Kennedy a gay rights champion

[vulgar_newcomer]

Its useless to try to argue with the man who knows so much on every topic.
In 1981-2, the infancy of a unknown disease, that wasn't formally known until 1983 and a test developed rapidly in 1985.
All in all I guess there is a lot to be learned still on a new disease, which HIV is at least to man.
The stigma attached to this unknown hell wouldn't be flattering had the first person been found with it and the first medical check up a Doctor said "This is the first case I've seen but this is called HIV.
It would have been given a bunch of homophobe names even if this sort of sci-fi knowledge of a first discovered disease was found.
If only Gay men were dying of breast cancer in 2009 do you think that it wouldn't have slanderous nasty names by the public? Why focus on this Grid shit, and make such a point that you were there in the beginning????
1988 is still the beginning of HIV/ADS, the beginning not a old well worn in plague or terror but a newly found much unknown illness.
Those that want to boast they were there in the beginning, are lucky to still be here now because it is not a old disease now in 2009. I have to repeat that because some fat heads just want to toot their horn to boost there own standing as they stare in the mirror.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, Author of Ryan White CARE Act, Dead at 77


http://www.poz.com/articles/edward_kennedy_ryan_white_1_17152.shtml

Lets talk about the Ryan White Care Act.
For without this likely HIV death rates in the USA would still be incredible high. Gay guys with HIV, all people with HIV have a lot to be thankful to Kennedy for.
Make no mistake without any doubt and you know it alls can research this, it ain't hard......... without any doubt the Republicans want and wanted to slash and kill the Ryan White Care Act last year, and this year. Certainly they would. Bush flat lined its funding in the past.
It was very much in jeopardy of being killed off or cut worse then it is now.
It is this piece of legislation which helps, helped, & will help those wrecked financially with HIV and allowed them to get proper medical care.
The needs are greater than funding can ever support yet it is much better than nothing even as is in 2009.

The death rates of HIV were highest from 1994 to 1998, when the first tier protease drugs emerged. It was the Ryan White Care act that gave thousands without health insurance or money the means to purchase drugs that cost well over $18,000 a yr in the USA to stay alive and get medical/support treatments. The death rates form AIDS in the mid 1990's dwarfed the famed start of the disease no matter how much one wants to think the death rate was incredible in 1983, AIDS hadn't killed anyone yet.... it was the 1990's.

http://www.kff.org/hivaids/upload/F...Epidemic-in-the-United-States-2005-Update.pdf

Without this bill you can be the death rate wouldn't have fallen off or be as low as it is today in American. It was the treatment offered by those that created the Ryan White Care Act that gave many a fighting chance and it doesn't matter if it was because of a white straight Kid or a Woman,................. but I know who authored the bill and who had nothing to do with it and wish it washed up to go away.

Thanks Teddy!

 

[noah617]

With all these gay rights leaders saying Kennedy was with them from the beginning it seems a little petty to stick with the argument that the op was making it up. Kennedy has been so supportive of gay causes that arguing over a couple of years one way or the other seems pretty unimportant anyway.

I'm watching the local news and although the viewing hours for Kennedy were supposed to end at 11, they're extending them because there's still a 3-4 hr long line outside. Now that's a well deserved tribute to a man who helped so many.

 

[noah617]

Wow that was an impressive mod response.

 

[NickCole]

^^^ The importance to NickCole was an attempt to expose me for stretching the truth, which I am pleased to report this time I have not.

The importance to me was not to expose you for anything. It wasn't about you, it was about truth. What's important to me is the truth -- recognizing, at once, that there is hard truth (Kennedy did not demonstrate leadership with AIDS funding in 1981, and neither did anybody else in Congress) and the truth as it's seen through one's context (how everything seems from where one is standing in the room -- if Bob's on the north side of a living room and Cheryl's on the south side during a busy party where a murder takes place in the center of the living room, the truth they tell will not be the same, it'll be in the context of what they observed from where they stood in the room).

What gay leaders have said is Ted Kennedy was more helpful to gays than any other Senator back in the 1980s and that he took a leadership role in AIDS funding. That is true and I, too, have written of how I appreciate that and that he's earned gratitude from gays for it, it's part of his legacy that deserves recognition and praise. And most of what those gay leaders said is true from where they stood in the room -- but not the implication that Kennedy took action in June 1981. What you said, that Kennedy was there for us when AIDS was called GRID is not true.

You are correct, it truly is minutae exactly when he began his advocacy for AIDS, the important point to stress is that everyone agrees it was very early.

It is not minutae because at issue is not days or weeks or months or even a few years, and if Kennedy or someone else of his stature had taken action when AIDS was called GRID, it's likely the whole story of how AIDS went would be different and less devastating. AIDS got out of control because there was no prominent leader for AIDS funding in 1981, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87. Six years is not minutae while thousands of people are getting sick and dying. (To be clear I blame Reagan and Republicans because they created an atmosphere that made it very hard to deal with AIDS. I don't blame Kennedy for that, but neither will I give him credit for something he didn't do.) It took a long time to privately raise even a fraction of the money needed for research and education and treatment while we also had to raise money for support services, and by the time the government --Kennedy-- stepped in with the big bucks that were needed many thousands had died and it had become an epidemic - or maybe its pandemic status had been reached by 1988, I don't recall. Not that that made Kennedy's achievement in 1988 unimportant or unneeded or unappreciated, but it was a long time in coming, several years, and that's not minutae.

 

[noah617]

Here's evidence of Ted Kennedy working on getting money for Aids research in July of 1983. I didn't feel like paying for an archived news article but I think you can get the gist of it.

 

[NickCole]

^^

That's interesting. Can you provide a link?

I've put several combinations into Google from what you've pasted there and nothing connected to that comes up.

Thanks.

 

[NickCole]

Oddly (or not - I still don't really get how Google works!) this is the kind of results my search comes up with if I use elements of what you posted but without the date:

Programs to Fight AIDS Cleared by Senate, 87-4; House's Approval Is Seen

By IRVIN MOLOTSKY, Special to the New York Times

Published: Friday, April 29, 1988

The Senate today approved a program of education, treatment and research to combat AIDS at a cost of up to $1 billion. The measure was the first comprehensive plan dealing with acquired immune deficiency syndrome to come before Congress, and it had bipartisan support, winning by a vote of 87 to 4.

The bill now goes to the House, where approval is expected. President Reagan is expected to sign the measure, which declares the disease to be a public health emergency.

Most of the money, much of it requiring separate legislation, would be spent in the fiscal year 1989, starting Oct. 1.

In calling for the approval of the program, Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, declared, ''According to the United States Public Health Service, by 1991 AIDS will claim more lives each year than the entire Vietnam War. We must act immediately and decisively to halt this killer. More than 60,000 Americans have come down with AIDS. Nearly 35,000 are already dead.''

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/29/u...-by-senate-87-4-house-s-approval-is-seen.html

I well remember this, and I remember we cheered Kennedy for the part he played.

October 1989 was when the first major government money got spent on AIDS. More than eight years after the first cases were identified. Eight goddamned years.

 

[noah617]

^^

That's interesting. Can you provide a link?

I've put several combinations into Google from what you've pasted there and nothing connected to that comes up.

Thanks.

I searched it under news and used "Kennedy Aids gay" i think and limited the search to the early 80's. We get so used to relying on Google for everything it's a little scary how stories from as recently as 25 years ago can be so hard to find.

Here's the link, weird how it has a smiley face in the middle of it. http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=PI&s_site=philly&p_multi=PI&p_theme=realcities&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB295EC18E1FBBF&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date&s_trackval=GooglePM

 

[NickCole]

So you are blaming Kennedy for the crisis it is today?

Unbelievable!

I wrote just a couple of sentences after the one you quoted: "(To be clear I blame Reagan and Republicans because they created an atmosphere that made it very hard to deal with AIDS. I don't blame Kennedy for that, but neither will I give him credit for something he didn't do.) "

This relentless mischaracterization of what you read only keeps proving that, wittingly or not, you make up stuff. I really have the sense you don't intend to, but it's interesting how you read "I blame Reagan and Republicans ... I don't blame Kennedy" and interpret it as "I blame Kennedy."

 

[NickCole]

I searched it under news and used "Kennedy Aids gay" i think and limited the search to the early 80's. We get so used to relying on Google for everything it's a little scary how stories from as recently as 25 years ago can be so hard to find.

Here's the link, weird how it has a smiley face in the middle of it. http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we...page=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM

Thanks for the link.

I have to take off, weekend guests arriving soon, but I'll check into it when I have time.

 

[NickCole]

I searched it under news and used "Kennedy Aids gay" i think and limited the search to the early 80's. We get so used to relying on Google for everything it's a little scary how stories from as recently as 25 years ago can be so hard to find.

Here's the link, weird how it has a smiley face in the middle of it. http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we...page=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM

Again, thanks for the link.

I've searched through a shelf of books at my house and pretty extensively on the Internet, in Congressional records and contemporaneous news reports and books exerpted online, and nowhere do I find a reference to Kennedy being a leader of that legislation. He did vote for it, as did many others, and he did lend his voice in urging Reagan to sign it, as did many others, and that's commendable. But it is not the same as the characterizations that Kennedy was a leader in AIDS funding when AIDS was called GRID, or back in 1981 into 82, 83 and so on.

Kennedy, and all the others in Congress, who voted for these funding allotments were the good guys compared to the Jesse Helms and Ronald Reagans -- as I've said, I blame Reagan and Republicans for making AIDS funding so difficult for so many years. Still, if you were around then or if the same thing happened today when it's your lovers and your friends dying and you're fighting for what's needed day by day, three hundred days, six hundred days, twelve hundred days, fifteen hundred days and so on before someone stands up as Kennedy did --bravely and rightly and commendably-- in 1988 and says we're going to put major government funding into dealing with this, the difference between 1981 and 1988 is large. And the difference between signing on to someone else's bill (which ultimately delivered very little funding to AIDS) and joining others in telling Reagan he should sign it, and leading substantive AIDS funding is also large.

As I've said before, Ted Weiss, Henry Waxman, Barbara Boxer, these are the people in Congress, and there were a few others, who were genuinely leaders, there for us from the beginning, when AIDS was called GRID and the years immediately following, fighting for what we needed when it was a steep uphill battle. Kennedy is a big name and Democrats are stumbling over themselves in the aftermath of his death (and while their current health care reform is a shambles and Obama's and Congress' numbers sliding) to "enlarge in death beyond what he was in life," as he once admonished we should not do with Bobby Kennedy. Ted Kennedy was responsible for substantive achievements, including leading the first major government AIDS funding in 1988, and that deserves to be remembered and honored, but the truth of his authentic legacy is diminished by efforts to make it something it was not. And those in Congress who really were early leaders, the ones who took the hits and burned the midnight oil and called in favors and really did fight for AIDS funding in 1981 and 82, in those true early years, who deserve the true honor for doing that, are disrespected as well.

 

[NickCole]

And yet you said this even though Kennedy was an AIDS advocate from the early days:

...if Kennedy or someone else of his stature had taken action when AIDS was called GRID, it's likely the whole story of how AIDS went would be different and less devastating.

Yes. I said it because it's true.

But contrary to your total mischaracterization of what I wrote, I did not say or suggest I blame Kennedy for AIDS being the crisis it is today.

 

[NickCole]

Some of the Kennedy haters may be simply "Kennedy Supported Obama, Not Hillary For President" haters, which makes it even more pathetic. To denigrate and tear down a man who has relentlessly pursued enhancing rights for 47+ years, simply because he supported a different Democrat in the race to the White House in 2008 is pathological.

Since these posts between you and Alfie are clearly about me, point out where I "denigrate and tear down" Kennedy. Of course you won't because you can't.

On the contrary, I have recognized and honored his genuine contributions and refused to let people make up stuff about him.

 

[NickCole]

Actually, old chap, what you're doing is trying to move the goal posts. You asserted that Kennedy was AWOL on AIDS and that the first AIDS legislation was in 1988. You stated:

I stated that Kennedy (and Hatch) got the first major AIDS legislation passed in 1988.

And I've given kudos to them for doing so.

Kennedy did not, prior to that and certainly not as far back as when AIDS was called GRID, take a leadership role in securing AIDS funding. I've stated that, and nobody has provided evidence to the contrary -- and when someone of Kennedy's name recognition and power leads major AIDS legislation, it's widely reported and documented, as his 1988 legislation was.

You were corrected on that count, Nick:

Philadelphia Inquirer - July 13, 1983 - A11 NATIONAL

QUICK CURE FOR AIDS IS SOUGHT

Fifteen senators asked President Reagan yesterday to take action that would help find the cause and a cure for AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome). In a letter to the President, the senators asked him to sign the Public Health Emergencies Act into law. The legislation, which passed both the House and the Senate without opposition, would set up a permanent $30 million fund to be used by the Secretary of Health and Human Services in public health emergencies. The fund would allow...

You claim I was corrected but Kennedy's name doesn't even appear in that quote, much less any indication that this was major AIDS legislation or that Kennedy was a leader of it. And, further, despite the $30 Million figure and headline, the legislation was not specifically about AIDS and in fact provided very little money to AIDS.