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Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (11511)	5/1/2002 4:11:40 PM
From: Poet	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21057

Have you seen Laz's three or four posts saying he wish we'd move onto something else?

To: J. C. Dithers who wrote (11511)	5/2/2002 1:11:50 AM
From: Dayuhan	Respond to of 21057

If gay men ceased to infect one another through unprotected rectal sex, the disease would soon be contained. Eventually it would be eliminated. It would be more accurate to say that incidence rates would be substantially lower. The disease is by no means exclusive to the gay community, and there is no indication that removal of homosexual transmission would eliminate the disease. Medical research has been pressured into seeking vaccines and cures, as opposed to a focus on prevention. People who speak out against the behavior that is the root cause of this disease, are accused on being "homophobes." The quest for vaccines and cures is the appropriate province of medical research. Prevention is as important, or more important, but we don't expect medical researchers to come up with preventive methods. That is the province of educators, parents, public health specialists. Homosexuality is not "the root cause" of AIDS. The disease is caused by a virus. The virus can be communicated by unprotected sex, both homosexual and heterosexual, and by other means as well. Homosexual sex has been a major means of transmission, especially in the US. It is not “the root cause". More efforts at education would be desirable, but they do not seem to have been effective in the past. They have actually been extremely effective. When the disease first emerged, intense educational efforts among the gay community had an immediate and significant effect on transmission and incidence rates. It seems that this effort may have slacked off, though, and needs to be resumed among younger gay men. At the very least, I think "social opprobrium" directed at the segment most responsible, young gay males, is certainly called for. Here is where you part company with reason. The figures cited do not suggest that all young gay males are having high-risk sex. They don’t even suggest that a majority are. Why condemn young gay males, generically, to social opprobrium because some members of that group are behaving irresponsibly? Is this reasonable? What is this social opprobrium supposed to accomplish? Is it supposed to stop people from being gay? If so, it’s not likely to succeed. Is it supposed to stop young gay men from having high-risk sex? How is it supposed to do that, when you would direct social opprobrium at all young gay males whether they are having high-risk sex or not? I would expect that social opprobrium might well be counterproductive. Imposing this on young gay men as a whole only encourages them to think of themselves as a separate community, and to work by their own rules. It would create a siege mentality among the gay community. Exclusion breeds anger and self-contempt, both of which are strong elements in self-destructive behaviour. Whose advice is a young person likely to listen to, that of people who accept them and genuinely care about their welfare or those who treat them with contempt because of what they are? I think that a renewed and directed educational program would be a lot more effective, and would have far fewer spinoff effects, than any amount of opprobrium. I suspect that the desire to impose social opprobrium has nothing to do with its effect on homosexuals or homosexuality. There is a nasty streak in human nature, one that frequently arises, that seeks to isolate groups – preferably those that are physically and/or numerically vulnerable – and exclude them. It gives people someone to hate, and some people (we’ve seen a few on this board) seem to want that badly. That is why people don’t want to direct opprobrium at an action, rather than a group. We don’t know which young people are having high-risk sex, so we have no definable target for our opprobrium. That is not acceptable, because opprobrium without a definable target simply isn’t any fun. This discussion has taken some truly bizarre tangents. The definition and etymology of the term “homophobe” are quite irrelevant to the issue, as far as I can see. The attempt to quantify the gay population is even more bizarre. What does it matter if gay people compose 20% or 2% or .02% of the population? It’s meaningless. The point is that they are citizens of the republic, and like all citizens they are guaranteed certain rights under our fundamental laws, among them life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, freedom of speech, freedom of association, etc. There is no cause to constrain these rights unless their exercise compromises the rights of others. That’s it, in a nutshell. Either you believe in freedom, or you don’t. If you believe that freedom should be limited to those who use their freedom in ways that you approve, you don’t believe in freedom.