The Scarlett H

Maryland Republican once proposed tattooing people with HIV. Thanks to a judge appointed by Clinton, he is leading in the race for a Congress seat.

This article was updated on November 9, 2022.

In Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel The Scarlett Letter, a woman in puritan New England who births a child out of wedlock faces prosecution. She is sentenced to prison, and has to wear a scarlett “A” on her clothing and stand on a public scaffold for three hours a day.

Neil Parrott, a far-right, extremist Republican state representative from Western Maryland, once actually proposed going beyond Hawthorne’s fictional premise of 172 years ago in real life. He supported branding people who tested positive for HIV with a tattooed mark as a means of identification, if not punishment and humiliation.

Parrott argued that placing such a mark permanently on a victim’s skin, rather than just making them wear a big letter, “H,” on their clothing, was somehow a “compassionate” proposal. Even the German Nazis only had stars and other codes sewn onto victims’ clothing, rather than permanently tattooed on their skin. Slaves, those accused of crimes in certain U.S. states, and Confederate soldiers who deserted were branded until the 1860s.

In a letter to the Hagerstown Herald-Mail, Parrott writes:

It’s time to take the specter of HIV critically.

A compassionate and critical resolution should protect the dignity of these contaminated whereas actually serving…