A Whisper of AIDS Persuasive Speech
Less than three months ago, at platform hearings in Salt Lake City, I asked the Republican Party to
lift the shroud of silence which has been draped over the issue of HIV/AIDS. I have come tonight to
bring our silence to an end.
I bear a message of challenge, not self-congratulation. I want your attention, not your applause. I
would never have asked to be HIV positive. But I believe that in all things there is a good purpose,
and so I stand before you, and before the nation, gladly.
The reality of AIDS is brutally clear. Two hundred thousand Americans are dead or dying; a million
more are infected. Worldwide, forty million, sixty million, or a hundred million infections will be
counted in the coming few years. But despite science and research, White House meetings and
congressional hearings; despite good intentions and bold initiatives, campaign slogans and hopeful
promises—despite it all, it's the epidemic which is winning tonight.
In the context of an election year, I ask you—here, in this great hall, or listening in the quiet of your
home—to recognize that the AIDS virus is not a political creature. It does not care whether you are
Democrat or Republican. It does not ask whether you are black or white, male or female, gay or
straight, young or old.
Tonight, I represent an AIDS community whose members have been reluctantly drafted from every
segment of American society. Though I am white, and a mother, I am one with a black infant
struggling with tubes in a Philadelphia hospital. Though I am female, and contracted this disease in
marriage, and enjoy the warm support of my family, I am one with the lonely gay man sheltering a
flickering candle from the cold wind of his family's rejection.
This is not a distant threat; it is a present danger. The rate of infection is increasing fastest among
women and children. Largely unknown a decade ago, AIDS is the third leading killer of young-adult
Americans today—but it won't be third for long.
We may take refuge in our stereotypes, but we cannot hide there long, because HIV asks only one
thing of those it attacks. Are you human? And this is the right question. Are you human? Because
people with HIV have not entered some alien state of being. They are human.
My call to you, my Party, is to take a public stand, no less compassionate than that of the President
and Mrs. Bush. With the President's leadership, much good has been done. Much of the good has
gone unheralded, and much remains to be done.
The lesson history teaches us is this: If you believe you are safe, you are at risk. If you do not see
this killer stalking your children, look again. There is no family or community, no race or religion, no
place left in America that is safe. Until we genuinely embrace this message, we are a nation at risk.
