From: cramer@optilink.COM (Clayton Cramer)
Newsgroups: ca.politics,talk.politics.misc
Subject: Re: Gay/Lesbian Equal Rights Needed
Date: 18 Dec 92 19:16:59 GMT
Organization: Optilink Corporation, Petaluma, CA

In article <1go6dhINN8pr@copland.crhc.uiuc.edu>, pgr@crhc.uiuc.edu (Paul Ryan) writes:
> >In any case, you only have to read soc.motss
> >for a while to realize that even among homosexual activists, there
> >are still people taking absurd risks engaging in unprotected sex
> >with strangers.  
> 
> Prejudiced, stereotyped, hatred-based bullshit.

Shall I post some examples from soc.motss?  

> The gay community has embraced safer-sex and risk reduction like no
> other group in the country, and we have healthy people and leveling
> infectin curves to show for it.

From AIDS Daily Summary, September 25, 1992:

  "AIDS Infection Rate for Gays Unchanged" United Press International (09/24/92)
     Pittsburgh--The University of Pittsburgh's Men's Study has found that 
  although there is increased AIDS awareness and safer sex among young gay men, 
  they are still contracting HIV at the same rate as gay men were eight years 
  ago. The study involved more than 1,000 gay and bisexual men, whose health was 
  tracked since the early 1980s. Approximately 7 percent of the 121 men aged 18-
  22 enrolled in the study in 1984 and 1985 were HIV-positive.  About 7 percent 
  of the 62 men in the same age group enrolled since 1988 also were infected 
  with HIV. Pitt research specialist Anthony Silvestre said, "The problem is not 
  going away. I anticipate a steady and continuing number of gay men being 
  diagnosed with AIDS in the next 10 years." Silvestre conceded that AIDS 
  awareness has risen among gay men, causing them to change their behaviors, but 
  focus group discussions indicated many men still engage in risky behaviors. He 
  said many limit their number of partners but are reluctant to use condoms 
  during sex. In addition, Silvestre said the increased number of HIV-positive 
  people means a person's risk of becoming infected can remain the same even if 
  he has fewer sex partners than may have been the case 10 years ago. Homosexual 
  men account for a decreasing population of all newly diagnosed AIDS cases in 
  recent years, with IV-drug users comprising a growing number. However, 
  Silvestre said that does not imply the epidemic is under control among gays. 
  "It's not that gay men are doing that much better, but that IV-drug users are 
  doing much, much worse," he added.

Look at the last sentence, in particular.

> >In any case, the health hazards of promiscuity were clear and well
> >known (though seldom lethal) in 1982.
> 
> And the implied next thought is that it's all they gay's faults.
> 
> The seventies were a sexually liberated decade.  Modern science found a
> cure or a treatment for many STDs, the pill freed women from fear of
> pregnancy, and America went through a sexual revolution to which gay
> sex was only a footnote.

But a footnote that caused the spread of AIDS rapidly throughout the
U.S.  The stupidity of straights caused such problems as herpes, which
fortunately, isn't killing off huge numbers of people.

> In the early 80s, the health hazards of promiscuity did become clear, and

Actually, they were clear in the late 1970s, but a lot of people 
(not all of them gay) wanted to believe otherwise.

> the entire nation, gays and straights alike, took a hard swing toward
> the conservative, sexually and socially.

Shall I post some of the "examples" from soc.motss?

> >So why are so few straights getting AIDS, except through contact with
> >prostitutes and IV drug abusers?
> 
> Because you are in denial.  You are clinging to this foolish belief that
> AIDS is somehow a gay disease, and burying your head in the sand.
> 
> from the January 1992 issue of Discover Magazine (page 52)
> 
>         "Now, in the world as a whole, at least 70% of the people infected with
> HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, are believed to have caught it from their
> heterosexual partners."

Yet, in this country, the percentage is VERY small.  Why?
n
>         "While infection rates among homosexual men in this country have begun
> to drop, among women they are soaring.  In 1990, 4,890 teenage and adult women
> were diagnosed with full-blown AIDS, and at least 100,000 more are feared to be
> carrying the virus.  Among adolescents, a group in which the disease is making
> especially rapid inroads, straight sex surpassed gay sex for the last two years
> as a way of spreading the infection."

Why then, do the CDC numbers indicate differently?
 
> >No question, massive education is needed.  But it won't solve the 
> >problem of the person who is suicidal, and completely unable to
> >control their sexuality (i.e. the average homosexual).
> 
> This is a completely gratuitous, knee-jerk insult with absolutely no
> redeeming pretense at a factual base whatsoever.  In short, it's exactly
> the kind of prejudiced, stereo-type based, hatred filled bullshit I expect
> from you.
> 
> Paul Ryan                  (pgr@crhc.uiuc.edu)     1308 West Main St.

It's the only characterization I can make of homosexuals, from reading
soc.motss.


-- 
Clayton E. Cramer {uunet,pyramid}!optilink!cramer  My opinions, all mine!
C++ is to C, as lung cancer is to lung.