Torie Chairman (UK) regrets party's anti-gay stance

[Charlie Brown]

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article344238.ece

Francis Maude, the chairman of the Conservative Party, has said that the homophobic attitude of the Thatcher government contributed to the death of his brother from Aids.

Mr Maude, who served as a minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, said he regretted voting for the now-repealed Section 28, which banned councils from promoting homosexuality. "In hindsight a mistake, I voted for it, I was a minister," he said.

In an interview with the gay news website PinkNews.co.uk, Mr Maude said: "We've been seen for a long time as a party which hasn't been very open to gay people. That's wrong." Asked if it was morally wrong, he replied: "Yes, totally."

"The gay scene in London in the 1980s was quite aggressively promiscuous and I think if society generally and the government I served in had been more willing to recognise gay people then there would have been less of that problem."

He added: "A lot of people like my brother would not have succumbed to HIV and lost their lives."

[Zenlitened]

1. Asked if it was morally wrong, he replied: "Yes, totally."

Plain and simple.

[Crazy Dave]

2. I never could understand why AIDS was classified as a "gay disease"

The statistics of the hundreds of thousands of heterosexual deaths yearly in countries like Africa, drug users and prostitutes world-wide is something that the number of deaths amongst gays worldwide would be hard to use even as a comparison. Wouldn't even be a whole percentage point probably.

[megatherium]

3. it first surfaced in the UK and the US as a disease

primarily in men who have sex with men, and secondarily in injective drug users.

Of course it became clear by the 1990s that there was a horrific pandemic of AIDS in subSaharan Africa, mostly in heterosexuals.