Wrong Signal on AIDS

It is altogether too bad that Gov. George Deukmejian vetoed the bill that would have tried to prevent AIDS patients from being fired or denied housing except where there was a legitimate and demonstrable health risk. The legislation had the support of, among others, the California Medical Assn., the California Manufacturers’ Assn., the Assn. of California Life Assurers and the American Red Cross.

In his veto message the governor argued that the legislation was not necessary. The state Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which oversees anti-discrimination laws, does consider AIDS, like all other medical ailments and diseases, a handicap falling under the anti-discrimination laws, but the question is not legally settled in the state’s administrative and judicial case law. The vetoed bill would have put AIDS on the same footing as, for instance, tuberculosis and cancer.

As the organizations and legislators who supported the bill know, the AIDS issue is in the largest sense a political issue: The question is the attitude that the state of California is going to take toward the victims of this dread disease. In all normal social situations, including work, there is no danger at all of catching AIDS from a person with the disease.

A number of cities, including Los Angeles and San Francisco, have adopted ordinances prohibiting discrimination against AIDS victims. Those laws serve both to reassure the victims of AIDS and to deter those who would persecute them. You can count on the common sense and the common decency of the vast majority of Californians to yield neither to panic nor to vindictiveness. It would have strengthened them to have had the full and explicit force of state law with them. The governor’s veto removed that extra shield.