, vulgar, and explicit to be quoted in this column. The grant application also reveals how this type of federal grant is used by recipients for media promotion of their special-interest cause, political demonstrations, and networking with like-minded groups.
The first time the clerk called the roll in the Senate on the Helms amendment, only five Democrats voted. Most of the Democrats were then seen huddling on their side of the aisle trying to figure out how they could defeat the Helms amendment.
Finally, they decided they did not dare to be tagged as voting to finance homosexual activities and materials, and so the Helms amendment passed 94 to 2.
The next day, Congressman William Dannemeyer (R-CA) led a similar battle in the House. The High-Risk Disease Notification Bill was on the floor, a bill that would require employers to notify employees of risks to their health in the workplace.
Dannemeyer proposed an amendment requiring that health care workers and emergency care workers be designated as a population at risk of occupational exposure to the disease known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. He pointed out that many health care workers have tried in vain to take precautions against infection with the AIDS virus and have been refused permission to do so by their hospital’s supervisors.
For example, Mrs. Norma Walson, a nurse at San Francisco General Hospital, has filed a $100 million lawsuit against her employer because she was not allowed to wear protective garments when caring for AIDS patients. She asserts that this situation caused her to contract cytomegalovirus (CMV), crossing the placental membrane and causing massive birth defects in her baby she was then carrying.
After a spirited debate, with Congressmen Trent Lott (R-MS) and Dick Armey (R-TX) supporting the Dannemeyer amendment, and Congressmen Henry Waxman (D-CA), Joseph Gaydos (D-PA), and William Ford (D-MI) speaking in opposition, the amendment appeared to lose on a voice vote. After Dannemeyer demanded a recorded vote, funny thing, his amendment passed 219 to 198, with 16 not voting.
Despite the favored access that the homosexual lobby enjoys in the media, legislators are starting to respond to the demands of larger groups of Americans for reasonable protections against the deadly disease of AIDS.
