The first member of Congress to die of AIDS
The first member of the US Congress to die of AIDS: for a long time, silence surrounded how he was infected.
On 7 May 1987, Republican Congressman Stewart B. McKinney of Connecticut died in Washington. He was fifty-six and the first member of the US Congress to die of AIDS-related causes. The diagnosis had only been made during his last hospital stay in April.
His office announced that McKinney had probably contracted the virus through a blood transfusion, probably during heart surgery in 1979. That was the official version, and it was convenient. Shortly after his death, however, friends reported that he had also had relationships with men. A man with whom he lived in Washington and whom he made his heir later stated that he had been his partner and that McKinney had already been infected when they met.
The homophobia of those years probably contributed to the question of infection being treated so cautiously. Anyone who died of AIDS in the eighties had to reckon with suspicion, and a political career was additionally at stake. How McKinney was actually infected cannot be said conclusively to this day. There is no clearly documented answer.
He remained known for something else. For sixteen years he sat in the House of Representatives, among other things on the Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, and gave his name to the 1986 homeless assistance law, the McKinney-Vento Act. His widow Lucie set up a foundation that runs a home in Fairfield for homeless people with AIDS. A nature reserve in Connecticut also bears his name.
The case shows how far the silence of the early years of the epidemic reached, even to the very top of politics.