San Francisco Chronicle - Thursday, August 20, 1992

"In the context of an election year, I ask you -- here in this great hall, or listening in the quiet of your home -- to recognize that the AIDS virus is not a political creature," said Mary Fisher of Boca Raton, Fla.

"It does not care whether you are Democrat or Republican. It does not ask whether you are black or white, male or female, gay or straight, young or old."

Fisher, 44, worked in the administration of President Gerald Ford and is the daughter of Max Fisher, a Detroit real estate investor and generous GOP contributor.

As his daughter spoke, the 84-year-old Fisher watched and wiped his eyes.

Pedestrian traffic on the floor of the Astrodome came to a virtual standstill as the audience of more than 4,000 delegates and alternates listened with quiet and dignified attention.

Fisher's speech followed the first such appearances at the Democratic National Convention in July by Bob Hattoy and Elizabeth Glaser, both of Los Angeles.

"Tonight," Fisher said, "I represent an AIDS community whose members have been reluctantly drafted from every segment of American society.

"Though I am white and a mother, I am one with a black infant struggling with tubes in a Philadelphia hospital. Though I am female and contracted this disease in a marriage, and enjoy the warm support of my family, I am one with the lonely gay man sheltering a flickering candle from the cold wind of his family's rejection."

Fisher learned last summer, after she was divorced, that she was carrying the deadly virus. She has two sons, ages 4 and 7.

She has declined to say how her former husband contracted the disease, saying such information divides victims into good and bad.

Her speech represented a starkly different tone from many of those given in the first two days of the convention at the Astrodome.

Although the party platform states that people with AIDS or HIV "deserve our compassion and our care," it also says, "Prevention is linked ultimately to personal responsibility and moral behavior. We reject the notion that the distribution of clean needles and condoms are the solution to stopping the spread of AIDS. Education designed to curb the spread of this disease should stress marital fidelity, abstinence, and a drug-free lifestyle."

Family values have become a rallying cry for President Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle, but Fisher, wearing a sequinned red AIDS ribbon, urged compassion for all.

"We do the president's cause no good if we praise the American family but ignore a virus that destroys it. We must be consistent if we are to be believed. We cannot love justice and ignore prejudice, love our children and fear to teach them. Whatever our role, as parent or policy-maker, we must act as eloquently as we speak -- else we have no integrity."

After the speech, Marty Keller of Sacramento, one of the two openly gay delegates at the convention, said, "I've waited for 2 1/2 days to hear the true voice of my party and I finally did."

With tears in his eyes, he said, "Mary Fisher became our conscience tonight."

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