Trump’s New CDC Director: AIDS Is ‘God’s Judgment’ Against Gays

Trump’s New CDC Director: AIDS Is ‘God’s Judgment’ Against Gays (Image via YouTube)

As noted frequently, the only demographic that Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, seems to want to please is right wing evangelical Christian extremists.  From moving the American embassy to Jerusalem - to satiate evangelicals delusion that the move is key to sparking Armageddon - to filling his cabinet with Christofascists who want to destroy the public schools  (which, horror of horrors, teach science, evolution and fact based sex education) when not lining his own pockets, Trump is doing all that he can to keep evangelicals behind him.  Meanwhile, evangelicals have shown their moral bankruptcy by supporting a man who is anathema to true followers of Christ.  Now, Trump has thrown evangelicals another bone by appointing an anti-science, anti-LGBT zealot to the directorship of the Centers for Disease Control.  The new CDC director, Robert Redfield is on record as stating that AIDS is god's punishment to gays for not complying with Christofascist dogma.  Never mind that legitimate science and every legitimate medical and mental health association in America stands for the reality that gays' sexual orientation is "normal" and not a choice.  A piece in Patheos looks at this totally unfit Trump appointee.  Here are highlights:

Trump’s new CDC director, Dr. Robert Redfield, is a dangerous Christian extremist with a history of demonizing gays and single parents.

Dr. Robert Redfield, the new Director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has long standing ties with conservative Christian groups that are hostile to gays, single parents, and anyone else that offends their “family values.”

In the past, the new CDC director has worked closely with the Christian organization Americans for a Sound AIDS/HIV Policy. The group claims that AIDS was “God’s judgment” against gays, and was punishment from God for an America weakened by single-parent households and a loss of “family values.”

CNN reports on Redfield’s deplorable record:

As an Army major at Walter Reed Medical Institute, he designed policies for controlling the disease within the US military that involved placing infected personnel in quarantine and investigating their pasts to identify and track possible sexual partners. Soldiers were routinely discharged and left to die of AIDS, humiliated and jobless, often abandoned by their families. . . . . In other words, Redfield used his prominent position in the U.S. military to design a policy that would ultimately humiliate and punish gay soldiers suffering from the AIDS virus.

Foreign Policy reports on the disastrous effect of Redfield’s odious policy decisions:

The military seemed intent on administratively punishing infected soldiers for their HIV status. Soldiers described being summoned to meet with a chaplain, who would inform them that they had tested positive for HIV, and counsel them while military police rifled through their barracks searching for evidence of homosexuality and the names of possible sex partners. . . . . Anecdotally, many of these young men committed suicide, and most were drummed out of the military without medical coverage, dying impoverished from their AIDS disease…

More on the new CDC director’s deplorable record via CNN:

In the 1980s Redfield worked closely with W. Shepherd Smith, Jr. and his Christian organization, Americans for a Sound AIDS/HIV Policy, or ASAP. The group maintained that AIDS was “God’s judgment” against homosexuals, spread in an America weakened by single-parent households and loss of family values.

Redfield wrote the introduction to a 1990 book, “Christians in the Age of AIDS,” co-written by Smith, in which he denounced distribution of sterile needles to drug users and condoms to sexually active adults, and described anti-discrimination programs as the efforts of “false prophets.”

In the early 1990’s, ASAP and Redfield also backed H.R. 2788, a House bill sponsored by deeply conservative Rep. William Dannemeyer (R-California). It would have subjected people with HIV to testing, loss of professional licenses and would have effectively quarantined them.

[F]or Redfield, the new CDC director, the best way to prevent HIV is not a science-based program promoting clean needles and condoms; instead, the so-called scientist recommended a faith-based program built around abstinence and Jesus.

Bottom line: Trump’s new CDC director, Dr. Robert Redfield, is yet another dangerous Christian extremist holding a prominent position in the Trump administration.  Can you feel the creeping Christian theocracy?

Sadly, Redfield embodies the mind set of today's evangelicals and unfit and unqualified Christian extremists that Trump has elevated to cabinet positions and other high ranking positions.  Be very afraid.