These past few months have made political history. Our values have been questioned. Our rights have been questioned. But who would think that in a society where you get equal pay for equal for equal work, no matter what color, sex or god you pray to that the deathly ill would be discriminated against.

AIDS is not a new issue anymore. We all know that you can’t catch the disease from sharing the same air as an infected individual or from holding their hand. That’s why it came as a complete shock to me that finding care for AIDS victims is still a problem.

I was driving down the street last week when I heard on my radio that 45 percent of the Chicago area nursing homes reject AIDS victims for care. Of the half that do care for AIDS victims, only one reserves beds for the victims, and they only reserve four.

What kinds of people turn these victims away? Hopefully, for their sakes, they are people with loving families who are willing to help care for them if this tragic ailment should strike them. Are the people that make the final decisions the ones that actually sit down, face to face with these victims and say “I am sorry. I just don’t think a nursing home is the proper place to care for a sick person like yourself, even if it would be the best place for you”? Or are they administrators that put that task on someone else?

Some nursing home administrators said they would not admit AIDS patients because it would “hamper staff recruitment, decrease community referrals, cause conflict among residents and cost more than average care.”

Pardon me, but the “hampering of staff recruitment” is not a good enough reason to turn a sick person away. Any staff member who is not educated enough about their patient’s diseases to know that they are not in any personal danger probably isn’t a good staff member anyway. True it might cause a temporary shortage in that field, but I’d rather wait around for awhile and have a qualified person taking care of me than someone just in to punch a time clock and pick up a paycheck.

As far as “decreasing community referrals,” if all nursing homes offered services to AIDS victims every home would be equal. The “conflict among residents” could be resolved as the other patients learned to relate with the victims by simply interacting with them.

If an AIDS victim’s care should cost a little more than the average patient’s care, I’m sure the victim’s fees would increase a little more, which would not increase the facility’s expenses. Nursing home care still must be cheaper for an AIDS victim than spending the rest of his life in a hospital.

I just don’t understand how people can be judges and determine which needy person can stay and which has to hike down to the next friendly institution. Social workers seem to be there to help place AIDS victims into environments suitable for their specific needs, but it’s a tough job when resources are so limited. It’s sad to think that nursing homes could help alleviate some of the burden on these victims and refuse to do so.

I thought that just about everyone was able to cope with the AIDS problem considering all of the free education that has been provided through the air waves and in literature. But for any nursing home administrator or staff member that might have missed it, educational material and services needed to learn how to better deal with AIDS patients is more than available.

This is a disease that affects normal people. I don’t claim to be an expert on the subject, but we can’t just let other people close doors to these victims. It’s obvious now that we still have a long way to go to protect the rights of these individuals. But if we can fight to protect the freedom to burn an American flag, we can certainly fight to protect the people it represents.