Fox News Channel's Geraldo Rivera came out in favor of same-sex marriage on the June 5 edition of his syndicated Geraldo At Large. Throughout the show, Rivera teased his final commentary proclaiming: "25 years after the discovery of AIDS is this the time to ban gay marriage?....The gay community takes another hit, 25 years to the very day that AIDS first ravaged their community." At the end of the show, Rivera chastised the President and advocated same-sex marriage as a way to prevent the spread of AIDS:
Rivera: "Exactly 25 years ago today federal officials first warned gay men that five homosexuals in Los Angeles had contracted a rare form of pneumonia. The disease that became AIDS was largely spread initially by the promiscuous, sometimes drug-fueled sex exemplified by the gay bathhouses where an uninformed generation contracted the disease that ultimately killed tens of thousands of them and many millions of others here and around the world. Beginning soon after the outbreak responsible voices began an aggressive campaign to educate young men raised in the era of those anonymous sexual contacts of the grave dangers involved. Public service announcements and information campaigns were launched. Red ribbons were also worn in sympathy as one after another public figure like actors Rock Hudson and Brad Davis, Queen’s Freddie Mercury and tennis great Arthur Ashe were diagnosed, some succumbing to the disease. While they are not all gay and may have contracted the disease in other ways like bad blood transfusions the majority got AIDS through sex. The recognition of that scary fact led to profound changes in social conduct. Most bathhouses were closed or closely regulated. Safe sex became a mantra. And something even more profound happened, marriage, where at least solid, stable relationships began replacing promiscuous sex as the norm in the gay community. Which is why on the 25th anniversary of the AIDS epidemic the current efforts to breathe life back into the amendment to ban gay marriage seems so counterproductive and blatantly anti-social."
[George W. Bush: "And I call on the Congress to pass this amendment, send it to the states for ratification so we can take this issue out of the hands of overreaching judges and put it back where it belongs, in the hands of the American people."]
Rivera: "I’m sorry Mr. President but I just don’t buy it. With the war in Iraq going so badly and where today 50 more innocent civilians were kidnaped by men wearing police uniforms, with fears the economy is being slowed down by high oil prices, to bring back the gay marriage issue is a pandering distraction. If it is not as blatantly political as it seems, then please tell the American people why you’ve decided that now is the time to focus the government on a bitterly divisive constitutional amendment that stands no chance whatsoever of passage. Let’s let the individual states decide whether or not they want gay marriage. Mr. President, with all due respect, don’t you have enough to do anyway?"
