Can You Get AIDS From Touching Infected Blood? Kim Davis' Lawyer Says Pulse Nightclub Shooting First Responders Had To Get HIV Test

The attorney who represented Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who was jailed in 2015 for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, issued controversial comments Monday about the LGBT community in regards to AIDS in an interview with a conservative radio program.

Speaking with Right Wing Watch’s “Faith and Freedom” broadcast, Mat Staver said first responders to the June 2016 shooting at gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, which left 49 dead and 53 injured, had to get tested for “AIDS-related conditions."

“In regards to the Pulse nightclub – as tragic as it is – some of these officers no doubt have gone through trauma as well because they were going through the nightclub. There was blood everywhere and, you know, they’re having to get tested for AIDS-related conditions because they’re literally walking in pools of blood,” Staver told the show’s host Holly Meade.

The comment hints at the stereotype that HIV/AIDS is a “gay disease” – a stigma that has plagued the LGBT community since the 1980s. While HIV is disproportionately higher within the group, any person regardless of sexual orientation, race or gender can catch the virus, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

Contrary to the fear that touching HIV-infected blood causes infection, statistics show that when a person with a wound or mucous membrane comes in contact with HIV-infected blood, the chances of HIV transmitting are “extremely rare cases,” according to AIDS.gov.

Staver also made other comments during the interview about the nightclub shooting, insisting that attacker Omar Mateen was driven by a motive that he was upset with the U.S. for bombing “his countries which would include Syria.”

“There was a narrative that the Obama administration and local politicians wanted to promote. It was the rainbow flag, it was an anti-gay issue. [But] it really was a terrorism issue,” Staver said.