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."
In fact, Helms fought tooth and nail against U.S. Government aid for AIDS funding and research and said the disease resulted from "unnatural" and "disgusting" human behavior.
