Alphonso David, president of
Human Rights Campaign (HRC), has called on President Donald Trump's
son, Donald Trump, Jr., to apologize for a “vile HIV and AIDS
tweet.”
The president's son
responded to an
op-ed on dating HIV-positive people published in the LGBT blog
Queerty ahead of World AIDS
Day, celebrated on Sunday, December 1.
Titled “What you stand to
lose by not having sex with people with HIV,” the essay argued that
a person's HIV status should not stand in the way of a potential
partner given that an undetectable viral load means a person cannot
transmit the virus.
“Well I can think of one
thing,” Trump responded in tweeting the article.
David called the tweet
“absolutely disgusting.”
“Trump Jr. just proved
again what we already knew – that he, his father and the
Trump-Pence administration don’t care about people living with HIV,
are undermining competent care and have no understanding of people
living with HIV,” David
said. “Trump Jr.’s absolutely disgusting and ignorant tweet
only serves to perpetuate the stigma faced by people living with HIV,
which HRC and LGBTQ advocates have fought so long to end. Trump Jr.
must apologize. And Trump and Pence must put their money where their
mouth is and actually sufficiently fund the domestic initiatives
aimed at ending the epidemic they claim to be combating.”
(Related: Trump's
World AIDS Day proclamation again omits LGBT people.)