Brandon K. Thorp over at Towleroad is covering the unbelievable blindness of Sen. Stacey Campfield (R-Tennessee), who in an interview with Michelangelo Signorile said he believes AIDS originated with homosexuals, specifically with a gay man (so-called Patient Zero Gaetan Dugas) having sex with a monkey. And other stupid shit, like believing that And the Band Played On's Randy Shilts was "appalled" by unsanitary gay-sex practices and thinking it's "virtually impossible" (!) to get HIV from heterosexual sex. Um, tell Africa that. Um, tell the huge number of heterosexuals who got it that way that. (Also, does a guy putting his dick in a woman's butt not count as heterosexual? Just curious.)

It's shocking—though by now its commonplace—to realize a state senator could be this (willfully?) ignorant of the basic facts about the origins of HIV. As Thorp points out, anyone who cares to know knows that Dugas is 100% known to not be the first human being ever to have HIV, let alone does anyone else on earth believe Dugas got it from balling some slut monkey.

Campfield's hokey opinions matter because he is the imbecile behind the "Don't Say "Gay" bill that's getting to much action in Tennessee. I wonder if he has a personal reason for not wanting people to talk so much about the gay?