Subject: Candidates Craft Positions on AIDS Carefully Date: Published: 5/13/87 176 lines Source: WALL STREET JOURNAL. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. Candidates Craft Positions on AIDS Carefully, As It Becomes Explosive Issue in '88 Campaign --- By David Shribman Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal MANCHESTER, N. H. -- Bruce Babbitt expected to spend the 1988 presidential campaign discussing his ideas on national defense, rebuilding U. S. industry and reshaping the global trading system. Instead, he is spending a lot of time talking about condoms. The Democratic presidential hopeful is trying to decide how explicit sex education should be as part of a broad position on the deadly disease AIDS. "We go out to educate the public," says the former Arizona governor, "and they end up educating us about what is on their minds." Mr. Babbitt and the other contenders for the two parties' presidential nominations are finding that AIDS is very much on the public's mind -- and that it looms as one of the most explosive issues on the political landscape. As the campaign switches into high gear, nearly every candidate is preparing a position on acquired immune deficiency syndrome, as the disease is formally known. Democratic Gov. Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts opened his presidential campaign here recently by urging Americans to "recognize AIDS for what it is -- the single most serious threat to the public health we have faced in our lifetime." The candidates are even girding for the inevitable challenge: Will they be willing to take a test for AIDS themselves? The AIDS issue is perplexing for Republicans, who are trying to develop positions that help curb the spread of the disease, trumpet the importance of family values and show empathy for victims, but that don't call for explicit sex education in the schools, don't encourage government distribution of condoms and don't embrace the goals of homosexual groups. The debate is so rancorous that Rep. Jack Kemp of New York, a GOP presidential candidate, withdrew as a sponsor of a testimonial dinner for Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, whose recommendation that schools teach children about condoms as part of an education offensive won the enmity of many conservatives, including Education Secretary William Bennett. But the issue also poses problems for Democrats, because it makes them vulnerable to charges they are "big spenders" and highlights the notion that, as Steven Stark, a Harvard Law School lecturer and former Jimmy Carter aide puts it, "they're traditionally identified as the party of moral license." On the Republican right, Mr. Kemp, television evangelist Pat Robertson and former Gov. Pierre du Pont of Delaware are urging chastity and monogamy as a weapon against AIDS. "There's one thing you can do to stop the AIDS epidemic right in its track -- and that is to limit your intimate relationships," says Mr. du Pont. Rev. Robertson adds: "The only safe sex is sexual continence and fidelity within marriage." Some political analysts warn, however, that the rush to placate the religious right on the AIDS issue -- Mr. Robertson holds out the specter of an AIDS quarantine, a notion no other GOP candidate has embraced -- may endanger Republicans' prospects in 1988. "These religious groups don't make up more than 15% of the electorate," says John Petrocik, a specialist in political parties at the University of California at Los Angeles. "So any candidate who works the religious right and calls AIDS an expression of moral decay will find himself in trouble with traditional business and banker Republicans who will be offended by that sort of talk." Rep. Kemp and Vice President George Bush favor mandatory AIDS testing before a marriage license is issued and GOP Sen. Robert Dole of Kansas advocates testing, but not "mandatory testing of everybody." Mr. Dole also won unanimous Senate approval for his resolution to establish a national commission on AIDS and is calling for increased support for the Centers for Disease Control. Mr. Bush has proposed a new program to speed the licensing of drugs that, like AZT, or azidothymidine, might prolong the lives of AIDS victims. Beneath the surface of this debate, GOP candidates are being pressed by the religious right to put distance between themselves and homosexual groups. "A conservative presidential candidate will have to say that homosexual behavior is wrong and harmful to society and the individual," says Connaught Marshner, a conservative activist and editor of the Family Protection Report. "Nobody wants a 'gay basher,' but you have to say that there is a moral question here." Meanwhile, gay activists are planning an offensive to keep the AIDS issue before the presidential candidates, particularly in the early primary and caucus states. "People think Iowa is some rural, parochial place," says Harold Wells, who is active in the Iowa AIDS Project, "but there's a lot of organizing, and politicians are not going to get away from addressing this." Even here in New Hampshire, where there have been only 27 reported cases of AIDS, the Legislature this week is set to approve a plan pushed by Republican Gov. John Sununu, who heads the Bush state campaign, to require an AIDS test for a marriage license. Although the incidence of AIDS among heterosexuals is increasing, the disease now principally afflicts one of the Democrats' activist constituencies. "We're not locked out from the Democratic Party as openly gay people," says Tom Chorlton, past executive director of the National Association of Gay and Lesbian Democratic Clubs, "and we're going to be making AIDS an issue." Gov. Dukakis already has felt the fury of homosexuals who, angered over his refusal to permit gays to serve as foster parents, criticized him during his reelection campaign and picketed him during the speech on Boston Common that opened his campaign last month. In recent months, Mr. Dukakis, who heads a National Governors Association task force on AIDS, has expanded testing and counseling sites, ordered state agencies to develop public-service announcements and explicit teaching guides and channeled government money -- for the first time in the state's history -- directly into medical research. Rep. Richard Gephardt used a campaign appearance to attack the Rev. Jerry Falwell's characterization of homosexuality as a "perverted life style." The Missouri Democrat, who has called for higher spending on AIDS research -- like the other candidates, he hasn't specified a figure -- answered Mr. Falwell: "His message of sexual terrorism has no place in a compassionate society." Mr. Dukakis and Democratic Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware both are willing to consider a number of different AIDS testing plans but harbor doubts about the reliability of such tests, while Democratic Sen. Albert Gore of Tennessee flatly opposes mandatory testing. Meanwhile, Mr. Gore, noting that federal estimates put the cost of treating AIDS victims at between $8 billion and $10 billion by 1990, is calling for changes in the nation's health-care financing system. Mr. Babbitt advocates "explicit" education in schools, as early as grades five through seven. "We need good, comprehensive, value-oriented sex education with AIDS as a part of it," he says. "Within that context, it is possible to be very explicit. You lead strongly with values, but you talk explicitly about prevention." Many analysts believe that AIDS, which is expected to claim 197,000 lives by 1991, has only begun to affect the national psyche -- and national politics. "AIDS may be the biggest issue in 1988, even if the subject doesn't come up in a debate," says Mr. Stark of Harvard. "It's the kind of thing that will affect people's moods and perceptions on the future and will shape what people say the 1988 election is all about." --- AIDS Cases in the United States Cases reported* 35,518 Deaths* 20,557 Number infected 1.5 million Cases expected by 1991 270,000 Deaths expected by 1991 197,000 As of May 11, 1987 Source: U. S. Public Health Service, Center for Disease Control --- 'Do you think people should be tested for the AIDS virus before they can get a marriage license?' Yes ......................... 82% No .......................... 14% Not sure ..................... 4% Source: Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll of 2,304 adults nationwide, conducted April 12-14, 1987 [This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]