By Karen Ocamb

Editor's note: Gay rights activists were still protesting California Gov. Pete Wilson's veto of the gay rights bill, AB 101, when Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary arrived at the home of Dr. Scott Hitt and Alex Kolezar on Oct. 14, 1991. Clinton, a long-shot presidential hopeful, was being interviewed for an endorsement by Access Now for Gay and Lesbian Equality (ANGLE), co-founded by his friend David Mixner. ANGLE subsequently raised significant early money and helped create the first-ever gay voting bloc to evict the Reagan-Bush right-wingers from the White House.

“Bill Clinton was clearly comfortable talking about HIV/AIDS -- which was a breath of fresh air after dealing with Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush,” Hitt recalled. “He was willing to talk specifically about what he would do on discrimination, and prevention and research.”

Clinton also made history by being the first presidential candidate to specifically address a gay audience at the Palace in Hollywood, considered a political risk in the conservative era.

“We had a last minute discussion before he came out to make his speech. We told him that probably half of the audience was HIV-positive and would probably die of AIDS in the next couple of years. His eyes got very wide; it clearly moved him that so many healthy-appearing people were infected and helping out his campaign,” Hitt said.

During the speech, Clinton said, “I have a vision and you're a part of it.” He called for a “real war on AIDS” and a “Manhattan Project” where one person would coordinate the response to HIV/AIDS. He also pledged to have an HIV-positive speaker at the Democratic Convention. (There were two: Bob Hattoy and Elizabeth Glaser.)

Then Clinton shocked many by thanking the gay and lesbian community for “their courage in the face of terror” and sharing knowledge with other communities. “The whole nation benefited.” Suddenly Clinton waved his arm over the crowd, saying that if he could take away their pain, “I would give up my race. I would do that.” AIDS, Hitt said “made things very time sensitive. There was a sense that we didn't have time.”

Despite his pronouncements, Clinton was dogged at several campaign stops by ACT UP, which Hitt said was “very necessary and very helpful” in putting pressure on the Bush administration and on Clinton to keep his promises.

During his inauguration, Clinton mentioned AIDS and panels from the Names AIDS Memorial Quilt Project were on display. Subsequently, he created the Office of AIDS that dealt with national policy out of the executive branch.

“A lot happened between 1992 and 1995 when Clinton established the President's Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS,” which Vice President Al Gore asked Hitt to chair. “We kept a critical stance. We were not cheerleaders for the president. We told him when he'd done something good and we also held his feet to the fire.”

In December 1995, Hitt helped organize an historic White House Conference on HIV/AIDS with the 30 council members, and more than 300 experts, activists and citizens living with HIV/AIDS, broadcast live on C-SPAN.

Twelve days before the conference, the Centers for Disease Control announced that a half million Americans had been diagnosed with AIDS, and more than 300,000 had died. They estimated that every day 120 more would die, another 160 would be diagnosed and nearly 140 would become HIV infected.

“First of all, this is a disease, and we have never before had a disease we could not conquer. We can conquer this. I believe that -- in my lifetime, we've eliminated small pox from the planet and polio from our hemisphere. We can do better, and we can do better until we prevail,” Clinton told the conference. “Our common goal must ultimately be a cure, a cure for all those who are living with HIV, and a vaccine to protect all the rest of us from the virus. A cure and a vaccine, that must be our first and top priority. ... We have to set a goal. ... We have to reduce the number of new infections each and every year until there are no more new infections.” (The entire speech is on www.inlamagazine.com.)

Though a tremendous amount of progress was made, the council hit a brick wall over lifting the ban on the use of federal prevention dollars for needle-exchange programs, despite scientific studies proving its effectiveness. In 1993, Dr. Peter Lurie published a government-funded survey estimating that 33 people were infected daily as a result of intravenous drug use, according to The New York Times. By April 1998, he estimated that 17,000 lives could have been saved had Clinton lifted the ban in 1992. Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher said that 40 percent of new AIDS infections were directly or indirectly attributed to dirty needles; 75 percent among women and children.

Furious that Clinton lacked the political will to “follow the science” as he promised, the council called a press conference to issue a vote of “no confidence” in the president in March 1998. But on April 21, 1998, apparently convinced by Drug Czar Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey that lifting the ban “would send the wrong message” about drug use to the nation's children, Clinton refused to lift the ban.

“At best this is hypocrisy,'' Hitt told reporters. ''At worst, it's a lie. And no matter what, it's immoral.''

The failure to act to save human lives based on politics, Hitt told IN, “was no different than the government's failure to act in Rwanda or Darfur today. The failure to act when you know better is immoral. And to this day, they still haven't done it.”

Out of office, Clinton said not lifting the ban was one of his greatest regrets. Hitt, meanwhile, founded the American Academy of HIV Medicine (ww.aahivm.com) to credential HIV providers. “Though Clinton wasn't perfect,” Hitt said, “the fact that he was open to discussion and to having a national debate was greatly beneficial to America.”

http://clinton6.nara.gov/1995/12/1995-12-06-president-remarks-at-aids-hiv-conference.html