> Joanna:
>
>> I never voted for quarantine, but I am taken aback by the reaction
>> on this list that the only motive for quarantine would be gay
>> bashing/oppression.
>
>
> I think where I disagree with Joanna is that I would assume that the
> government (if I was writing only for an English list I would say
> 'State', not 'Government', but the meaning I think is not quite right
> for US listers) was not to be trusted as a starting point. In the
> abstract there is nothing wrong with any public policy using
> compulsion for the greater good - except that capitalist governments
> in the Western world have demonstrated their default position
> hostility to social progress and civil rights.
Yeah, I wasn't thinking of the U.S. Govt.; I was thinking of whether quarantine would ever be an acceptable option.
>
> And that would be my basic criticism of the AIDS awareness campaigns
> as well - they assumed that the government was a force for good. I
> would assume from the outset that it was a force for bad, and that the
> willingness of health authorities to get behind AIDS awareness was due
> to their willingness to give ground on the sanctity of the
> heterosexual family if they got to associate sexual promiscuity with
> death in the public mind. Foucault was wrong on the fact of AIDS, but
> he was right on the puritanical meaning of AIDS awareness.
Yeah, no disagreement here.
Joanna