Ruth Westheimer Quotes

My play Safe Sex was picked apart because critics thought it was untrue. It was a play in which no one had AIDS, but the characters talked about how it was going to change their lives.

You can’t do anything about HIV-AIDS unless you are willing to talk about condoms.

When I started out, no one would talk to young people about HIV or AIDS. I looked around and radio looked like a powerful way to shape culture in a healthy way.

I think anything that has to do with sexuality makes people very interested.

Being in the design industry, I've tended to meet more people who are affected by HIV and AIDS.

Responsible moral behavior is the first and best line of defense against AIDS, and is the only message we should send young people worldwide.

HIV AIDS is a preventable disease and should never be a source of shame!

We hope we are moving toward a world where sexual orientation is not an issue, because we hate the idea of a gay ghetto. I think that it's a real shame that people become restricted by their sexuality or define their whole lives by their sexuality.

C. Everett 'Chic' Koop became U.S. Surgeon General under President Reagan. He was a world renowned pediatric surgeon who had a tumultuous Senate confirmation process due to partisanship. Chic took office in January 1982, a time of 'tobacco wars' and a new and evolving terrifying disease that we ultimately came to know as AIDS.

I realize that homosexuality is a serious problem for anyone who is - but then, of course, heterosexuality is a serious problem for anyone who is, too. And being a man is a serious problem and being a woman is, too. Lots of things are problems.

Americans are a decade behind Canada when it comes to sex education and understanding their bodies.

We need men and women to sit down and talk to each other about sex honestly and openly. That would help us fight Aids so immediately. But our lack of communication is hugely problematic.

State Universities are breeding grounds, quite literally, for sexually transmitted diseases including HIV, homosexual behavior, unwanted pregnancies, abortions, alcoholism, and drug abuse.

In the name of rolling back AIDS we've inundated this country with condoms.

We need to teach responsibility not legislate morality, because the vows of abstinence break far more easily than latex condoms.

We are fighting a deadly disease. We are not fighting the people who have that disease. Homosexuality does not produce AIDS.

I got tested for AIDS. I know Barack got tested for AIDS. There is no shame in being tested for AIDS. It’s an important thing.

You can’t have a campaign against AIDS that emphasizes global abstinence.

HIV's never been proven to cause AIDS. HIV ain't ever killed anybody.

We all know you can get AIDS from sex, but did you know that you can get sex from aides?

Knowing your HIV status is such an easy thing to do, but again, we've created this stigma around even going to get tested.

We think that if we get tested, that means you have to have HIV. Or we think that just by knowing someone with HIV, we're going to get HIV or because he's gay or she's a lesbian or whatever. This false information has been put out there and it's created this stigma that stops us from going to find out if we're infected. The truth is it doesn't matter who you are, if you're having sex, you need to be getting tested, plain and simple.

If you're not doing needles and you're not gay, you won't get AIDS, probably.

Abstinence-only education - the best STD (Sexually Transmitted Disease) and pregnancy delivery system that politicians have ever devised.

We had the 60s sexual revolution, and now people are dying of AIDS.