Over the last few years, the Republican party has given the American public some wild headlines. Conservatives in general have pulled the Republican party so far to the right that the center of the political spectrum might be impossible to get back to. The idea of the GOP being pulled to the right isn't just happening on the national level, but the state level as well. A Republican state senator in Tennessee, Stacey Campfield, has given Americans another wild and crazy idea when he decided to go on a radio show with openly gay host, Michelangelo Signorile.
Stacey Campfield - “Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community...It was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men.....My understanding is that it is virtually, not completely, but virtually impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex.”
It's important to note that "one guy screwing a monkey" isn't totally accurate as Campfield has suggested. What is accepted throughout the scientific community is that HIV is an offshoot of SIV, Simian Immunodeficiency Virus, which is most commonly found in chimpanzees. Now the most commonly accepted theory of how humans received the virus is called the 'hunter' theory. According to avert.org, the 'hunter' theory is when chimps were killed and then eaten transporting the virus to the humans eating them. SIV would then mix itself with the new human host, leaving us with HIV. There are many forms of HIV, with the majority leading back to this theory.
The idea that man "screwed a monkey" and brought AIDS to the United States is nothing short of ignorant. AIDS can be transferred through sex and blood transfusion and what Campfield is saying just echoes the ignorance of 1980s. In the 80s, the majority of Americans lacked knowledge about AIDS and when people don't know about something they become scared of it. President Ronald Reagan was so ignorant when it came to AIDS that he didn't even mention the word until the end of his presidency. AIDS is scary enough that we don't need people like Stacey Campfield trying to put more fear into people.
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