If a Thursday speech from the White House commemorating World AIDS Day seemed familiar, that\u2019s because it was pretty much the same one they delivered last year.<\/p>\n
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Vice President Mike Pence called the annual event a day to \u201cremember those who have lost their lives to AIDS,\u201d in a speech delivered to faith leaders, lawmakers, and officials within the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
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\u201cBut it\u2019s also a day to celebrate the remarkable progress that we\u2019ve made in combating this disease and to reaffirm our ongoing commitment to end AIDS as a public health threat,\u201d Pence said to tremendous applause from the Beltway crowd. \u201cWe are closer today than ever before to ending the AIDS crisis in our time.\u201d<\/p>\n
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For the second straight year, the administration\u2019s comments failed to recognize one of the groups most affected by the virus: LGBTQ people. In 2016, gay and bisexual men comprised two-thirds of new HIV cases in the United States.<\/p>\n
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But to make matters worse, the remarks were nearly identical to those made by his boss, President Donald Trump, a year earlier.<\/p>\n
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In addition to slashing resources to fight HIV\/AIDS around the world, Trump has disbanded his Presidential Advisory Council on HIV\/AIDS and refused to restaff the White House Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP). He has also redirected funding from the Ryan White Care Act to separate refugee families at the border and floated a policy ejecting HIV-positive troops from the military.
Meanwhile, Pence has been accused of contributing to an HIV outbreak while governor of Indiana in 2015. He has further claimed abstinence-only education is the effective only way to prevent the virus\u2019 spread, calling condoms \u201ca very, very poor protection against sexually transmitted diseases.\u201d
While he was running for U.S. Congress in 2000, critics say Pence also advocated that funding for HIV\/AIDS programs instead be directed to conversion therapy centers. In a statement on his campaign website, he claimed \u201cfederal dollars [should] no longer [be] given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u201cResources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior,\u201d the website claimed.<\/p>\n
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