A WHISPER OF AIDS 439
A Whisper of AIDS
Mary Fisher
1 Less than three months ago, at platform hearings in Salt Lake City, I asked the Republi-
can Party to lift the shroud of silence which has been draped over the issue of HIV and AIDS. I
have come tonight to bring our silence to an end.
2 I bear a message of challenge, not self–congratulation. I want your attention, not your ap-
plause. I would never have asked to be HIV–positive. But I believe that in all things there is a
purpose, and I stand before you and before the nation, gladly.
3 The reality of AIDS is brutally clear. Two hundred thousand Americans are dead or dy-
ing; a million more are infected. Worldwide 40 million, 60 million, or 100 million infections will
5 Tonight, I represent an AIDS community whose members have been reluctantly drafted
from every segment of American society. Though I am white and a mother, I am one with a black
infant struggling with tubes in a Philadelphia hospital. Though I am female and contracted this
disease in marriage and enjoy the warm support of my family, I am one with the lonely gay man
sheltering a flickering candle from the cold wind of his family’s rejection.
6 This is not a distant threat; it is a present danger. The rate of infection is increasing fastest
among women and children. Largely unknown a decade ago, AIDS is the third leading killer of
young adult Americans today—but it won’t be third for long. Because, unlike other diseases, this
one travels. Adolescents don’t give each other cancer or heart disease because they believe they
are in love. But HIV is different, and we have helped it along. We have killed each other with our
ignorance, our prejudice, and our silence.
7 We may take refuge in our stereotypes, but we cannot hide there long. Because HIV asks
only one thing of those it attacks: Are you human? And this is the right question: Are you hu-
man? Because people with HIV have not entered some alien state of being. They are human.
440 PERSUASIVE SPEECHES FOR ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
8 My call to you, my party, is to take a public stand no less compassionate than that of the
President and Mrs. Bush. They have embraced me and my family in memorable ways. In the
place of judgment, they have shown affection. In difficult moments, they have raised our spirits.
In the darkest hours, I have seen them reaching not only to me but also to my parents, armed with
that stunning grief and special grace that comes only to parents who have themselves leaned too
long over the bedside of a dying child.
9 With the President’s leadership, much good has been done; much of the good has gone
unheralded; and, as the President has insisted, “Much remains to be done.”
12 My father has devoted much of his lifetime guarding against another Holocaust. He is
part of the generation who heard Pastor Niemoeller come out of the Nazi death camps to say:
“They came after the Jews, and I was not a Jew, so I did not protest. They came after the trade
unionists, and I was not a trade unionist, so I did not protest. Then they came after the Roman
Catholics, and I was not a Roman Catholic, so I did not protest. Then they came after me, and
there was no one left to protest.”
13 The lesson history teaches is this: If you believe you are safe, you are at risk. If you do
not see this killer stalking your children, look again. There is no family or community, no race or
religion, no place left in America that is safe. Until we genuinely embrace this message, we are a
nation at risk.
14 Tonight, HIV marches resolutely toward AIDS in more than a million American homes,
littering its pathway with the bodies of the young—young men, young women, young parents,
and young children. One of the families is mine. If it is true that HIV inevitably turns to AIDS,
then my children will inevitably turn to orphans.
A WHISPER OF AIDS 441
17 I have a message for you: It is not you who should feel shame. It is we—we who tolerate
ignorance and practice prejudice, we who have taught you to fear. We must lift our shroud of
silence, making it safe for you to reach out for compassion. It is our task to seek safety for our
children, not in quiet denial but in effective action.
18 Someday our children will be grown. My son Max, now four, will take the measure of his
mother. My son Zachary, now two, will sort through his memories. I may not be here to hear their
judgments, but I know already what I hope they are.
22 To my children, I make this pledge: I will not give in, Zachary, because I draw my cour-
age from you. Your silly giggle gives me hope. Your gentle prayers give me strength. And you,
my child, give me the reason to say to America: “You are at risk.” And I will not rest, Max, until I
have done all I can to make your world safe. I will seek a place where intimacy is not the prelude
to suffering.
23 I will not hurry to leave you, my children. But when I go, I pray that you will not suffer
shame on my account.
24 To all within sound of my voice, I appeal: Learn with me the lessons of history and of
grace, so my children will not be afraid to say the word AIDS when I am gone. Then their chil-
dren, and yours, may not need to whisper it at all.
442 PERSUASIVE SPEECHES FOR ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION
A Whisper of AIDS
by Mary Fisher
Commentary
“A Whisper of AIDS” was delivered at the Republican National Convention in Houston, Texas, on August
19, 1992. Only a year earlier Mary Fisher had learned that she had contracted the HIV virus from her ex–
husband. Resolving to do all she could to fight the disease, she became an outspoken advocate of the
need for public understanding and resources in the battle against AIDS. After telling her story to the Re-
publican Platform Committee in May 1992, Fisher, a former staff assistant to President Gerald Ford, was
invited to address the party’s national convention that summer.
Feeling, as she said later, like “the only HIV-positive Republican,” she was deeply concerned how her
message of compassion and awareness would be received. It did not take long, however, for Fisher’s
Here is a synopsis of the speech.
Specific Purpose: To persuade my audience to adopt attitudes of awareness toward the AIDS epidemic
and of compassion toward people who are HIV-positive.
Central Idea: Because AIDS can strike anyone at any time, we must do all we can to combat it and to
be compassionate toward people who are HIV–positive.
Method of Organization: Topical
A WHISPER OF AIDS 443
The second section of the body consists of paragraphs 7–10, in which Fisher issues a call to
the Republican Party to treat AIDS victims with the compassion they deserve. People who are
HIV–positive, she tells her audience, do not merit shame or condemnation. After praising
The fourth—and longest—section of the body runs from paragraph 15 through paragraph
24. In this section Fisher moves back and forth between personal observations about her condi-
tion and her family and comments directed to various portions of her audience. After thanking
her family in paragraph 15 for their support and compassion, she speaks in paragraphs 16–17 to
HIV–positive people who lack support and compassion. It is not you who should feel shame, she
says, but those of us who “tolerate ignorance and practice prejudice.”
Conclusion: If there is a clearly identifiable conclusion to Fisher’s speech, it is the brief words of para-
graph 25—“God bless the children, and God bless us all”—and even those words are so closely
connected to the content of paragraph 24 that they can be considered an extension of that par-
agraph rather than a distinct conclusion. As with Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream,” the most
meaningful question to ask about the end of Fisher’s speech is not whether it has an explicit
conclusion, but whether it concludes effectively—which it unquestionably does.
To boost Fisher’s credibility as a Republican, her speech was preceded by a video stressing
her family’s long–time connections with the Republican Party, including her work as a staff assis-
tant to President Ford and her father’s activities as a Republican fund–raiser. During the speech
itself, Fisher reminded the audience of her Republican credentials by mentioning her testimony
before the platform committee three months earlier (paragraph 1), her family’s close relationship
Evidence and Reasoning: Although Fisher does not employ a great deal of statistical evidence, she
does present telling figures in paragraphs 3 and 6 about the extent of the AIDS epidemic. These
figures are necessary to establish her point that AIDS is on the march in the United States and
the world. However, had she presented too many statistics, she would have changed the tone
of her speech and may have undermined its personal, emotional appeal.
16–17, with the prejudice faced by many people who are HIV–positive.
As in both of these examples, most of the evidence in Fisher’s speech comes from her per-
sonal experience. Not only is this appropriate given her status as HIV–positive, but it is sound
rhetorical strategy. To be successful, Fisher had to move the AIDS debate beyond the level of
statistics and experts and relate it to the lives of ordinary Americans. By drawing on her own ex-
plains the brutal reality of the AIDS epidemic and seeks to convince her audience that no one is
immune from it. The most extended appeals to compassion are in paragraphs 7–10, 15–17, and 21–
25, but the need for compassion runs through the entire speech as a theme in a symphony.
Language: As effective as Fisher’s speech is in other respects, it is distinguished above all by its use of
language. Just as Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” stands out from the thousands of
pulses of fear and compassion, ignorance and awareness, silence and speech. This thematic an-
tithesis is reinforced by the heavy use of stylistic antithesis. In paragraph 2, for example, Fisher
says, “I bear a message of challenge, not self-congratulation. I want your attention, not your ap-
plause.” In paragraph 6, she cautions that AIDS “is not a distant threat; it is a present danger.” In
paragraph 10, she counsels that “We cannot love justice and ignore prejudice, love our children