Huckabee Urged Isolating AIDS Patients

By Jeralyn, Section Elections 2008
Posted on Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 11:47:21 AM EST
Tags: Mike Huckabee (all tags)

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The AP has an exclusive report that Mike Huckabee's response to the AIDS epidemic in 1992 was to oppose federal funding for research and advocate isolating AIDS patients:

As a candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in 1992, Huckabee answered 229 questions submitted to him by The Associated Press. Besides a quarantine, Huckabee suggested that Hollywood celebrities fund AIDS research from their own pockets, rather than federal health agencies.

"If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague," Huckabee wrote.

Huckabee also said homosexuality could "pose a dangerous public health risk.".

I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle, and we now know it can pose a dangerous public health risk."

On funding AIDS research he wrote: [More...]

.... Huckabee complained that AIDS research received an unfair share of federal dollars when compared to cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

"In light of the extraordinary funds already being given for AIDS research, it does not seem that additional federal spending can be justified," Huckabee wrote.

Huckabee has now changed his tune:

Since becoming a presidential candidate this year, Huckabee has supported increased federal funding for AIDS research through the National Institutes of Health.

"My administration will be the first to have an overarching strategy for dealing with HIV and AIDS here in the United States, with a partnership between the public and private sectors that will provide necessary financing and a realistic path toward our goals," Huckabee said in a statement posted on his campaign Web site last month.

Huckabee will sink like a stone. I just hope he doesn't elevate Rudy Giuliani in the process.

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Huckabee Urged Isolating AIDS Patients | 13 comments (13 topical)

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Huckabee fakes decency and integrity (5.00 / 1) (#1)
by Geekesque on Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 12:26:08 PM EST

a lot better than most.

I am wondering how many other millions of (none / 0) (#2)
by Wile ECoyote on Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 02:07:24 PM EST

people changed their tune on the treatment of aids and aids patients between 1992 and 2007. I will have to think back and see if I remember what I thought in 1992 about anything.

Views in a Vacuum (none / 0) (#4)
by scarshapedstar on Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 02:36:48 PM EST

This isn't just about AIDS per se. It's about how you treat other human beings. And he sure as hell hasn't recanted any of this bullsh*t:

I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle

Yeah, OK. If I were a gay person, I would love this guy, because he'd no longer consider me a walking biohazard but merely an unnatural and sinful aberration.

It takes a reeeeal piece of work to have zero empathy whatsoever.

[ Parent ]

Um, Ms. TL's (none / 0) (#5)
by Wile ECoyote on Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 04:06:30 PM EST

Headline was:
Huckabee Urged Isolating AIDS Patients

I read that it was about Aids.

Like I said I wonder how many other persons veiws changed between '92 and '07.

[ Parent ]

Okay (none / 0) (#6)
by scarshapedstar on Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 08:17:42 PM EST

And like I said, unless he's ready to admit that being gay is not a "choice", I don't believe he's changed.

Let's not kid ourselves what the real motivation behind the gay -- whoops, I mean, AIDS -- concentration camp advocacy was.

Or, okay, we can kid ourselves and pretend that when Huck came to the conclusion that we should quarantine people with AIDS, he wasn't even considering that these people were unnatural aberrations made of pure sin. Nope. 'Twas a strictly rational decision.

[ Parent ]

Like I (none / 0) (#10)
by Wile ECoyote on Sun Dec 09, 2007 at 06:23:16 AM EST

said, how many millions of other people changed their minds on how people with aids should be treated between '92 and '07.

[ Parent ]

By 1992 Most People Knew About AIDS (5.00 / 0) (#11)
by john horse on Sun Dec 09, 2007 at 08:21:38 AM EST

wile,
Per TPM

It may be tempting to think Huckabee's comments were just a reflection of the ignorance of the times, but that's far too forgiving an explanation. The AP noted that in 1992, "it was common knowledge that AIDS could not be spread by casual contact." Four years before Huckabee expressed support for a quarantine, C. Everett Koop and the Surgeon General's office explained to the nation that the disease could not be contacted through everyday contact.

So most people knew by 1992 that AIDS could not be spread by everyday contact. After all, the disease had been around since the early 80's. Most people knew. Huckabee didn't.

[ Parent ]

: Huck knew (none / 0) (#13)
by scarshapedstar on Sun Dec 09, 2007 at 01:03:09 PM EST

But he was appealing to the Wile E Coyotes of the world ("Should we lock up our citizens because of a disease that's not transmissible through casual contact? Gee, who knows? It's a he-said-she-said! Views can change daily...") and so he pretended not to.
In response to Wile's repeated question. The number of responsible, informed, non-bigoted people who've changed their mind on how to treat an STD since 1992:
Zero.
If someone has changed their mind, they clearly are irresponsible, uninformed, or bigoted. And let me make this abundantly clear, that's your right, here in America.
But it doesn't make them fit to be President. The many tragedies of the last seven years are proof enough of that.

[ Parent ]

OK (none / 0) (#12)
by squeaky on Sun Dec 09, 2007 at 12:31:12 PM EST

So what does that have to do with Huckabee's past and current anti-gay stance, which is the issue here (as if you didn't know)?

[ Parent ]

You treat it as though it is just a point of view (none / 0) (#8)
by glanton on Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 08:49:32 PM EST

and shrug hey, people and their views change.

Maybe if he hadn't gone senile Reagan would have wound up retracting his bigoted 'perspective' on AIDS as well. After all, it was the 80s. People change.

:-0

[ Parent ]

I hope Giuliani is the nominee (none / 0) (#3)
by MikeDitto on Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 02:34:20 PM EST

Because I think he is most beatable in the general.

However this rhetoric from Huckabee is exactly the red meat the Republican base is looking for. The base really does want gay people eliminated, and they really do believe AIDS is God's punishment, and they only now support expanding research and funding because they know from a Huckabee that funding would come in the form of abstinence-only programs and federally-funded religious organizations.

This report is good news for Huckabee, unfortunately--not him going down in flames.

: Funny, isn't it? (none / 0) (#7)
by scarshapedstar on Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 08:21:52 PM EST

God's most devoted followers can't resist the call of Satan to line up at the government teat.
I figured with all of those tithing dollars coming back tenfold, they wouldn't even need our tax money. Maybe they're being punished by the Almighty?

[ Parent ]

why would this be a bad thing? (none / 0) (#9)
by cpinva on Sat Dec 08, 2007 at 11:52:22 PM EST

i suppose it depends on what you mean by "elevate". lol

nothing could possibly make giuliani look any better, he's just organized crime that knows how to use a napkin. that said, for the democrats, he'd be the best possible republican nominee.

so much dirt, you just wouldn't know where to begin!