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.
