Rep. William E. Dannemeyer’s Plan for AIDS Victims

It has begun again. A type of people with propensities peculiar to themselves, people who have for years dealt with discrimination and hatred from their neighbors, people who have contributed greatly to the arts and sciences throughout history, are about to become this era’s pariah.

Rep. William E. Dannemeyer (R-Fullerton) has hired Dr. Paul Cameron (Times, Aug. 20), an admitted homophobe, who suggests a “rolling quarantine” of gays, intravenous drug users and prostitutes infected with AIDS. I am sure many who read the article asked the same question: What does that mean? The implication is to gather all of these people and place them somewhere where they can die of this horrible disease, which, he insists, they deserve.

What of those who do not have this disease? Will they ultimately be “ghetto-ized” because their life styles are similar to those doomed? Will they be hunted down and placed in “quarantine” because of their potential for getting AIDS or as punishment for their “deliberate and thoughtless” exposure to the public of the disease? And finally, what will be the “final solution?” Whatever happened to the Judeo-Christian ethic of judge not, lest you be judged?

AIDS is not a “gay disease.” It is a people disease and kills regardless of race, life style, political view or religion. Blaming someone for it is the easy way out, with little hope for stemming it. When a cure is found, will it be used for gays only? Or worse, will it be withheld in order to wipe them out? It is a chilling thought.

J. BURCIAGA

West Hollywood