The CDC informs us that over 90% of all men who have ever been diagnosed with HIV-AIDS contracted it through having sex with other men (61%), intravenous drug abuse (21%), or both (9%). Homosexual conduct thus is even more of a risk to human health than intravenous drug injection. We should no more normalize homosexual conduct, let alone homosexual marriage, than to normalize shooting up with needles
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Whether or not you consider Africa and it's hundreds of thousands of straight people dying of AIDS, those statistics are pure bullshit. Just as many heterosexuals get HIV from unprotected sex as gay men. Lesbians by the way, have the lowest overall risk statistically. In all cases, boiling it down to sleeping around with strangers - which is no more integral to being gay than it is for the bored housewife or millionaire playboy - does more to convey the danger than getting your panties in a bunch over the gender of each participant.
Apart from that, illegal narcotics aren't the only intraveneous drugs - insulin, adrenaline, flu shots, just to name three - and more than one poor bastard was the victim of shoddy hospital disposal and cleaning standards.
The CDC informs us that over 90% of all men who have ever been diagnosed with HIV-AIDS contracted it through having sex with other men (61%), intravenous drug abuse (21%), or both (9%).
Tell it to the 22.5 million people presently suffering from HIV in Africa. All they all gay IV drug users too?
Statistics also show that the vast majority of men and women who have been diagnosed with syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia and genital warts contracted it through having sex with someone of the opposite sex. Heterosexual conduct thus is even more of a risk to human health than intravenous drug injection. We should no more normalize heterosexual conduct, let alone heterosexual marriage, than to normalize shooting up with needles.
His source is credible, and his reporting of their stats is fairly accurate. He's using the estimated numbers, which are slightly higher than the confirmed numbers, and that's probably his bias at play, but the difference isn't huge. He's being blatantly homophobic, yes, but he has the numbers pretty close to right.
The fact that he said "all men who have ever been diagnosed" instead of "US males with stage 3 AIDS diagnosed between 2008 and 2011" does make him wrong. And the fact that he jumps from "male-male sex is a relatively frequent point of HIV transmission" to "male-male sex is more health hazardous than IV drug use across the board, and should therefore be condemned" makes him stupid. And the fact that he omitted to mention that about 59% of women with HIV contracted it from heterosexual sex (compared to about 38% by IV drug use) makes him dishonest, because lies of omission are still lies. But I give him points for not just pulling the stats out of his butt.
@grimsoncrow,1512008
No, what is dangerous is UNPROTECTED SEX. It doesn't matter from whom you get HIV. If you and your partner both get tested, and you're both HIV-negative, you can have all the gay sex you want and it won't hurt anybody. Except Bryan Fischer, because it makes his pants fit wrong. (So make sure you send him a video.)
That's because AIDS was first introduced into America's gay community. It could have just as easily been introduced by returning Christian missionaries, just like several plagues were brought to Europe by crusaders, and it would have been called "Christian Immunodeficiency Syndrome". Germs don't care.
"both (9%)"
But how many women have contracted HIV from other women? Very damn few I'd say. The simple fact is that it's harder for men to contract HIV from women, but very easy for women to get it from men. So that's why the rates of HIV contraction in males are higher from gay sex than heterosexual intercourse. But you can't ignore the fact that many heterosexuals have HIV or AIDS, so despite what people believed 30 years ago, it's not a "gay disease."
And I notice that Bryan, like most anti-gay bigots, is ignoring all the other STD's which are normally passed through heterosexual intercourse. It's like they only focus on HIV and totally ignore the vast array of other STD's which have been passed between men & women for thousands of years. True, many of them are trying to keep everyone except married people from having sex, but they're not condemning heterosexual sex as "dangerous behavior" like they do with gay sex.
@Hasan Prishtina: Nonetheless, this seems to be a trend. Countries (and in Australia, states) with more lax drug laws normally see a short spike in use and problems, followed by a significant and sustained decrease. I'm unaware of anti drug measures ever actually working, and to bring out the big guns... alcohol. One of the most damaging, addictive and dangerous recreational drugs around, easily worse than cannabis or MDMA, and readily available. You may recall banning it was not a successful enterprise, and yet most people refuse to acknowledge that doing the exact same thing with other drugs may not be the best approach.
Fuck this actually, I'm going to go watch the Penn & Teller's Bullshit War on Drugs episode right now.
Also, nice analogy, Fischster. IV drug use, like sex with any consenting adult, is not that risky if simple precautions are taken. Street heroin from a dealer is probably a lot riskier than antibiotics from a doctor*, but again, anonymous sex with a stranger is a lot riskier than monogamous sex with your spouse. Unless you're suggesting we outlaw the life-saving procedures doctors perform too, it would only be consistent for you to support same- sex marriage, and yet you do not. It's almost as if every single argument you spout is borne of desperation...
*I've only taken the latter of these, but it was an intravenous syringe, and I remarkably didn't get HIV.
The CDC informs us that over 90% of all men who have ever been diagnosed with HIV-AIDS contracted it through having sex with other men ...
And I suspect you'll find that most women with HIV contracted it through having sex with men, too, which is why lesbians have a very low rate of HIV infection. Women are not efficient transmitters compared to men.
You forgot to turn it around; how many homosexual men have contracted HIV? How many homosexual men have contracted HIV since it was common knowledge that the disease exists and that it was common in the gay community? How many men in sub-Saharan Africa that have contracted HIV are homosexual?
There are three forms of lies; ordinary lies, damned lies and statistics.
Actually, distributing new needles in exchange for old needles reduces the rate of HIV infections among drug abusers. Letting things out in the open and accepting it for what it is, and try to do something good from there works much better than to just condemn stuff and force it into hiding.
As of 2009, however, they report only 57% of new infections in males occured as the result of me having sex with men, and when we consider all new cases--not just new cases in males--the most common mode of transmission is heterosexual intercourse (hovering around 80%:
So clearly it isn't homosexual intercourse that's poses a greater risk to human health than intravenous drug use--heterosexual intercourse poses a greater risk than EITHER intravenous drug use or homosexual intercourse.
@JGC:
As of 2009, however, they report only 57% of new infections in males occured as the result of me having sex with men
Err, for your sake I really, really hope this is a typo ^^"
@ JGC
I'm not sure where your info is coming from, but the source he's citing covers from 2008 to 2011, including 2009, and at no point in that time does M/F sex account for more than 18.4% of new cases in the US. It never gets close to 80% unless you take Africa into account. Within the US, M/M sex is the number one source of infection, followed by IV drug use, with M/F sex coming in third, and F/F sex not even on the horizon.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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