Libby Doles Out Dubious Honor [1]
Submitted by Daniel Haack [2] on
Republican [3] Senator Elizabeth Dole [4] of North Carolina [5] submitted an amendment [6] to name an HIV/AIDS [7] relief bill after the late Jesse Helms [8]. Helms, Dole’s predecessor in North Carolina, was notorious for being a "strident foe of HIV/AIDS [7] prevention, research and treatment." In 1988, while vigorously opposing the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS research bill, Helms said, "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy." Later, in 1995, in opposition to refunding the Ryan White Act, he argued that "the government should spend less on people with AIDS because they got sick due to their 'deliberate, disgusting revolting conduct.'" In 1991, seven activists from the group Act Up [9] famously put a giant condom on Helms' Arlington home that said, "Helms Is Deadlier Than A Virus." Helms did announce in 2002 that he’d changed his mind about AIDS funding in Africa; however, his change-of-heart did not extent to American gays, saying that homosexuality "is the primary cause of the doubling and redoubling of AIDS cases in the United States."