Seriously.  I’m so tired of Tennessee being in the national news for crazy things like this.  In a radio interview on Thursday, Knoxville’s incredibly intelligent state representative said, 

“My understanding is that ut us virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS trough heterosexual sex.”

I would really like to see him say that to the face of 66% of women (85% of female African Americans) with HIV.  Guess how they got?  Yeah.  Saying things like this are only detrimental to society.  HIV infection is on the rise.  The young adults now are too young to remember the AIDS epidemic and panic of the ’80s and their parents likely weren’t old enough to really be concerned about it.  Add to that a culture on intolerance and bigotry and we’re beginning to have another wave of major infections.  People today, en masse, have the idea that “it will never happen to me.”  But it can.  Gay men still make up the largest percent of new HIV infections and it’s for the same reasons as it was in the ’80s.  

• It’s not like anybody’s gonna get pregnant
• I don’t sleep around
• I was drunk

But, guess what?  That doesn’t mean you can’t catch it. 

The African American community is particularly struck by this.  70% of new HIV infections in men are in young, black men.  And if you think about the fact that African Americans are only 14% of the US population, you realize how severe this problem is.  Some of this is attributed to particularly fierce homophobia amongst African American men.  When a group is already largely marginalized, fighting social norms and morés isn’t always an option.  By being seemingly forced to live out gay lives in secret and then return home to a “normal” heterosexual life, it opens everyone up to a whole new world of problems.  

But Campfield, the sponsor of the “Don’ Say Gay” bill here in Tennessee, keeps spouting his ridiculous rhetoric, pseudoscience, and blatant lies and he’s is damaging the reputation of our state and the harming the people who live here.  It’s time for the people of Knoxville to give him the axe.