Kansas bill calls for HIV positive people to be quarantined

 From Gay Star News courtesy of a facebook friend:

Kansas House Bill 2183, which has passed in the Kansas Senate, will update the state’s public health statute by allowing quarantine of Kansans with ‘infectious diseases.’

Senator Marci Francisco attempted to restore an amendment providing an exclusion for people living with HIV/AIDS, saying the disease is not spread through casual contact and the bill could permit discrimination.

Cody Patton, Executive Director of sexual health charity Positive Directions, said: ‘We live in a very conservative state and I’m afraid there are still many people, especially in rural Kansas, that have inadequate education and understanding concerning HIV/AIDS.

More here.

Yes, what's the matter with Kansas, indeed.  No, this is not from the Onion.  The mind-boggling, jaw-dropping thing is that this is real life.  Kansas wants to lock up people who are HIV positive.

You know, if it's Ebola, fine.  Smallpox, go for it.  Andromeda Strain, we'd be crazy not to.  But not HIV.  It just doesn't work like that.  But what's totally infuriating is that this is a conversation for 1983, not 2013, not thirty years later.  We already know this.  We already know that it is a grave infringement on the human rights of people living with HIV to lock them up.  We've known this for decades.  We've KNOWN it.  This is total lunacy.

It is impossible for me to not group such insanity together with all the recent psychotic right-wing commentary about rape and birth control, and about voting rights.  I know there are sane conservatives out there, good Americans with whom I have political disagreements, but who are also, no doubt, as horrified as I am about how many of their right-wing fellow travelers are trying to reopen extraordinarily important questions about civil and human rights which have long been settled.  What the hell is going on here?  Who the hell are these lunatics?

Why on earth is there a vocal percentage of the US population that would have us return to the Dark Ages?

We like to think of ourselves as the greatest country in the world.  But we're not.  We have totally deranged citizens in our midst.  And they have political power and the will to carry out their sick and twisted social fantasies.  There is a cancer on our nation.  It needs to be cut out of the body politic.

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