Early in my political career I worked for a great man…a congressman from California with quite a bit of seniority. He was the ranking member of the House Health and Environment Subcommittee and second ranking member on the full House Energy and Commerce Committee. He was a big shot.
In those days, the mid to late 80’s, Congress faced their initial responses to the AIDS epidemic. My boss, always the conservative, viewed HIV and AIDS as a sexually transmitted disease. Our opponents always viewed the matter as a civil rights issue given that nearly 100% of all cases of HIV were occurring within the gay community.
Of course, viewing HIV and AIDS as a communicable disease, thereby invoking standard public health practices, meant that many homosexuals would have their lives opened up to public scrutiny – and they certainly didn’t want that. Committee hearings were always heated. The liberal Democrats who controlled Congress in those days were very protective of the gay community and insisted that the matter be treated as a civil rights issue first and a public health problem second.
As the congressman and I thought about how to explain these differing views, we felt truth was the best thing. And so he instructed me to craft a floor speech that he would insert into the Congressional Record that addressed, in very frank terms, how HIV was spread and why the disease was so concentrated in the gay community.
On June 29, 1989, we put those remarks in the Congressional Record. Prior to Bill Clinton’s impeachment transcript about his affair with Monica Lewinski, our remarks were the most widely read in memory, or so we were told by people who know that sort of thing. What was of particular interest were remarks titled “What Homosexuals Do.”
In graphic, but clinical, detail we described how HIV was spread so easily in the gay community – we wrote candidly about what homosexual do. And needless to say, it caused a stir.
Fast forward to now. Just the other day, a small group of anti-gay protestors (mostly from one family) paid for an ad in the Tribune and the Deseret News. It showed two men kissing and explained how disappointed they were in Governor Huntsman’s recent flip-flop on gay marriage – or what he calls civil unions.
I couldn’t help but think back to those remarks I wrote in 1989. Had I to do it all over again, I wouldn’t. What I wrote was factual. But what I wrote was inappropriate for the public square.
Sometimes we convince ourselves that the cause is so great that even offending everyone’s good sensibilities is appropriate to get the point across. It rarely, if ever, is.
What I wrote way back then wasn’t hate speech, although many partisans thought is was. I think they confused stark reality with hate speech – kind of a blame-the-messenger mentality. We like to do that when we don’t have a very good argument for things.
The ad that this anti-gay group ran feels like a hateful rant, even if their words aren’t explicitly hateful. For me, the real issue is appropriateness. Frankly, I think there are ways to get a point across without offending the sensibilities of regular people.
We live in a free country where these sorts of ads can be bought and sold – whether by gays attacking the LDS Church or anti-gays attacking homosexual lifestyles and the politicians who support them. GK Chesterton once said, “We are learning to do a great many clever things…the next great task will be to learn not to do them.”
That sums up my feelings here. It simply is inappropriate to run those sorts of ads.
I’m Paul Mero. Thanks for listening.
