AIDS Booklet Stirs Senate to Halt Funds
Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), ready to “throw up” after seeing a comic book showing safe sex between two men, succeeded today in having the Senate approve a cutoff of all federal money for any AIDS educational program that encourages or promotes sex among homosexuals.
“This subject matter is so obscene, so revolting, it is difficult for me to stand here and talk about it,” Helms said on the Senate floor. “I may throw up.”
Helms said he showed the comic book to President Reagan at the White House and the President “opened the book, shook his head and slammed his fist.”
“This senator is not a goody-goody two shoes. I’ve lived a long time . . . but every Christian ethic cries out for me to do something,” Helms said. “I call a spade a spade, a perverted human being, a perverted human being.”
Helms offered an amendment to the $129-billion appropriations bill for the departments of Health and Human Services and Labor that would prohibit the use of any federal money to “encourage, condone or promote” homosexual sex.
The amendment was approved, 94 to 2.
Helms said the Gay Men’s Health Crisis Center in New York City, which produced the comic book, has received $674,679 from the Communicable Diseases Center for its programs.
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