Activists Denounce Governor as 'Closet Case'

Springfield, Illinois [October 1, 1989] — Governor James Thompson Sept 11 [1989] signed a bill making it a possible crime for an HIV-positive person to kiss someone who doesn't know of the individual's positive status. The governor also repealed a one-of-a-kind state law requiring those seeking marriage licenses to take an HIV antibody test.

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Since the law took effect on Jan. 1, 1988, 250,000 pre-marital HIV tests in Illinois turned up 52 antibody-positive individuals. Marriage license applications in counties bordering Wisconsin and Indiana, meanwhile, dropped as much as 21 per cent as lovers crossed state lines to avoid the "AIDS test" and the $20 to $150 lab fees.

While Thompson was applauded by AIDS, gay, civil rights and public health activists for repealing the marriage testing law, he was denounced for signing a measure making it a felony, punishable by up to seven years in prison, to "expose...the body of one person to the bodily fluid of another person in a manner that could result in the transmission of HIV."

And for the second September in a row, members of ACT UP/Chicago staged a rowdy march up Halsted Street in Chicago's gay neighborhood to Thompson's mansion Sept. 15, protesting his signature on legislation they called dangerous.

Before the evening was over, protesters had called Thompson a closet homosexual and burned the state flag of Illinois.

No Transmission Required

Last year Thompson signed a bill allowing doctors to test for HIV without patients' knowledge. This year it was a bill that makes it a felony for persons with HIV antibodies to share their body fluids with others without first announcing their HIV status. Violators could spend up to seven years in prison.

This year's bill, authored by arch-conservative state Rep. Penny Pullen (R-Park Ridge), does not require that transmission occur for a crime to be committed. It does, however, exclude the antibody-positive person from prosecution if the other individual "knew that the infected person was infected with HIV, knew that the action could result in infection with HIV, and consented to the action with that knowledge."

Pullen has said previously that government studies back up her position that open-mouth kissing falls within the law's parameters, even though the government has yet to record an actual instance of HIV transmission via kissing.

AIDS activists are calling the new law "outrageously vague," and point out that violation seems contingent — among other things — on the precise epidemiological knowledge of the person allegedly put at risk.