The Jesse Helms PEPFAR Bill

I simply have no words in the face of Liddy Dole's attempt to attach Jesse Helms' name to the PEPFAR renewal. Helms did everything he could to ensure the deaths of thousands of gay men from HIV in the 1980s and 1990s; he never recanted his despicable hatred of those who struggled alone with this disease in the darkest days of the epidemic, and did all he could to make sure nothing was ever done to help them. That he should be honored now, especially when he was single-handedly responsible for adding a unique stigma to HIV-positive people in immigration law is just ... well, unfathomable.