Homophobe Rand Paul says homosexual CDC official’s ‘life-style’ made him unfit to be in authorities

Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official who resigned final week over the anti-science insurance policies of Donald Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., is unfit to be in authorities due to his “lifestyle,” U.S. Sen. Rand Paul mentioned Tuesday.

Daskalakis is homosexual and has generally posed in leather-based gear for photographs, additionally exhibiting off his tattoos.

He “describes the risky behavior that he and his lifestyle involve,” Paul, a far-right Republican from Kentucky, advised The Hill.

“A guy that is so far … out of the mainstream, I think most people in America would discount his opinion because of the things he said in the past. He does not represent the mainstream of anything in America,” Paul added.

Daskalakis was director of the CDC’s Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases till he delivered his resignation letter final Wednesday. The subsequent day, he was “very respectfully” escorted out of the CDC constructing in Atlanta, he advised The Advocate, together with two others who resigned, Chief Medical Officer Debra Houry and Director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Daniel Jernigan.

“I am unable to serve in an environment that treats CDC as a tool to generate policies and materials that do not reflect scientific reality and are designed to hurt rather than to improve the public’s health,” Daskalakis wrote in his scathing resignation missive. “I find that the views [RFK Jr.] and his staff have shared challenge my ability to continue in my current role at the agency and in the service of the health of the American people. Enough is enough.”

He condemned the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Kennedy and of which the CDC is a component, for sidelining profession scientists, withholding knowledge, and dictating immunization schedules that he mentioned “threaten the lives of the youngest Americans and pregnant people.” The Food and Drug Administration has restricted the eligibility for COVID-19 vaccines nearly completely to seniors and people with severe underlying well being circumstances like bronchial asthma or weight problems.

HHS has additionally scaled again HIV prevention efforts, smoking cessation applications, and monitoring of meals security issues, whereas Kennedy has questioned vaccine efficacy and unfold conspiracy theories. “The CDC you knew is over,” Daskalakis advised The Advocate. “Unless someone takes radical action, there is nothing there that can be salvaged.”

But for homophobes like Paul, the first challenge is Daskalakis’s so-called life-style. For the report, any sort of sexual contact can unfold infections — or be prevented from spreading infections by way of use of prevention medicine (pre-exposure prophylaxis) or use of condoms.

Paul isn’t the one right-winger who’s criticizing Daskalakis. Republican U.S. Rep. Buddy Carter of Georgia known as him a “BDSM Satan worshipper” in an look on CNN Sunday.

Some critics have pointed to Daskalakis’s pentagram tattoo as an indication of satanism. “I am certainly not a satanist,” he told The Advocate in 2022. He advised Politico the identical yr, “I wish I were that interesting.” He famous that he additionally has a tattoo of Jesus Christ, reflecting his upbringing within the Greek Orthodox Church.

Daskalakis joined the CDC in 2020, initially as director of the Division of AIDS Prevention, after being deputy commissioner for the Division of Disease Control on the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. He additionally led the federal authorities’s response to the mpox outbreak in 2022.

There are different homosexual males within the federal authorities, even underneath Trump, together with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. No phrase on whether or not Paul considers him unfit to serve.

This article initially appeared on Advocate: Homophobe Rand Paul says gay CDC official’s ‘lifestyle’ made him unfit to be in government