get donkey!

White House extends its middle finger to AIDS and HIV sufferers and gays and lesbians

From this MSNBC piece:

The Bush administration has chosen Jerry Thacker, a Pennsylvania marketing consultant who has characterized AIDS as the “gay plague,” to serve on the Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV and AIDS.

NEXT WEEK, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson is scheduled to swear in several new commission members. They include Thacker, a former Bob Jones University employee, who says he contracted the AIDS virus after his wife was infected through a blood transfusion.

[snip]

In his speeches and writings on his Web site and elsewhere, Thacker has described homosexuality as a “deathstyle” rather than a lifestyle and asserted that “Christ can rescue the homosexual.” After word of his selection spread among gays in recent days, some material disappeared from the Web site. Earlier versions located by The Washington Post that referred to the “gay plague,” for instance, were changed as of yesterday to “plague.”

[snip]

“This individual is an extremist ideologue who persecutes and demeans an entire class of people impacted by this disease,” said David Smith, spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign. “That type of person has no business advising the president of the United States on how the government should address the epidemic.”

Carl Schmid, a Republican gay activist who worked on President Bush’s 2000 campaign, said he was disappointed and frustrated that HHS disregarded warnings that Thacker’s selection would overshadow the commission’s valuable work.

We need to have a scientific-based approach to the problems of HIV-AIDS and not this radical agenda he’s pushing,” Schmid said. Aside from the harshly anti-gay tone of Thacker’s rhetoric, Schmid said, his major objection to Thacker is his aggressive lobbying for abstinence-until-marriage education.

“Abstinence-until-marriage does not help anyone in the gay community, because we can’t get married,” he said. “If you are a gay youth, who is addressing your concerns?”

Thacker’s biography on the Web site of the Scepter Institute, a nonprofit organization that sells religious-based AIDS material, indicates he is a Bob Jones University graduate and was a “member of the university faculty for seven years.” Bush caused a stir in the 2000 presidential campaign when he spoke at the South Carolina university, which until recently banned interracial dating and has been accused of anti-Catholic attitudes.

In September 2001, Thacker returned to his alma mater to give two “Chapel Messages.” The speeches, summarized on the university Web site, focused on the “sin of homosexuality” and his family’s struggle with AIDS.

“When he and his wife discovered in 1986 that they had contracted HIV, the most horrible thought was that it was a disease connected with the sin of homosexuality,” according to the summary. “They didn’t want anyone to think they were homosexual because they knew what the Bible said about homosexuality.”

Thacker’s beliefs on homosexuality are known as “reparative therapy,” a philosophy that considers homosexuality aberrant behavior that can be modified through religious faith. Professional organizations such as the American Psychological Association say that approach has no medical or scientific basis.

The Bob Jones summary of Thacker’s speeches said: “Homosexuality is not inborn biologically, just as incest and bestiality are not inborn. Studies have show that thousands of homosexuals have been set free from this sin.”

un-f|<'|\|-believable!

Granted, it is tragic that Thacker and his wife contracted AIDS, but should a zealous and seemingly vengeful man who has an axe to grind with the gay community really be helping craft the Administration’s policy on HIV and AIDS? Yes, there are other people from other backgrounds on the 35-member panel, but I have found no information that any of the other members are on a religious crusade against gays. It only takes one person to highjack and handcuff a panel such as this one. Furthermore, in nominating him, the White House gives tacit support of Thacker’s bigoted and ill-founded views. On top of that there is the whole Bob Jones thing. Why is this Administration so beholden to that “institution”? Is Thacker really the best that the Administration could do, or is it that they just don't give a damn about fighting the “gay plague”?

UPDATE: Atrios has more. This Thacker guy is really quite disgusting.

January 23rd, 2003 Posted by Rob | Politics | one comment