With Kennedy, 'justice for all' meant gays and lesbians, too

Real heroes are hard to find, but with Teddy, we had one

While Ted Kennedy’s passing is being mourned by the nation, there’s real anxiety in the gay and lesbian community about who — and whether — anyone of his stature will come along to replace him.

Real heroes are hard to find.

From the earliest days of the AIDS crisis Kennedy’s advocacy on behalf of the GLTB community was simply immeasurable. At a time when nearly every elected official ran from the issue as fast as they could, terrified of the political ramifications, Kennedy stood up, often a lone voice in the senate, and he quickly became an unrivalled allay in the fight against AIDS.

Let it never be forgotten that in the 1980’s Kennedy battled the then very powerful Jesse Helms, who wanted to see gay men housed in concentration camps. Courageously, and at no profit to himself, he fought every amendment that Helms dreamed up to block AIDS funding or to menace and stigmatize gay people.

Remember too that throughout that low, dishonest decade President Ronald Reagan refused to even utter the word AIDS until 36,058 Americans had been diagnosed and 20,849 had died. It’s impossible to think of another stigmatized social group in America who would have had to die in those kinds of numbers before a sitting President even acknowledged their plight.

There was so much Reagan could have done. He could have stemmed the homophobic rhetoric that flowed easily from so many in his administration. Countless lives could have been saved had his administration had responded quickly and compassionately with public health and educational programs instead of judgmental silence or outright contempt.

In contrast to Reagan, there was so much that Kennedy did do. First, he made HIV/AIDS medicines available to everyone by creating the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP). When Kennedy took over the leadership of the Senate Committee on Health in 1987, he made AIDS the committee’s top priority at a time when there was still so much stigma surrounding the disease, taking a political risk that few politicians of the period were willing to follow.

And when Kennedy pushed for the Ryan White CARE Act in 1990, named after the Indiana teenager who was expelled from his school when his tutors leaned he had contracted AIDS through a tainted hemophilia treatment, he did so not only because he believed in what he was doing, but because he had come to personally know Ryan White. That act is still the largest federally funded program for people living with HIV/AIDS. It sought funding to improve availability of care for low-income, uninsured and under-insured victims of AIDS and their families.

Had he done nothing else, Kennedy’s advocacy on this issue alone deserves a lasting monument.

​
Nster.com