Jesse Helms Estate Tries to Recast Late Senator as Gay Rights Hero

[Emit]

From the You've Got to be Kidding Department:

Now that the HIV Travel and Immigration Ban has been lifted, those in charge of the late Senator Jesse Helms' estate and reputation are trying to cast him as a gay rights hero:

"Efforts to lift the ban were blocked by a 1993 Congressional amendment introduced by Senator Jesse Helms, Republican of North Carolina. Those who fought the law say Mr. Helms, who died in 2008, perpetuated decades of discrimination.

But just as the ban has disappeared, the curators of Mr. Helms’s legacy are trying to touch up the relevant history. Some want him seen as a savior to those with AIDS and a defender of gay rights.

Despite Mr. Helms’s storied opposition to 'a homosexual lifestyle,' the Jesse Helms Center in Wingate, N.C., is challenging the idea that he was a “homophobe” or obstructive in the AIDS fight.

According to the center’s Web site, 'It was Senator Helms who worked most tirelessly to protect the very principles of freedom that homosexuals are denied in many other nations.'

John Dodd, president of the Jesse Helms Center Foundation, recently disputed an editorial in the British newspaper The Guardian that vilified Mr. Helms for his role in the ban. Mr. Dodd argued that 'two million Africans were alive' because of the senator’s work fighting H.I.V."

Assemblyman Tom Ammiano of San Francisco, whose partner Tim Curbo died from AIDS, said the Helms Center sought to sanitize the record. “It’s spitting on the graves of all the people who suffered,” Mr. Ammiano said, adding, “He was truly evil and very cavalier about it. He should be in the hall of shame.”

~snip~

http://www.towleroad.com/2010/03/jesse-helms-estate-tries-to-recast-late-senator-as-gay-rights-hero.html

[muntrv]

1. What next? Strom Thurmond fought for civil rights & wanted to ban segregation?

[Emit]

2. Repugs rewriting history

Seems it's happening a great deal too often these days.

[4lbs]

12. Well, he did have sex with at least one black woman and produced bi-racial children.

http://www.rbvincent.com/std.htm


So there! That proves it! We're all just haters.

[gratuitous]

3. Shorter Helms Estate: Gays win

It's obvious that Jesse Helms' bigoted ways don't fly even with his most fervent supporters anymore. This is probably the only way they can think of to say how wrong Mr. Helms was all those years, and while it's not an apology, it's about as close as any of the victims of his decades of oppression are likely to come.

[KILL THE WISE ONE]

4. are they trying to slander Jesse or upset gays ? WTF

Zombie Jesse is spinning in his grave.

[The Genealogist]

5. What next? Ovens in concetration camps were to bake cookies for all the Jews?

Jesse Helms was a disgrace to humanity, and I consider any attempts to put lipstick on that dead pig an affront to basic common sense as well as to every person who suffered because of his petty bigotry.

[Grand Taurean]

6. Rewriting history.

[BrklynLiberal]

7. Welll....look. Everyone thought he was a rabid segregationist ..and yet, he had a black daughter...

:sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm: :sarcasm:

[hatrack]

8. And when you think about all the things he could have done with his retirement . . .

http://www.theonion.com/articles/jesse-helms-retirement-plans,7724/

[Emit]

10. lol

hadn't seen that before

[demosincebirth]

9. Maybe he was a closet Log Cabin'er.

[LonePirate]

11. Just when I thought those right wingers couldn't be any nuttier, here comes this whopper.

What in the hell has infected them and how do we cure it?

[muntrv]

13. So the Helms estate will have no problem with putting a pink triangle on his grave?