Republican Zealots Now Target Access to HIV-Prevention Medication

These fanatical monsters want to convert you or kill you

Each morning, I start my day by popping a pill. I reach into my medicine cabinet, grab a bottle of Truvada, also known as PrEP, or pre-exposure prophylaxis, place the pill in my mouth and swallow it. Just like that, I magically live another day without worrying about catching HIV, since the drug blocks transmission of the virus. Sure, I could still get hit by a bus, but when they conduct an autopsy, I’ll be HIV-negative. This extraordinary pill is nothing short of a miracle.

If prominent members of the Religious Right get their way, they will use the long arm of the law to reach inside medicine cabinets and snatch away HIV-prevention pills. These busybodies will choose for me and others, as if we are helpless children, our options for  protecting ourselves against a virus.

Right now, you might be saying, “no, this can’t be true. Is this happening in America?” Given the rightward shift of the Supreme Court and the radical direction of the Republican Party, where else would this happen?

The Advocate reports that the mastermind behind Texas’ draconian abortion law, former Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell, has turned his attention to PrEP.  His private legal practice filed a federal lawsuit in 2020, Kelley v. the United States of America, on behalf of clients who disagree with the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that insurance providers cover HIV preventive medications. 

“The PrEP mandate forces religious employers to provide coverage for drugs that facilitate and encourage homosexual behavior, prostitution, sexual promiscuity, and intravenous drug use,” the lawsuit states. “It also compels religious employers and religious individuals who purchase health insurance to subsidize these behaviors as a condition of purchasing health insurance.” 

Speaking on behalf of the plaintiffs, the suit claims “neither they nor any of their family members are engaged in behavior that transmits HIV.”

That’s interesting, because none of my family members are smokers, drug addicts, alcoholics, suffer from fatal heart conditions or deal with mental health issues associated with religious fanaticism. Meanwhile, nine of the ten states ranked highest in obesity are Red States, yet my family is relatively thin, and no one has diabetes. None of my family members sunbathe either, as thousands of Texans do in Galveston or Corpus Christi, just begging for skin cancer.      

Yet, my tax dollars presumably are covering maladies associated with these behaviors. In a civilized society, that’s how medical care works. We pool our money together to help people in their time of need. We don’t get a multiple-choice form to pick which treatments for diseases we’ll fund with our tax dollars.

This selfish, myopic brand of thinking brings to mind Republican Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. He opposes federal disaster relief when it’s needed by states other than his own. However, when tornadoes whipped through Kentucky in 2021, Senator Paul came, hat in hand, hypocritically begging for federal disaster funds. He asked President Biden to “move expeditiously to approve the appropriate resources for our state,” citing the “loss of life and severe property damage.” Hmm, where was that concern for victims of Hurricane Sandy in 2013, when Paul opposed federal funds?

Ultimately, the PrEP situation is about religious nutcases feverishly working to impose their worldview. They have installed an activist Supreme Court, that is eagerly working to slam a wrecking ball into the wall separating church and state. Having overturned Roe v. Wade, these fanatics are emboldened. They are seeking to strip away as many rights as possible, as quickly as they are able.

Where will they stop? They won’t, until they are forced to by public outrage and protest, or elections that throw the right-wing bums out of office. If they are given free rein, your living room will morph into their church sanctuary. To these zealots, you’re either a true believer or a grand deceiver. Individual will or liberty of conscience doesn’t count for the unbeliever because they are considered in bondage and deceived by the devil. “True freedom”, to these crazies, only exists through Jesus, who is the author of our liberty.

Such convoluted thinking allows these right-wing Christians to take away rights, while sincerely believing that they are doing you a favor. Still, it’s difficult for me to comprehend how anyone who calls themselves “pro-life” or a Christian could be anti-PrEP.  

Ideologues like Jonathan Mitchell would say that those who have sex outside heterosexual marriage should face consequences for ungodly behavior. However, if you intentionally deprive otherwise healthy people of a pill that prevents the transmission of a virus, you’re deliberately orchestrating and manufacturing consequences that otherwise would not exist. You’re consciously making people sick because you would rather see them dead than enjoy sex in which you disapprove. It’s difficult to see how essentially murdering people, to make them conform, is Godlier than the supposedly ungodly behavior you’re trying to preempt. 

The puerile idea that passing homophobic laws will lead LGBTQ becoming celibate or heterosexual, is a tired fundamentalist’s fantasy. For decades they pushed conversion ministries. Most of these groups collapsed when their supposedly cured, “ex-gay” leaders had sex with their clients. Or, they came out of the closet to announce their miserable conversion camps had failed. The thoughtless, arrogant actions of Mitchell isn’t going to lead to less gay sex, but it will lead to riskier sex that places lives in danger.

I’m talking from personal experience. For most of my adult life sex was a potentially deadly act. At the age of eighteen, I moved to Fort Lauderdale. It was 1988 at the height of the HIV epidemic, and South Florida perennially had some of the nation’s highest infection rates. There were condoms, of course, but those occasionally break. In drunken, late-night flings, they could also slip off and it would be difficult to notice.

And, of course, there was the human factor. In the heat of the moment, with the chemistry just right and the mood picture-perfect, people get lost in passion and have unprotected sex. It’s the same scenario that explains every lost virginity, unplanned pregnancy or, “what-the-hell let’s get naked” moment, in human history.

People make irrational decisions based on emotion every single day, especially if sex is involved. The beauty of PrEP is that it’s a safety net, for those moments in life when you walk the highwire. There are other sexually transmitted diseases other than HIV, so it’s wiser to wear a condom. The reality, however, is that sex feels better without condoms, so people will often choose to not wear them. That’s the real world, not the delusional, ideological universe occupied by extremists like Mitchell.

If people have their PrEP taken away, many healthy, happy individuals will fall ill, and others will die. Those lost in the name of religious fanaticism, could have reached full life expectancy, had their futures not been robbed by the “pro-life”.  

It’s difficult for empathetic people to grasp, but Mitchell and his sociopathic religious clients simply don’t care. They demand that you embrace their nasty, angry version of God while you’re on earth. If you don’t follow their prescribed path, they’re perfectly willing to hasten your departure to the afterlife. Unless you share their value system or happen to be a fetus, your life isn’t worth the paper your birth certificate is printed on.

If attacking PrEP availability isn’t enough, Republican bullies in Congress are strategizing to pass new federal anti-transgender legislation. Reuters reports these efforts “would roll back protections for transgender people, setting a playbook for action on a divisive social issue should they take control of Congress this fall.”

Meanwhile, Oklahoma Republican Sen. James Lankford blocked a Democratic bid to unanimously pass a bill attempting to protect interstate travel for abortion. Apparently, Republicans now want to monitor women’s travel and hunt down those suspected of terminating pregnancies.

Just imagine a hypothetical scenario where a pregnant woman is excited about having a baby. Unfortunately, she has a miscarriage while visiting her mother out of state. The grieving woman returns home, only to face a right-wing Inquisition to determine if her miscarriage was legitimate or an abortion. A couple months earlier she made the mistake of sending an abortion joke to a friend in a text message. It’s used as evidence against her, and she’s convicted of murder and sent to prison. The potential for persecution and outright abuse in Red States cannot be overstated, as Republicans maneuver on ways to carry out forced births.  

The right-wing cave dwellers seeking to control our lives are cruel and primitive. They must be ferociously fought and soundly defeated with every ounce of energy we can muster. To say they want to turn back the clock is too kind. They would take our society back to the sundial if they could.

Children of the Enlightenment, this is a call to rise up to save America, and prevent our country from descending into a backward, bigoted and brutish Dark Age. We are the only thing that stands between a broken nation run by religious fanatics and a rational country with a promising future.