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crossposted on Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters
At a the National HIV Conference last week, the Centers for Disease Control said the following:
Gay and bisexual men account for half of new HIV infections in the U.S. and have AIDS at a rate more than 50 times greater than other groups. . .
. . . Gay and bisexual men account for half of new HIV infections in the U.S. and have AIDS at a rate more than 50 times greater than other groups, according to Centers for Disease Control & Prevention data presented at the National HIV Prevention Conference this week in Atlanta.
This is bad news to almost everyone except for our friend Peter LaBarbera, who naturally used this news for his own benefit:
The issue in this ongoing “culture war” is not the cause of homosexual “orientation” — or merely the legality of “same-sex marriage.” It’s homosexual behavior itself — and whether government should promote it or discourage it, or be neutral. I say discourage it, since the evidence keeps pouring in that conduct which has been proscribed as immoral down through centuries of Judeo-Christian tradition is also highly dangerous. Now if the CDC will only stop blabbering on about “homophobia” and start telling the truth — that the rectum is not a sexual organ, after all, and that we must take tough measures against “gay” promiscuity — America will become a healthier place.
Never mind that he shows his ignorance by taking in part of the CDC's statement and ignoring the part that doesn't suit his agenda.
The “blabbering about homophobia” that LaBarbera alludes to is this part of the article that he conveniently omitted in his attack on lgbts:
Many conference speakers, including ranking officials with the CDC, said getting rid of stigma, including homophobia, against those with HIV/AIDS is also a crucial part in reducing incident rates.
LaBarbera also omitted this part of the article:
( U.S. Department of Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen) Sebelius also noted that gay and bisexual men, as well as African Americans and Latinos, continue to be hardest hit by the disease in the U.S. Steps are being taken by the Obama administration to target these populations specifically, she said.
“We’re targeting our efforts at high-risk groups like African Americans. Today, African Amer-icans make up just a tenth of the population. But they account for nearly half of new HIV infections. One in 30 African-American women will be diagnosed in her lifetime. One in 16 African-American men will be diagnosed with HIV. In 2005, the CDC reported that in five major cities, almost half of all African-American gay men were HIV positive. The situation is also dire for Latinos,” she said.
“Think about that. Imagine if it were half the straight white women in Atlanta. Wouldn’t we be calling this a national emergency? Shouldn’t we be?” she said to a cheering crowd.
I know LaBarbera wouldn't dare denigrate the Latino and African-American community for their unfortunate rate of HIV infections in the same manner that he denigrates the lgbt community. Not to worry, though. I'm sure enterprising racists will talk about the supposed “inferiority” of blacks and Latinos.
After all, you just can't keep hogs away from the trough, whether they be racists or homophobes.
14 Comments
LaBarbera hates GodWhat’s going to happen when he gets to his pearly gates and finds he can’t get in because he spent his life peddling lies and inciting hatred towards his fellow man in order to solicit “donations” and his salary?
What kind of a ridiculous juvenile God does LaBarbera believe in; one that cares more about where I’ve consentually had my penis than how we treat our fellow man?? One that cares more about who I show affection to than how many lives he’s destroyed?
And what about the (ten times more) heteros who have performed anal sex? And the third of gays who don’t?
I know it’s dumb to expect him to let any sort of logic get in the way of his money-raising. That’s his true God. His money is soaked in our blood, LaBarbera is a vampire.
UmI don’t see the point in using unfounded religious beliefs to attack other unfounded religious beliefs.
Stick with the facts and the logic please, which you obviously have a grasp of. Don’t need the rest. Not useful. K thanks.
If he’s so worried about promiscuity, he should start with the heterosexual population.Then he should do his part to promote gay marriage and monogamy.
He is clearly focused on and bigoted against one thing. Homos.
I’m terribly sorry..for not being a strict atheist. I’ll try to confine my angry personal reactions only to things that are useful personally to you in the future. K thanks.
28 million AfricansI guess the world would be a “healthier place” if we simply nuked the entire African continent.
The scary thing is that we don’t even know what’s going on in China. AIDS is now the number one cause of death by infectious disease in China. The number of HIV infections could be 100 times greater than the Chinese government is reporting.
China, Africa, India, Russia…
The United States is hardly even a drop in the bucket. This is a global pandemic.
Our goverment could outlaw all gay sex and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. The global infection rates would continue to rise by the thousands every day.
If Peter LaBarbera Hates Anal Sex So Much….then he needs to stop having it.
Nobody’s forcing the cheapskate to do anything, it’s on his own accord. Stay away from Folsum Street Fair, stay away from the bathhouses.
Simple as that.
The government did outlaw all gay sex.Our epidemic started when that was in effect.
YepEven if there had been laws against eating monkey meat, HIV still would have crossed to the human population.
Viruses aren’t subject to our laws.
Peter needs to simply STFUHe lies incessantly, uses logic a five-year-old could punch holes through, and is a total boor.
He also suffers from bad breath, greasy hair, body odor, his feet stink to high hevean, and he is incredibly clumsy in bed. So I’m told.
A couple thing this article doesn’t reflectThe number of new cases in the 1980′s were about 80% gay/bisexual men spread by M2M sex, the rest was primarily IV drug users.
So now AIDS is much more heterosexually transmitted than it originally was in America.
There was also no mention of the UTTER failure of 8 years of IGNORANT abstinence only faith based sh*t, or removing ALL mention of gay sex from AIDS literature.
NOW CA is gutting an outreach program of AIDS literature in 12 languages. So this extremely minimal cost outreach to a dozen communities, will spread AIDS needlessly, instead of warning how not to transmit the virus.
You know…He always brings up AIDS rates when defending gay marriage, but what about lesbians with their low rate of infection. Even lower than heterosexuals.
Lesbian marriage for everyone I guess using his logic! Damn…I don’t qualify
Can’t see the minorities for the treesYes of course Gays, African-Americans, and Latinos are suffering the highest rates of infection. It is also likely that when one stops to consider the level of mistrust and animosity that has developed between these groups and the mainstream community in the United States–which the medical community belongs too, there might be other reasons why these communities suffer such a higher level of infection. I suppose the people like LaBarbera would never think to consider that these groups have only recently begun to heal from the mistrust fostered by society and the medical community which advises it. A medical community which still has blood on its hands due to historical treatment and/or mistreatment of these very communities.
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study was one of the most tragic episodes in the history of the U.S. Public Health Service. From 1932 to 1972, the study intentionally withheld treatment for 399 poor African American men suffering from syphilis in order to study the diseases effects. The government did not go public with the study of its information until outed under the Clinton administration.
The American Psychiatric Association (APA), was kind enough to de-list homosexuality as a psychological disorder in the early 70s. However, this did not seem to erase the previous centuries of attempting to fix homosexuals through wonder therapies ranging from incarceration to electroshock. Or the continued mistrust in the community created by studies of this type that list the statistic but do little or nothing to speak to the homophobia and social ostracization that has played such a huge role in the community. Somewhere between the mistrust, racism, and fear-mongering the Latino community can pick from a litany of issue that isolate them from the trust needed to listen to and work with the medical community and avoid the downfalls that continue to spread this horrible disease.
LaBarbera could take a page from the Bible. 1 Corinthians 13:1-7 to be exact:
“If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing. If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing. Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.”
Ironically, BDSM is often safest sex aroundPeter rails against the leather/BDSM community and gay men in general, but can never get his facts straight (all puns intended). Those of us who enjoy the more esoteric forms of sexual “play” often are having the safest possible time – no chance for fluid exchange – the worst thing you can catch is the flu. But because Peter finds it weird (or, perhaps more accurately, finds it extremely compelling), he refuses to acknowledge this simple truth.
You have the annoying habitof destroying my keyboards! LOL