Americans New McCarthyism
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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: