40.Mary Fisher - A Whisper of AIDS
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 and AIDS. I
have come tonight to bring our silence to an end. I bear a message of challenge, not selfcongratulation.
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 purpose.
and 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, it is despite
it all 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 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, because unlike other diseases,
this one travels. Adolescents don’t give each other cancer or heart disease because they
believe they are in love, but HIV is different. and we have helped it along. We have killed each
other with our ignorance, our prejudice, and our silence.
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. They
have not earned cruelty, and they do not deserve meanness. They don’t benefit from being
isolated or treated as outcasts. Each of them is exactly what God made: a person. not evil,
deserving of our judgment. not victims, longing for our pity people, ready for support and
worthy of compassion.
My call to you, my Party, is to take a public stand, no less compassionate than
that of the President and Mrs. Bush. They have embraced me and my family in
memorable ways. In the place of judgment, they have shown affection. In difficult
moments, they have raised our spirits. In the darkest hours, I have seen them reaching not only to
me, but also to my parents, armed with that stunning grief and special grace that comes only to parents who
have themselves leaned too long over the bedside of a dying child.
With the President’s leadership, much good has been done. Much of the good has gone
unheralded, and as the President has insisted, much remains to be done.
But we do the President’s cause no good if we praise the American family but ignore a virus that destroys it.
We must be consistent if we are to be believed. We cannot love justice and ignore prejudice,
love our children and fear to teach them. Whatever our role as parent or policymaker, we
must act as eloquently as we speak else we have no integrity. My call to the nation is a plea
for awareness. If you believe you are safe, you are in danger. Because I was not hemophiliac,
I was not at risk. Because I was not gay, I was not at risk. Because I did not inject drugs, I was not at risk.
My father has devoted much of his lifetime guarding against another holocaust. He is part of
the generation who heard Pastor Nemoellor come out of the Nazi death camps to say,
“They came after the Jews, and I was not a Jew, so, I did not protest. They came after the
trade unionists, and I was not a trade unionist, so, I did not protest. Then they came after the
Roman Catholics, and I was not a Roman Catholic, so, I did not protest. Then they came after
me, and there was no one left to protest.”
The The lesson history teaches 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.
Tonight, HIV marches resolutely toward AIDS in more than a million American homes, littering
its pathway with the bodies of the young young men, young women, young parents, and
young children. One of the families is mine. If it is true that HIV inevitably turns to AIDS, then
my children will inevitably turn to orphans. My family has been a rock of support.
My 84yearold father, who has pursued the healing of the nations, will not accept
the premise that he cannot heal his daughter. My mother refuses to be broken. She still calls at midnight
to tell wonderful jokes that make me laugh. Sisters and friends, and my brother Phillip, whose birthday is today, all
have helped carry me over the hardest places. I am blessed, richly and deeply blessed, to have such a family.
But not all of you But not all of you have been so blessed. You are HIV positive, but dare not
say it. You have lost loved ones, but you dare not whisper the word AIDS. You weep
silently. You grieve alone. I have a message for you.
It is not you who should feel shame. It is we we who tolerate ignorance and practice
prejudice, we who have taught you to fear. We must lift our shroud of silence, making it safe
for you to reach out for compassion. It is our task to seek safety for our children, not
in quiet denial, but in effective action.
Someday our children will be grown. My son Max, now four, will take the measure of his
mother. My son Zachary, now two, will sort through his memories. I may not be here to
hear their judgments, but I know already what I hope they are. I want my children to know that
their mother was not a victim. She was a messenger.
I do not want them to think, as I once did, that courage is the absence of fear. I want
them to know that courage is the strength to act wisely when most we are afraid. I want
them to have the courage to step forward when called by their nation or their Party and give leadership,
no matter what the personal cost.
I ask no more of you than I ask of myself or of my children. To the millions of you who are
grieving, who are frightened, who have suffered the ravages of AIDS firsthand: Have courage,
and you will find support. To the millions who are strong, I issue the plea: Set aside prejudice
and politics to make room for compassion and sound policy.
To my children, I make this pledge: I will not give in, Zachary, because I draw my courage
from you. Your silly giggle gives me hope. your gentle prayers give me strength. and you, my
child, give me the reason to say to America, "You are at risk."
And I will not rest, Max, until I have done all I can
to make your world safe. I will seek a place where intimacy is not the
prelude to suffering. I will not hurry to leave you, my children, but when I go, I pray that
you will not suffer shame on my account.
To all within the sound of my voice, I appeal: Learn with me the lessons of history and of
grace, so my children will not be afraid to say the word "AIDS" when I am gone.
Then, their children and yours may not need to whisper it at all.
God bless the children, and God bless us all. Good night.
