Darkside Rainbow

ACLU Acts Against RV Park Banning HIV+ 2 Yr Old From Pool - 365gay.com

(Montgomery, Ala.) The American Civil Liberties Union sent a letter to the owner of the Wales West RV park in Silverhill, Ala., today demanding that it stop discriminating against people with HIV. The RV park banned a child with the disease from using the swimming pool, showers and other common areas of the park without his parent’s obtaining a letter from a doctor.

We’re going to avoid the wailing “but it’s just a chiiiiiiiild” angle since that’s just a cheap ploy on emotional heartstrings, although I doubt if this were an adult case it would have gained as much attention. The main issue that I’m focused on is the fact that an HIV+ positive person is, yet again, being treated like a leper due to ignorance.

You would think, in this day in age, people would be more educated about the reality of HIV and AIDs. HIV/AIDS requires concentration in hospitable bodily fluids for transmission - the primary fluids being blood and sexual emissions. You can not contract HIV/AIDS from:

holding hands;

kissing;

touching a handrail touched by an HIV+ individual;

using the same toilet as an HIV+ individual;

using the same shower as an HIV+ individual;

even kissing an HIV+ individual.

Considering the devastating effects that HIV has on the human body, it is surprisingly weak outside of a hospitable environment. Skin cells, saliva, and water do not count as a hospitable environment; there is almost 0% concentration of HIV in your average HIV+ patient’s saliva or skin, and HIV is not an airborne or waterborne pathogen. In the air, in plain water (don’t even get me started on chemical-inundated water), HIV will die.

Sexually transmitted disease. Do you understand this concept? There must be blood-to-blood contact or inundation of major bodily fluids on mucus membranes. So frankly you should not be worried about an HIV+ two-year-old in an RV park unless you really think some of your tenants are that interested in having sex with a two-year-old…and in that case, you’ve got much bigger problems. There is a very thin possibility of blood-to-blood infection; children are prone to falling and injuring themselves, especially when playing with other children. But do you really think this child’s foster parents are going to let that happen? Do you really think they won’t shadow that child everywhere and make sure that he doesn’t suffer so much as a single scratch? HIV+ children are in an already fragile state of health and require constant supervision.

So what are you afraid of? Are you so swayed by the propaganda about HIV/AIDS, the so-called “gay sex disease”, that you’re going to discriminate against someone who contracted this disease through no action of their own without truly understanding what you’re “protecting” people from? Do you even know what it is that you’re guarding against, or just following blind prejudice under the guise of playing the CYA game? Yes, you’ve got to cover your arse and think about liability and the safety of other tenants, as well as think of any possible legal angles. I understand that perfectly well, and in that case I can understand asking the parents of the child to take certain precautions.

But to bar the child from public areas of the park until the parents obtain a doctor’s letter? I don’t see that doctor’s letter as an olive branch, or even any sort of compromise. It’s an insult. It’s a bloody effin’ accusation.

The HIV+ are not lepers, and they shouldn’t be treated that way.

Educate yourselves. You’ll be a better person for it.

I’m out.

wales west rv park, hiv, aids, aclu