Mary Fisher, an HIV-positive woman with a prominent Republican background, delivers a powerful and personal plea to end the silence and stigma surrounding HIV/AIDS, urging for compassion, awareness, and action from her party and the nation.
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[Applause]
Ladies and gentlemen, once again, please
direct your attention to the convention
video wall.
Fisher was raised amid trauma. Her
father, Max Fiser, has been a Republican
leader and presidential adviser for more
than three decades. A year ago, Mary
Fiser, who had herself served a White
House post for President Gerald Ford,
discovered she is HIV positive. After
agonizing family deliberations, she told
the public her story. But in private or
public, Mary says her most important
audience is her two children, Max and Zachary.
Zachary.
Tonight, when I tucked each of you into
bed, I said to you what you've heard me
say every night of your lives. Since the
moment you came for my body, Max, and
the hour you were placed in my arms,
Zachary, I have known that I would one
day need to give you up. And so each
night I rehearse for the day when I must
give you over. That is why as I reach
for the day's last kiss and hug, you
always hear me say the same four words,
Thank you.
Less than three months ago at platform
hearings in Salt Lake City, I asked the
Republican party to lift the shroud of
silence which has been draped over the
issue of HIV and AIDS. I have come
tonight to bring our silence to an end.
I bear a message of challenge, not self- congratulation.
congratulation.
I want your attention,
not your applause. I would never have
asked to be HIV positive, but I believe
that in all things there is a purpose,
and I stand before you and before the
nation gladly.
The reality of AIDS is brutally clear.
200,000 Americans are dead or dying. A
million more are infected.
Worldwide, 40 million, 60 million, or a
100 million infections will be counted
in the coming few years. But despite
science and research, White House
meetings and congressional hearings,
despite good intentions and bold
initiatives, campaign slogans and
hopeful promises,
it is despite it all the epidemic which
is winning tonight.
In the context of an election year, I
ask you here in this great hall
or listening in the quiet of your home
to recognize that AIDS virus is not a
political creature. It does not care
whether you are Democrat or Republican.
It does not ask whether you are black or
white, male or female, gay or straight,
young or old. Tonight,
Tonight,
I represent an AIDS community whose
members have been reluctantly drafted
from every segment of American society.
Though I am white and a mother, I am one
with a black infant struggling with
tubes in a Philadelphia hospital.
Though I am female and contracted this
disease in marriage and enjoy the warm
support of my family, I am one with the
lonely gay man, sheltering a flickering
candle from the cold wind of his
This is not a distant threat. It is a
present danger. The rate of infection is
increasing fastest among women and children.
children.
Largely unknown a decade ago, AIDS is
the third leading killer of young adult
Americans today. But it won't be third
for long. Because unlike other diseases,
this one travels.
Adolescents don't give each other cancer
or heart disease because they believe
they are in love. But HIV is different
and we have helped it along.
We have killed each other with our
ignorance, our prejudice, and our silence.
silence.
We may take refuge in our stereotypes,
but we cannot hide there long
because HIV asks only one thing of those
it attacks. Are you human?
And this is the right question.
Are you human?
Because people with HIV have not entered
some alien state of being. They are human.
human.
They have not earned cruelty and they do
not deserve meanness. They don't benefit
from being isolated or treated as outcasts.
outcasts.
Each of them is exactly what God made. A
person, not evil, deserving of our judgment,
judgment,
not victims longing for our pity.
People ready for support and worthy of compassion.
My call to you, my party, is to take a
public stand no less compassionate than
that of the president and Mrs. Bush.
They have embraced me and my family in
memorable ways. In the place of
judgment, they have shown affection.
In difficult moments, they have raised
our spirits.
In the darkest hours, I have seen them
reaching not only to me, but also to my
parents, armed with that stunning grief
and special grace that comes only to
parents who have themselves
leaned too long over the bedside of a
With the president's leadership, much
good has been done. Much of the good has
gone unheralded and as the president has
insisted, much remains to be done.
But we do the president's cause no good
if we praise the American family but
We must be consistent if we are to be believed.
believed.
We cannot love justice and ignore
prejudice, love our children and fear to
teach them. Whatever our role as parent
or policy maker, we must act as
eloquently as we speak,
My call to the nation is a plea for awareness.
awareness.
If you believe you are safe, you are in danger.
danger.
Because I was not hemophiliac.
I was not at risk
because I was not gay. I was not at risk
because I did not inject drugs. I was
My father has devoted much of his
lifetime guarding against another holocaust.
holocaust.
He is part of the generation who heard
Pastor Nehler come out of the Nazi death
camps to say, "They came after the Jews
and I was not a Jew, so I did not protest."
protest."
They came after the trade unionists and
I was not a trade unionist, so I did not protest.
protest.
Then they came after the Roman Catholics
and I was not a Roman Catholic so I did
not protest.
Then they came after me and there was no
lesson history teaches is this. If you
believe you are safe, you are at risk.
If you do not see this killer stalking
your children, look again.
There is no family or community, no race
or religion, no place left in America
that is safe.
Until we genuinely embrace this message,
we are a nation at risk.
Tonight, HIV marches resolutely toward
AIDS in more than a million American
homes, littering its pathway with the
bodies of the young. Young men, young
women, young parents, and young children.
children.
One of the families is mine.
If it is true that HIV inevitably turns
to AIDS, then my children will
inevitably turn to orphans.
My family has been a rock of support. My
84 yearear-old father who has pursued
the healing of the nations will not
accept the premise that he cannot heal
his daughter.
My mother refuses to be broken. She
still calls at midnight to tell
wonderful jokes that make me laugh.
Sisters and friends and my brother
Phillip, whose birthday is today, all
have helped carry me over the hardest places.
places.
I am blessed, richly and deeply blessed
to have such a family.
But not all of you have been so blessed.
You are HIV positive
but dare not say it. You have lost loved
ones but you dare not whisper the word AIDS.
AIDS.
You weep silently.
You grieve alone.
I have a message for you.
It is not you who should feel shame. It
is we. We who tolerate ignorance and
practice prejudice. We who have taught
you to fear.
We must lift our shroud of silence,
making it safe for you to reach out for
compassion. It is our task to seek
safety for our children, not in quiet
denial, but in effective action.
Someday our children will be grown. My
son Max, now four, will take the measure
of his mother. My son Zachary, now two,
will sort through his memories. I may
not be here to hear their judgments, but
I know already what I hope they are.
I want my children to know that their
mother was not a victim. She was a
messenger. I do not want them to think,
as I once did, that courage is the
absence of fear. I want them to know
that courage is the strength to act
wisely when most we are afraid.
I want them to have the courage to step
forward when called by their nation or
their party and give leadership no
matter what the personal cost.
I ask no more of you than I ask of
myself or of my children.
To the millions of you who are grieving,
who are frightened, who have suffered
the ravages of AIDS firsthand,
have courage and you will find support.
To the millions who are strong, I issue
the plea. Set aside prejudice in
politics to make room for compassion and
sound policy. [Applause]
To my children, I make this pledge. I
will not give in, Zachary, because I
draw my courage from you.
Your silly giggle gives me hope. Your
gentle prayers give me strength. And
you, my child, give me the reason to say
to America, you are at risk.
And I will not rest, Max, until I have
done all I can to make your world safe.
I will seek a place where intimacy is
not the prelude to suffering.
I will not hurry to leave you, my
children, but when I go, I pray that you
will not suffer shame on my account.
To all within the sound of my voice, I appeal.
appeal.
Learn with me the lessons of history and
of grace. So my children will not be
afraid to say the word AIDS when I am gone.
gone.
Then their children and yours may not
need to whisper it at all. God bless the
children and God bless us all. Good night.
night. [Applause]
Heat up Heat.
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