Ryan White's mother wants a word with Huckabee
by Mark Silva
There's at least one person looking for some elaboration in Mike Huckabee's stance on the isolation of AIDS patients: The mother of Ryan White.
Jeanne White-Ginder, mother of the Indiana teenager who lost his battle with AIDS in a case that gained the nation's attention in the late 1980s, has told the Associated Press that the only recently reported comments of Huckabee in 1992 that AIDS patients should be isolated are "so alarming to me." Huckabee, who was running for Senate in Arkansas then and is seeking the Republican Party's nomination for president now, said within the past few days that he stands by the statement -- as well as his belief that homosexuality is a "sin.''
In a telephone interview Monday with The Associated Press from her home in Leesburg, Fla., White's mother said: "It's very important to me that we don't live in the darkness" -- citing a time when people thought AIDS was transmitted through casual contact, such as by "kissing, tears, sweat and saliva." She said: "We have to treat this disease like a disease, and like Ryan always said, not like a dirty word.''
White was 13 when he was diagnosed with AIDS in December 1984, having contracted the disease from a blood-clotting agent treating his hemophilia. He was barred from school, in fear that the disease could be spread casually. He died in 1990 at the age of 18.
Huckabee, later elected governor of Arkansas, made his comments about isolation and homosexuality in a Senate campaign questionnaire for the AP in 1992. White-Ginder, who has declined to say what political party she belongs to, calls his comments "completely beyond comprehension,'' the AP is reporting today.
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