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Health - AP Conservative Withdraws From AIDS Panel 22 minutes ago Add Health - AP to My Yahoo!
WASHINGTON - A Christian activist chosen by the White House for a presidential AIDS (news - web sites) advisory panel is withdrawing his name under pressure after characterizing the disease as the "gay plague," along with other anti-homosexual statements.
The administration had chosen Jerry Thacker to serve on the Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV (news - web sites) and AIDS. He was to be sworn in along with other new commission members next week by Health and Human Services (news - web sites) Secretary Tommy Thompson.
On Thursday, however, Thacker was sending a letter signaling that he would not accept the appointment, administration officials said.
White House press secretary Ari Fleischer (news - web sites), while neither confirming nor denying the withdrawal, issued a stern rebuke of Thacker's statements.
"The views that he holds are far, far removed from what the president believes," Fleischer said. "The president has a total opposite view. ... The president's view is that people with AIDS need to be treated with care, compassion."
The administration's choice of the Pennsylvania marketing consultant had come under severe criticism from gay rights groups and others. Thacker contracted the AIDS virus after his wife was infected during a blood transfusion received during childbirth. Their daughter also is HIV-positive.
Thacker, a graduate of Bob Jones University, is founder of the Scepter Institute. At one point, his biography on the Scepter Web site referred to AIDS as the "gay plague." It now calls AIDS a "plague." Thacker has referred to gay people as practicing a "deathstyle," rather than a lifestyle, and has described homosexuality as a sin that can be cured by Christianity.
Like the Bush administration, he promotes abstinence from sex as the way to prevent HIV infection. "For the unmarried, the only truly 'safe sex' is not to have sex," Thacker has written.
He describes himself as an activist in the Christian community.
In September 2001, Thacker returned to his alma mater to give two "Chapel Messages." As once summarized on the university Web site, the speeches focused on the "sin of homosexuality" and his family's struggle with AIDS and its association with gays.
"Be compassionate to those caught up in this sinful deathstyle. Let them know you care, but at the same time let them know homosexuality is a sin. Most people find the homosexual behavior vile and disgusting. Only when homosexuals know it is sin can they repent," said the summary.
It also said: "Many people believe that AIDS is the judgment of God on our nation, but Mr. Thacker believes that homosexuality is the judgment of God on America."
The 35-member AIDS commission advises the White House on AIDS prevention and treatment policy.
David Smith of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights advocacy group, applauded the news that Thacker would not join the panel but said Bush administration AIDS policies still fall far short.
"While this is a positive development, the underlying problem continues to remain with this administration's approach to HIV and AIDS," Smith said. "They're obsessive focus on abstinence as the solitary mechanism to prevent the transmission of HIV is not based in sound science. They continue to come from an ideological perspective as opposed to a scientific perspective."