Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This Day in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
Hello and welcome to This Day in History Class, a
show that uncovers a little bit more about history every day.
I'm Gay Bluesiay, And today we're looking at a one
of a kind protest from the early nineteen nineties, the
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day when a huge fabric condom rose above the house
of a sitting senator. The day was September fifth, nineteen
ninety one. A group of protesters draped a giant, inflatable
condom over the home of North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms.
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The goal of the unusual demonstration was to protest Republican lawmakers,
Helms in particular, who were vehemently opposed to gay rights
and to funding AIDS research and treatments. To help get
their point across, the group's sdenseled a message in big
block letters on the front of the fabric condom. It read, quote,
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a condom to stop unsafe politics. Helms is deadlier than
a virus. During his thirty year career in the Senate,
Jesse Helms was known for his hard edged conservatism and
his dogged efforts to block any legislation he opposed. This
earned him the nickname Senator No, and Helms took great
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pride in living up to it. As North Carolina's Senator,
he said no to all sorts of things, including civil rights,
foreign aid, affirmative action, tax increases, a woman's right to choose,
and even modern art. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Helms was most provocative
on subjects of race and homosexuality. In nineteen eighty three,
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he was the only Senator to vote against making Martin
Luther King Junior's birthday a national holiday, and he even
led a sixteen day a filibuster to try to stop
the measure from passing. Less than a decade later, Helms
fought just as strongly to block federal spending on HIV research, treatment,
and prevention. He called the LGBT community quote perverted human
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beings and insisted that they were to blame for the
AIDS crisis due to their quote deliberate, disgusting, revolting conduct.
In nineteen eighty eight, Helms turned his fiery rhetoric into
legislation by introducing an amendment that would prohibit the use
of any federal funds to quote promote, encourage, or condone
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homosexual activities. It passed with only two objections in the
Senate and just forty seven no votes in the House.
It's hard to gauge the true impact of the so
called Helm's Amendment, but it's reasonable to think that some
people may not have gotten sick or died if they
had been able to learn about safe section practices from
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the government's HIV prevention campaign. Thousands of Americans wrote protest
letters condemning the Helm's Amendment and the government's general disregard
for the HIV AIDS crisis. Then, in the summer of
nineteen ninety one, AIDS activist Peter Staley decided to take
the fight to Helm's own doorstep. The group he had
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co founded, act UP, was about to launch a new
AIDS organization that would focus solely on spurring the development
and approval of anti HIV medications. This new affiliate was
called the Treatment Action Group, or TAG, and Staley wanted
to announce its arrival by staging an eye catching act
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of civil disobedience. As one of the most vocal opponents
of their cause, Senator Helms was an obvious target, and
it didn't take Staley long to hit on the idea
of covering his house in a condom as the activists
later recalled a supposed public servant had contributed to the
death of my friends and was standing in the way
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of fighting the disease. Someone needed to confront him to
make him uncomfortable. My goal was to criticize him and
get people to laugh at him at the same time.
So I dreamed big, a big condom, that is. Staley
put together a team, which he called the tag Helm seven,
and with the help of a gay friend who worked
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in the Senate, they were able to find out the
senator's home address. It was a two story brick colonial
home in the Washington suburb of Arlington, Virginia. The team
took a reconnaissance trip to see it in person so
that they could better estimate how large a condom they
would need to cover it. Once they had worked out
the dimensions, Staley reached out to several novelty companies, the
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kind that make those big inflatable animals that you might
find outside a car dealership. Estimates for the custom condom
ranged from third twenty five hundred dollars to fifteen thousand dollars,
all of which was well beyond the price range of
the newly minted group. In the end, It was legendary
record executive and film producer David Geffen who footed the
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bill for the condom. Staley's boyfriend at the time was
good friends with Geffen, and after sharing their plans with him,
Geffen handed them a thick wad of cash and warned
them to be careful. Shortly after, the team placed in
order for a thirty five hundred dollars inflatable condom to
be made from the same material as a parachute. Once
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it arrived from California, they took it to an act
up member's country home in upstate New York so that
they could practice unfurling it and blowing it up. Then
they stencil painted their biting message onto the front and
headed to northern Virginia. The protesters scheduled their demonstration for
September fifth, nineteen ninety one, during the Senate's summer recess.
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They purposely chose a date when Senator Helms was out
of town, and they even knocked on his door the
night beforehand to confirm that no one was home. The
tag team also told CNN and all the local TV
stations that they were planning to cover a US senator's
home with a condom. They wouldn't say who the target was, though.
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Instead they had the press meet them at their Virginia
motel and then followed their rented U haul truck to
the mystery senator's home. Once they arrived, everyone sprang into action.
A few of the team members scrambled up a twenty
eight foot extension ladder and began unpacking the condom from
a duffel bag. They laid out the enormous prophylactic and
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connected it to a large blower with a custom built
stand made just for Helm's roof. Other team members pinned
the bottom of the condom to the grass below using
plastic stakes and rubber mallets. Then they plugged the long
extension cord into a portable generator and cheered with the
light as the giant condom rose into the air. It
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covered the entire roof and the front of the house,
standing nearly thirty five feet tall at full length. The
first police car arrived just a few minutes after the
condom was fully inflated. The participants expected to be arrested
on the spot, but much to their surprise, they were
eventually allowed to go free. The police said it was
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up to the Senator whether or not to press charges,
and Helms ultimately declined to do so, hoping to keep
the incident from becoming an even bigger news story than
it was already guaranteed to be. At the police's request,
the protesters took down the inflatable condom and packed it away,
leaving Helms's home just the way they had found it.
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The group was even allowed to keep the condom, which
they later donated to the one National Gay and Lesbian
Archives in Los Angeles. In the end, the tag Helm
seven walked away with nothing but a parking ticket, apparently
they had parked their truck on the wrong side of
the street. The only other thing the team had failed
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to account for was the presence of Helm's housekeeper. It
was later discovered that she had spent a rather confusing
morning trapped inside the house, unable to get out until
the condom was removed. Later that evening, TV stations across
the country covered the incident, sharing the group's rebuke of
Senator Helms and demonstrating the playful side of political activism.
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As for Helms, he responded about as you'd expect. He
complained about the stunt on the Senate floor and denounced
the perpetrators as quote radical homosexuals. Still, he never did
press charges, and more importantly, he never passed another harmful
aid's amendment. And while we can't say for certain that
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the giant inflatable condom caused him to back down, well
it probably didn't hurt. I'm Gabe Blues Gay and hopefully
you now know a little more about history today than
you did yesterday. If you'd like to keep up with
the show, you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and
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Instagram at TDI HC Show, and if you have any
comments or suggestions, feel free to send them my way
by writing to this Day at iHeartMedia dot com. Thanks
to Kasby Bias for producing the show, and thanks to
you for listening. I'll see you back here again tomorrow
for another day in History class