American Civil Liberties Union

You can’t catch HIV from a toilet seat.

You can’t catch HIV from kitchen utensils.

You can’t catch HIV from everyday contact with the people around you. 

Old news, right? In fact, all of those points were made in Understanding AIDS, the health information pamphlet mailed to every American household by Surgeon General C. Everett Koop in 1988. But apparently the message was lost on folks at the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC). 

Alabama segregates all prisoners with HIV, and houses them separately from all other prisoners – it’s an HIV ghetto.  As soon as you walk into Limestone Correctional Facility, the prison where Alabama houses all male prisoners with HIV, you know who has the virus:  they are forced to wear a white armband day and night.  

This week, Washington will host the 2012 International AIDS Conference.  This is the first time since 1990 that the U.S. will host the major international gathering on the AIDS epidemic.  The reason for this is that in 1987, Congress passed legislation prohibiting people living with HIV from traveling into the United States.  Under the ban, those living with HIV were listed as having a “communicable disease of public health significance.”  Rooted in the fear and prejudice that was an ever-present reality in those days, the ban imposed an unfair burden on tourists, short-term visitors, and foreigners seeking to live in the U.S.   In 2009, President Obama finally lifted the travel ban, following a 2008 statutory repeal vote in Congress, correctly pointing out that if the U.S. wants to be a world leader in the fight against HIV/AIDS, “we need to act like it.”