Yikes.
He was young then, and stupid. Now he's just a lot older
and stupid:
Wyoming’s newest legislator stands by a book he wrote nearly 30 years ago that claims many gay people demand the right to have sex with children and people with AIDS should be quarantined if they continue having sex.
The book is called “The Death Sentence of AIDS: Vital Information For You and Your Family’s Health and Safety.” It was self-published by T.R. Mader, who at the Wyoming Legislature goes by the name Rep. Troy Mader, R-Gillette.
It was mostly a compilation of news and opinion pieces on the subject, some of them Insane, with the author's own commentary apparently leaning towards the Insane side. Among the claims were that gay Americans with HIV were seeking to purposely infect straight Americans and that gay Americans were likely to have sex with an "average" of over 1,000 sex partners.
Mader still stands by the book, because hey-he-was-just-quoting-the-experts.
“You’re asking the wrong person,” he said. “That’s what the experts recommended at the time. I will say this: I haven’t seen anything to refute their statements at the time. Again, that was 30 years ago. I have researched a lot of issues over the years. I am not up to speed on all the issues the experts said back then.”
And it sounds like he's a real character. He even has gay friends, he says.
“I don’t preach to them,” he said. “They know where I stand. I know where they stand. We get along great.”
So if you were wondering, that's where the current crop of Republican nuts come from. They're the same crop of Republican nuts that were nuts way back during the Reagan years, but now they've aged 30 years and so have three decades of being wrong about things tucked away under their belts.