Charity slams ex-UKIP president for saying HIV is the ‘wages’ of gay promiscuity
Former UKIP deputy leader Lord Christopher Monckton has been branded as “living on another planet” by Terrence Higgins Trust for suggesting that HIV is the “wages” of gay promiscuity.
The HIV and sexual health charity has condemned the comments, saying they are “ignorant” and “fuel stigma”.
“The wages of promiscuity is deadly disease. It is now at last admitted, even in official circles, that HIV is chiefly a disease of homosexuals and drug-abusers – and that a far greater percentage of homosexuals than heterosexuals do drugs.
“AIDS, then, is at root a ‘gay’ disease, and officialdom’s terrified refusal to admit that fact has killed 36 million worldwide.”
In response, Daisy Ellis, Acting Policy Director at Terrence Higgins Trust, told PinkNews.co.uk: “These words come as no surprise from a man who has previously called for people with HIV to be quarantined for life.
“Lord Monckton’s views on HIV and sexuality are not just from another time, but practically another planet. Ignorant and apoplectic comments like these fuel stigma and prevent people coming forward for testing, prolonging the epidemic.
“There is simply no place for this kind of thinking in modern society.”
It is not the first time Lord Monckton has made outspoken remarks about HIV.
In 1987, he wrote: “There is only one way to stop AIDS. That is to screen the entire population regularly and to quarantine all carriers of the disease for life. Every member of the population should be blood-tested every month.
“All those found to be infected with the virus, even if only as carriers, should be isolated compulsorily, immediately, and permanently.”
Lord Monckton – a former Conservative advisor – joined UKIP in 2009 and served as the party’s deputy leader, and President in Scotland.
He left the party last December, after reported ‘in-fighting’.
As the 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, the politician has a hereditary peerage – and was engaged in a long-running dispute over the House of Lords Act 1999, that he claims deprived him of a seat in the Lords.
He stood unsuccessfully in a number of by-elections for the House, and claims to be “a member of the Upper House but without the right to sit or vote” – but the Clerk of the Parliaments insists he is not and never has been in the House of Lords.
