Popular Culture Review Vol. 16, No. 2, Summer 2005 | Page 117

Americans New McCarthyism 113 Working to keep stereotypes and myths alive and the world moving backwards, Mr. Sneed had claimed in his letter that too much federal AIDS money went to groups helping to prevent HTV infections among gay men and to treat those \^4io had contracted the virus. He wrote: Family-oriented, God-loving black conservative grassroots Republicans are presently organizing to end the stranglehold that the ‘Homosexual Power Elite,’ via AIDS Action, HRC, and other homosexual organizations, presently maintain on the domestic AIDS relief budget,” he wrote. “As I have expressed, on the record, that in my opinion, experience, and knowledge, this stranglehold has led to unnecessary deaths and suffering of black Americans from the AIDS virus. Mr. Sneed failed to support, explain, or document his assertions, and for good reason. Simple logic: if there is not a huge closeted homosexual population within the black community (which is unlikely), clearly the virus is being contracted through heterosexual sex and other means for which homosexuals cannot be blamed. Researchers and AIDS prevention activists at the Twelfth Annual Retrovirus Conference (Boston, 2005) attributed the high rate among blacks to such factors as drug addiction, poverty and poor access to health care. The African-American clerics affiliated with the Traditional Values Coalition ended their letter with a truly mixed message, the natural consequence when stereotypes and myths confront reality: As spiritual and community leaders of this nation, we stand for the biblical and community institutions that have made our nation great. “Biblical institutions” include slavery, genocide, polygamy, misogyny, murder, torture, mutilation, and a host of other pathologies and crimes against humanity. But the “institution” that did make this country great is indeed “community”: a coalition of diverse, equal citizens who recognize stereotypes and myths for ^^4lat they are and abandon those who use them for their own political purposes, and then work together in good conscience for the common good, despite differences, be they religious, ethnic, or cultural. Penn State Abington College Mel Seesholtz Notes ^ The “homosexual agenda” was exposed by Representative Barney Frank (DemocratMassachusetts) in his address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention: