WASHINGTON -- When the nation's most conservative political organizations convened, Paul Cameron was there to urge a national quarantine of all homosexuals to combat the spread of AIDS.
Also on hand to ride the nation's resurgent wave of conservatism were pro-lifers, free marketeers, anti-feminists, promoters of the new-fangled 'Star Wars' space weaponry and the fellows who insist on the right to own old-fashioned hand guns.
Accuracy in Media sponsored a booth where a young woman hawked for $12 each some nifty navy-blue neckties with little red and white bullseyes.
Casual browsers at the various booths may have been abruptly sobered by the message delivered at the one manned for the Foundation for Traditional Morality by Sue and Bert Hurlburt.
One of their pamphlets was entitled, 'What Homosexuals Do (It's More Than Merely Disgusting).'
'You need to talk to Dr. Cameron,' Hurlburt said.
Cameron, a psychologist from Lincoln, Neb., was anxious to talk.
'Unless we get medically lucky,' he said, 'in three or four years, one of the options discussed will be the extermination of homosexuals.'
Cameron was lobbying in the corridors at the Conservative Political Action Conference to warn of the dangers of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, a disease that usually is fatal and is believed to be spread mainly through sexual contact between homosexuals.
Cameron, who heads the Institute for the Scientific Investigation of Sexuality, said homosexuality is curable.
'It's not a sickness,' he said. 'It's a bad habit. It's like smoking but it's a more powerful habit.
'AIDS was started and transmitted by homosexuals,' said Cameron, who accuses the medical profession of 'pussy-footing' on the issue and favoring gay rights.
He said gays 'posture as victims but they earn their AIDS.'
To protect the rest of society, he said, all of them should be 'confined to quarters.'
'The ominous specter now is that it looks as if mosquitoes may be able to transmit AIDS,' Cameron said.
'Normal people probably could take a hit or two from a mosquito carrying AIDS but a small child couldn't,' he said. 'If children start dying of AIDS, I don't think a homosexual's life will be worth a damn.'
He acknowledged his proposal to quarantine homosexuals has not taken hold, even in most conservative circles.
'Many of the people right here at this conference are tolerant of homosexuality,' he said. 'That's a mistake.'
Cameron said stemming the AIDS epidemic 'involves quarantining gays, closing all gay bars and baths, criminalizing homosexual acts that involve exchange of bodily products and closing the borders to homosexual travel.'
