Washington DC leads America’s HIV/AIDS pack. One in twenty people in our nation’s capital carry the deadly retrovirus. Many of you are probably wondering, “How in the world could our government allow such disgraceful numbers?” Activist Nicole Styles has her suspicions.
Via ABC:
Styles thinks that when these staggering numbers were announced, a state of emergency should have been declared. Instead, she and many others in D.C. suspect that the government’s seeming indifference is because 80 percent of those infected are black and most of the others are gay.
Styles believes that if the disease affected white heterosexuals at a rate of one in 20, the city and federal government would have more of a response.
What?! Our Republican controlled government ignores blacks and gays? How retro!
Matt
Is it so much the government ignores the gays and blacks? I don’t think so. Yes, you could say this 10, 20, or 30 years ago but I think in this time it is more of an issue of class. The government basically ignores the poor and middle class except in election times to garner a vote or two.
Matt
Aren’t the Democrats in control of the government now with a majority in congress?
cjc
If we had a Westminster system like in Britain, that would be true. But as long as Dumbya is in the White House, it ain’t so.
In any case, I think it’s more of a case of DC government incompetence than outright racism.
WWH
ADAP (Aids Drug Assistance Program) has nearly doubled under Bush. Credit where credit is due….
Gregg
Abstinence only! Yee ha!
Matt – the government is not the Congress. What did I learn in elementary school? Oh yes, there are 3 branches of the Federal gov’t – Executive, Legislative, and Judicial. The Legislative is primarily Democratic right now. Executive is Rupug. And Judicial is skewing hard to the right.
I do agree with you that the current gov’t does ignore the poor and disenfranchised though.
Matt
Gregg – Thank you for the correction. Please allow me to correct you on a few items.
First as you mention the executive is “rupug”. I believe you meant to say Republican.
The legislative is not primarily democratic. It is controlled by the Democrats. Saying it’s primarily Democratic would be akin to saying that the Legislative Branch was primarily Republic in the early 2000.
Finally, the supreme court seems evenly split to me. It is popularly accepted that Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito compose the Court’s conservative wing. Justices Stevens, Souter, Ginsburg and Breyer are generally thought of as the Court’s liberal wing.
Justice Kennedy, generally thought of as a moderate or in layman’s terms a swing vote. That sounds evenly split to me and not so “hard to the right” as you state.
Kristian Israel
Matt, you clearly understood what Greg said, otherwise you would have not corrected him, instead of homos stating “I am smarter” and “better”, lets try and unite for causes we belive deserve attention, and not personal attention that clearly divides us, its time to use our brains, our creativity against the people in control who are clearly (not all of them) not better than us.
đ
Matt
Kristian,
What causes do we need to unite for? Other than HIV/AIDs which is not really a GLBT issue anymore but a world issue, I see nothing that I need to unite for? I’m not looking to marry anyone ever so I’ll pass on helping you all out on that one.
Ryan
Matt, stop being a twat.
The problems in DC have been bad and are getting worse. Also there were rumblings that the Whitman Walker clinics (the primary means of HIV care in the city in particular for those without health insurance) were going to be functioning on severely reduced funds.