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Less than three
months ago, at the platform hearings in Salt Lake
City, I asked the Republican party to lift the
shroud of silence which has been draped over the
issue of HIV/AIDS. I have come tonight to bring our
silence to an end.
I bear a message of
challenge, not self-congratulation. I want your
attention, not your applause. I would never have
asked to be HIV positive. But I believe that in all
things there is a good purpose, and so I stand
before you, and before the nation, gladly.
The reality of AIDS
is brutally clear. Two hundred thousand Americans
are dead or dying; a million more are infected.
Worldwide, forty million, sixty million, or a
hundred million infections will be counted in the
coming few years. But despite science and research,
White House meetings and congressional hearings;
despite good intentions and bold initiatives,
campaign slogans and hopeful promises--despite it
all, it's the epidemic which is winning tonight.
In the context of an
election year, I ask you--here, in this great hall,
or listening in the quiet of your home--to recognize
that the AIDS virus is not a political creature. It
does not care whether you are Democrat or
Republican. It does not ask whether you are black or
white, male or female, gay or straight, young or
old. [Applause.]
Tonight, I represent
an AIDS community whose members have been
reluctantly drafted from every segment of American
society. Though I am white, and a mother, I am one
with a black infant struggling with tubes in a
Philadelphia hospital. Though I am female, and
contracted this disease in marriage, and enjoy the
warm support of my family, I am one with the lonely
gay man sheltering a flickering candle from the cold
wind of his family's rejection. [Applause]
This is not a distant
threat; it is a present danger. The rate of
infection is increasing fastest among women and
children. Largely unknown a decade ago, AIDS is the
third leading killer of young-adult Americans
today--but it won't be third for long. Because,
unlike other diseases, this one travels. Adolescents
don't give each other cancer or heart disease
because they believe they are in love. But HIV is
different. And we have helped it along--we have
killed each other--with our ignorance, our
prejudice, and our silence.
We may take refuge in
our stereotypes, but we cannot hide there long.
Because HIV asks only one thing of those it attacks:
Are you human? And this is the right question: Are you
human? Because people with HIV have not entered some
alien state of being. They are human. They have not
earned cruelty and they do not deserve meanness.
They don't benefit from being isolated or treated as
outcasts. Each of them is exactly what God made: a
person. Not evil, deserving of our judgment; not
victims, longing for our pity. People. Ready for
support and worthy of compassion. [Applause.]
My call to you, my
Party, is to take a public stand no less
compassionate than that of the President and Mrs.
Bush. They have embraced me and my family in
memorable ways. In the place of judgment, they have
shown affection. In difficult moments, they have
raised our spirits. In the darkest hours, I have
seen them reaching not only to me, but also to my
parents, armed with that stunning grief and special
grace that comes only to parents who have themselves
leaned too long over the bedside of a dying child.
With the President's
leadership, much good has been done; much of the
good has gone unheralded; and as the President has
insisted, "Much remains to be done."
But we do the
President's cause no good if we praise the American
family but ignore a virus that destroys it.
[Applause.] We must be consistent if we are to be
believed. We cannot love justice and ignore
prejudice, love our children and fear to teach them.
Whatever our role, as parent or policy maker, we
must act as eloquently as we speak--else we have no
integrity.
My call to the nation
is a plea for awareness. If you believe you are
safe, you are in danger. Because I was not a
haemophiliac, I was not at risk. Because I was not
gay, I was not at risk. Because I did not inject
drugs, I was not at risk.
My father has devoted
much of his lifetime to guarding against another
holocaust. He is part of the generation who heard
Pastor Niemoeller come out of the Nazi death camps
to say, "They came after the Jews, and I was
not a Jew, so I did not protest. They came after the
Trade Unionists, and I was not a Trade Unionist, so
I did not protest. They came after the Roman
Catholics, and I was not a Roman Catholic, so I did
not protest. Then they came after me, and there was
no one left to protest." [Applause.]
The lesson history
teaches is this: If you believe you are safe, you
are at risk. If you do not see this killer stalking
your children, look again. There is no family or
community, no race or religion, no place left in
America that is safe. Until we genuinely embrace
this message, we are a nation at risk.
Tonight, HIV marches
resolutely toward AIDS in more than a million
American homes, littering its pathway with the
bodies of the young. Young men. Young women. Young
parents, and young children. One of the families is
mine. If it is true that HIV inevitably turns to
AIDS, then my children will inevitably turn to
orphans.
My family has been a
rock of support. My eighty-four-year-old father, who
has pursued the healing of the nations, will not
accept the premise that he cannot heal his daughter.
My mother has refused to be broken; she still calls
at midnight to tell wonderful jokes that make me
laugh. Sisters and friends, and my brother Phillip,
whose birthday is today--all have helped carry me
over the hardest places. I am blessed, richly and
deeply blessed, to have such a family.
But not all of you
[Applause], but not all of you have been so blessed.
You are HIV-positive but dare not say it. You have
lost loved ones, but you dared not whisper the word
AlDS. You weep silently; you grieve alone.
I have a message for
you: It is not you who should feel shame, it is we.
We who tolerate ignorance and practice prejudice, we
who have taught you to fear. We must lift our shroud
of silence, making it safe for you to reach out for
compassion. It is our task to seek safety for our
children, not in quiet denial but in effective
action.
Someday our children
will be grown. My son Max, now four, will take the
measure of his mother; my son Zachary, now two, will
sort through his memories. I may not be here to hear
their judgments, but I know already what I hope they
are.
I want my children to
know that their mother was not a victim. She was a
messenger. I do not want them to think, as I once
did, that courage is the absence of fear; I want
them to know that courage is the strength to act
wisely when most we are afraid. I want them to have
the courage to step forward when called by their
nation, or their Party, and give leadership--no
matter what the personal cost. I ask no more of you
than I ask of myself, or of my children.
To the millions of
you who are grieving, who are frightened, who have
suffered the ravages of AIDS firsthand: Have courage
and you will find support.
To the millions who
are strong I issue the plea: Set aside prejudice and
politics to make room for compassion and sound
policy.
To my children, I
make this pledge:
I will not give in,
Zachary, because I draw my courage from you. Your
silly giggle gives me hope. Your gentle prayers give
me strength. And you, my child, give me the reason
to say to America, "You are at risk."
And I will not rest,
Max, until I have done all I can to make your world
safe. I will seek a place where intimacy is not the
prelude to suffering. I will not hurry to leave you,
my children. But when I go, I pray that you will not
suffer shame on my account.
To all within the
sound of my voice, I appeal: Learn with me the
lessons of history and of grace, so my children will
not be afraid to say the word AIDS when I am gone.
Then their children, and yours, may not need to
whisper it at all.
God bless the
children, and bless us all--good night.
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