‘Moralists’ vs. the AIDS War : Helms amendment would cut off funding to many gay-oriented groups

Congress is now almost certain to reauthorize the Ryan White Care Act to provide care and treatment for AIDS patients for another five years. But the big question is whether it can fend off ill-conceived amendments that could well cripple the program, which has funneled $93 million to Los Angeles alone since 1991.

In his obsession against homosexuality, Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) has saddled the Senate bill with an amendment that would prohibit the use of this money to promote or encourage intravenous drug use or homosexuality. As defined by the amendment, to promote or encourage homosexuality is to affirm it “as natural, normal, or healthy” or to “[describe] in any way techniques of homosexual sex.” Thus Helms would permit local agencies that receive Ryan White money to instruct heterosexual men on how to use a condom as an anti-AIDS measure but not to instruct gay men, the ones most severely affected by the epidemic.

This absurd amendment could well curtail the excellent work done by AIDS Project Los Angeles and countless other programs that serve the gay community.

The Senate also passed a milder amendment, sponsored by Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Kan.), which specifies only that the money not be used directly to promote sexual activity of any type. The Kassebaum version is acceptable to AIDS professionals, and they are mobilizing to have it introduced as a preemptive strike at the Helms version when the bill comes up for a House vote soon.

The bill is likely to reach the House floor under an open rule. That means it would be a sitting duck there for self-righteous moralists trying to prove they are tough on homosexuality.

AIDS is a dreadful disease, not a moral condition or a religious issue. It is a disease without sexual or racial preference that is taking an ever greater toll of women and various ethnic groups in Los Angeles and many other cities.

The House should ratify the vaguer Kassebaum amendment and let doctors, social workers and other care givers get on with the essential work of treating the afflicted and striving to halt this scourge.