Quote Of The Day - Ryan T. Anderson

"For the past generation, there have been a bunch of lies told in the public schools and in the media, lots of propaganda, but propaganda can’t win in the long run. In the long-run, the truth wins out. In the same way when there were some racists who tried to say that you can’t have interracial marriage, that was propaganda, it was a lie, and it failed. In the same way, trying to eliminate that marriage is about uniting the two halves of humanity, not black and white, because that’s not the two halves of humanity, the two halves of humanity, male and female, husband and wife, mom and dad, you can’t erase that, and in the long run the truth will win out." - Heritage Foundation spokesdouche Ryan T. Anderson.

RELATED: Right Wing Watch points out that the Heritage Foundation is a big fan of the late Sen. Jesse Helms, who got his political start by denouncing interracial marriage.

Photo Of The Day

(Via The Randy Report)

Spitting On The Graves Of AIDS Victims

Revisionists charged with "protecting the legacy" of dead dead dead Jesse Helms are trying to recast the vile homophobe as a champion of people with AIDS. Unsurprisingly, activists are furious.

Efforts to lift the [HIV travel] ban were blocked by a 1993 Congressional amendment introduced by Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina. Those who fought the law say Mr. Helms, who died in 2008, perpetuated decades of discrimination. But just as the ban has disappeared, the curators of Mr. Helms’s legacy are trying to touch up the relevant history. Some want him seen as a savior to those with AIDS and a defender of gay rights. Despite Mr. Helms’s storied opposition to “a homosexual lifestyle,” the Jesse Helms Center in Wingate, N.C., is challenging the idea that he was a “homophobe” or obstructive in the AIDS fight.

According to the center’s Web site, “It was Senator Helms who worked most tirelessly to protect the very principles of freedom that homosexuals are denied in many other nations.” John Dodd, president of the Jesse Helms Center Foundation, recently disputed an editorial in the British newspaper The Guardian that vilified Mr. Helms for his role in the ban. Mr. Dodd argued that “two million Africans were alive” because of the senator’s work fighting H.I.V. Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco, whose partner Tim Curbo died from AIDS, said the Helms Center sought to sanitize the record. “It’s spitting on the graves of all the people who suffered,” Mr. Ammiano said, adding, “He was truly evil and very cavalier about it. He should be in the hall of shame.”

This "champion" is the guy who said about gays: "It's their deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct that is responsible for the disease." A real fucking hero.

(Tipped by JMG reader Robert)

HIV Travel Ban Ends Today

More than 22 years after it was first proposed by Sen. Jesse Helms, as of today the federal government has stopped blocking people with HIV from entering the United States.

President Obama said the ban was not compatible with US plans to be a leader in the fight against the disease. The new rules come into force on Monday and the US plans to host a bi-annual global HIV/Aids summit for the first time in 2012. The ban was imposed at the height of a global panic about the disease at the end of the 1980s. It put the US in a group of just 12 countries, also including Libya and Saudi Arabia, that excluded anyone suffering from HIV/Aids. The BBC's Charles Scanlon, in Miami, says that improving treatments and evolving public perceptions have helped to bring about the change. Rachel Tiven, head of the campaign group Immigration Equality, told the BBC that the step was long overdue. "The 2012 World Aids Conference, due to be held in the United States, was in jeopardy as a result of the restrictions. It's now likely to go ahead as planned," she said.

Today's Hero: NC Sen. Julia Boseman

Openly lesbian NC state Sen. Julia Boseman was the lone dissenting vote in a resolution honoring the life work of the greatest homophobe to disgrace the halls of Congress, U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms. The resolution passed the North Carolina House 98-0 and in the Senate 41-1. Boseman is NC's the only openly gay or lesbian state legislator. A total of 26 lawmakers in both chambers abstained from voting. Thank you, Sen. Boseman!

(Via Matt Comer @ Q-Notes)

Elizabeth Dole Says "Fuck You" To Americans Who Died From AIDS

This is unbelievable. Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) wants to rename the the current AIDS relief bill after Jesse Helms.

SA 5074. Mrs. DOLE submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by her to the bill S. 2731, to authorize appropriations for fiscal years 2009 through 2013 to provide assistance to foreign countries to combat HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows: On page 1, line 5, strike "and Henry J. Hyde" and insert ", Henry J. Hyde, and Jesse Helms".

Jesse Helms, the man who in 1987 described AIDS prevention literature as "so obscene, so revolting, I may throw up."

Jesse Helms, the man who in 1988 vigorously opposed the Kennedy-Hatch AIDS research bill, saying, "There is not one single case of AIDS in this country that cannot be traced in origin to sodomy."

Jesse Helms, the man who in 1995 said (in opposition to refunding the Ryan White Act) that the government should spend less on people with AIDS because they got sick due to their "deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct."

Jesse Helms, the man who in 2002 announced that he'd changed his mind about AIDS funding for Africa, but not for American gays, because homosexuality "is the primary cause of the doubling and redoubling of AIDS cases in the United States."

Many people hold Ronald Reagan responsible for adding to the early AIDS death toll by his inaction on the pandemic, but it was Helms' actions in thwarting early research that inarguably hastened the demise of many thousands of Americans. How many of my friends, of your friends, would be alive today if the life-saving medications had arrived just one fucking year earlier?

Fuck YOU, Senator Dole. Fuck you with something hard and sandpapery.

(Via - Atomic Gay Wonk)

HomoQuotable - Michelangelo Signorile

"The news on Friday about Helms' death was certainly satisfying for those of us who experienced his reign of terror, and I among others gave him a fitting send off.

"But let's not let history forget that a powerful gay man was instrumental to Jesse Helms, even as Helms was vilifying and demonizing gay men and allowing them and and many others to die throughout the 80s and 90s. Conservative, then-closeted, Republican political operative Arthur Finkelstein (pictured here in one of the only known photos of the guy) helped engineer Helms' racist campaign against African-American Charlotte Mayor Harvey Gantt in 1990, as Helms was vilifying gay sexuality, blocking AIDS funding, stalling prevention and attacking queer artists.

"Had Jesse Helms not had the handiwork of Finkelstein, who worked for Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and various right-wing senators, he might have lost that race. Instead, we had another decade of his antigay grip on the Republican Party, as he blocked HIV prevention measures and thousands more died.

"Finkelstein is today still working as a strategist for right-wing Republicans, as are many other closeted and not-so-closeted gay Republicans. Finkelstein was outed in 1996 in Boston magazine, and a few years ago he quietly got married to his partner in Massachusetts -- benefiting from the hard work of LGBT activists while he promoted and worked for a vile antigay crusader like Jesse Helms.

"Jesse Helms is dead but his legacy lives on. Republicans today similarly bash gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgender people in order to win elections -- maybe not so vociferously, maybe on different issues than those in the 80s and 90s, but no less opportunistically. And people like Arthur Finklelstein and many other gay Republicans work for them and endorse them.

"Here we are, currently in a presidential election season in which the Republican candidate John McCain supports the California ballot measure banning marriage, has left the door open to a federal marriage amendment, is opposed to lifting the ban on gays serving openly in the military, is opposed to the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and voted against the Hate Crimes Prevention Act. And yet, we've seen Patrick Sammon of the Log Cabin Republicans and his group carry water for McCain as the group mulls whether or not they should endorse him -- as if it's a difficult decision. John McCain may not be ideologically in the same place as Jesse Helms on homosexuality, but what does that matter? If Jesse Helms were in the Senate today John McCain's voting record on gay rights wouldn't be that much different from that of Helms. And John McCain is busy promising to defeat gays to all the same people who supported Jesse Helms.

"Let Jesse Helms' death be a reminder of the kind of gay-bashing the Republican Party has promoted and exploited for decades among its politicians -- and which continues today -- and of the selfish and self-deluded gay people who give the party cover, help, strategy and support. And let's vow not to let it happen again. " - Activist, author, and radio host Michelangelo Signorile.

Jesse Helms Is Dead Dead Dead

Former Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC), the most notoriously racist and homophobic politician in the history of the United States, has died at the age of 86. Happy Independence Day!!!

And now for some choice quotes from DEAD Jesse Helms, the greatest embarrassment to my home state of North Carolina and the nation:

- On threatening the life of a sitting president: "Mr. Clinton better watch out if he comes down here. He'd better have a bodyguard."

- On gays and AIDS: “It's their deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct that is responsible for the disease”

- On equality: "I've been portrayed as a caveman by some. That's not true. I'm a conservative progressive, and that means I think all men are equal, be they slants, beaners, or niggers."

- On education: "Your tax dollars are being used to pay for grade-school classes that teach our children that cannibalism, wife-swapping and murder of infants and the elderly are acceptable behavior."

- On civil rights: "The Negro cannot count forever on the kind of restraint that's thus far left him free to clog the streets, disrupt traffic, and interfere with other men's rights."

- On journalists: "The New York Times and Washington Post are both infested with homosexuals themselves. Just about every person down there is a homosexual or lesbian."

- On the Duke University students upset by Martin Luther King's assassination: "They should ask their parents if it would be all right for their son or daughter to marry a Negro."Some choice commentary from around the web:

Michelangelo Signorile:

No, I do not have any sympathy for his family at this time or anyone else connected to this man, so fuck that usual nicety reserved even for the family of those with whom you disagreed. This is beyond a "disagreement ." Jesse Helms almost single-handedly allowed the deaths of thousands -- willfully denied them help -- while pushing his moral agenda in the Senate. His faint supposed apology in recent years -- for not doing more on AIDS, not for his vicious homophobia -- was far too little, too late, designed to clean up his ghastly legacy a little bit before he croaked. Throughout the 80s and 90s my friends died, and perhaps some of your friends died too, because this man stalled vital research and prevention efforts and vilified gay people.

A commenter on AmericaBLOG:

“A lot of crackers have their burning crosses at half-mast today in his honor.”

From CNN.com:

"If you’re a Christian, Jesse is probably in a very hot, unpleasant place. If you believe in Karma, he’s probably reborn as a poor black child in Somalia."

Via Dan Savage, this bit of unintentionally amusing animation on the Daily Oklahoman was screencapped. Dan's commenter writes:

I went to the Daily Oklahoman website to see what they were saying about the Seattle basketball team moving to OKC, and this was on the front page. The animated ad trotted out from the right side and landed right on Jesse’s mug. All I did was take a screenshot and add the text in the gray box at the bottom.

Classic video: In 1991, Treatment Activist Guerrillas (TAG) of Act-Up placed a giant condom over Jesse Helms' Arlington, Virginia home.