As you pointed out advertisers purchase time on television programs because they know that what people see on television influences their behavior and influences their choices. We know from the Centers for Disease Control that 91% of the males who have been diagnosed with HIV-AIDS since the epidemic began contracted it through having sex with other men or through injection drug abuse. That means that homosexual behavior is just as risky and just as dangerous as injection drug use and we should not glamorize it anymore than we would glamorize intravenous drug use.
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The actual percentage of homosexual male cases of HIV is 78%, not 91%, according to the source you yourself cited . Admittedly, that is significantly higher than I expected. Nevertheless, the danger is not dependent on one's orientation but on the nature of the contact: anal sex is more dangerous than either oral or vaginal, and, most importantly, safe sex practices greatly reduce the risk of infection . Gay sex done safely is much safer than unprotected straight sex.
Of course, all of this ignores the fact that you seem to think that all gays do is have sex. Sexuality is an aspect of identity. It is no more dangerous than any other part of one's identity. No matter what identity we have, it is how we choose to act on it that is good or bad, not the identity itself. So talking about the dangers of "homosexual behavior" is like saying that being a supporter of the Second Amendment is the same as killing someone with a gun.
Edit @arcticknight: 56% is for all cases of infection, not just males. Fischer was discussing just men, so the actual percentage is 78%, counting drug use cases. Still way off from 91%, though.
According to the CDC;
Male to male sexual contact: 56.4%
That's a lot less than 91%
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance/resources/slides/general/slides/general_7.pdf
Edit: According to the source cited above, heterosexual sex accounts for 31% of HIV cases. Maybe Mr. Fischer needs top abstain from all sex in order to protect himself (and protect us from his offspring).
Let's just cut it down to reality: sex involving penetration with a penis not sheathed in latex or polyurethane is the most common way for people to be exposed to HIV. Because of some details in terms of transmission and because of how HIV was first introduced to North America (and the sociosexual context at the time), yes, there have been a lot of gay and bisexual men with AIDS -- but worldwide, heterosexual sex is still the most common means of transmission. In the U.S., heterosexual women are the group with the second-highest rate of infection -- lesbians have the lowest rate. So what do we make of all this? Use a fucking condom if you're having vaginal or anal sex with a male.
Lying for Jesus is still lying, Bryan.
But really, who am I kidding? In one of his most recent missives, he all but calls for forced conversions at gunpoint in Muslim countries, and apparently wants to make missionary conversions a requirement for the US to send foreign aid. So really, this is mild stuff for him.
And yet people like you lobby against safe sex education and push abstinence-only.
You all should be executed for the numerous deaths your shitty abstinence-only programs are responsible for. You are all murderers, whether or not you realise it.
Keep bleating about HIV being a gay disease and you will change those statistics. Straight teenagers, who haven't had proper sex-ed, will think it does not concern them, and they will have unprotected sex, maybe lots of anal sex, as this will keep the "virgin" state for the girls.
But perhaps not that great a change in male statistics, as the one being penetrated is at higher risk of contracting AIDS, than the one doing the penetration.
As you pointed out advertisers purchase time on television programs because they know that what people see on television influences their behavior and influences their choices. We know from the Centers for Disease Control that 85% of the females who have been diagnosed with HIV-AIDS since the epidemic began contracted it through having sex with men or through injection drug abuse. That means that heterosexual behavior is just as risky and just as dangerous as injection drug use and we should not glamorize it anymore than we would glamorize intravenous drug use.
(Statistics from Wehpudicabok's link. Are you convinced? I'm convinced! From now on all TV shows must feature only lesbians, bisexual women in relationships with other women, and asexuals in all varieties.)
That stat is worthless as a point of comparing the risk of drug injection and male-male sex, because you don't know how much each one is contributing to said 91%. To say nothing of the risks that have nothing to do with AIDS, of which homosexual sex has much fewer than intravenous drug use (or illicit drug use in general).
When looking at all AIDS cases in which male-male sex may be a factor, it includes 75% of male cases (and 60% of all cases). (Of course, this is only true of America, where the brunt of the AIDS epidemic is borne by the gay community, due to the fact that it started there. This is not true of all AIDS affected countries). Total of 470,000 AIDS cases, 270,000 due to male-male sexual contact, with or without shared needles. Assume that 5% of population is gay (underestimate). The number of gay men with AIDS is 0.1% of the American population (300 million)and the men with AIDS is 4% of the total gay male population (estimated 7.5 million).
Even assuming all AIDS patients were gay, the reasoning is backwards because it does not look at the impact on the total gay population, thus allowing you to assess "risk". The spoiler: only 5% of the male gay community would be infected if every male AIDS patient happened to be gay. Not exactly the same level of risk that would be suggested by the totally inane "91%!!1!1!!" statistic.
"Use a fucking condom if you're having vaginal or anal sex with a male."
And if you care about your partner, use a condom when getting oral sex. There's just as much risk of giving your partner STDs that way as when you're having PIV intercourse. The giver of oral is more at risk from catching STDs than the receiver is. Swallowing fluids creates a risk for HIV.
" That means that homosexual behavior is just as risky and just as dangerous as injection drug use"
No, it means fundie-enforced fail is more dangerous than anything else. Needle exchange programs have been shown to reduce HIV transmission by 40%, yet fundies block these programs, causing people to be infected by HIV, making christianism more dangerous than homosexual drug use.
Bzzz! Wrong; you can't add two groups and say that both are just as dangerous, without stating the individual group percentage.
Sweden and the US of A combined have about 318* million citizens. That means that Sweden is just as large as the US. Or, ya know, not!
Who's glamorizing homosexuality, btw? We just accept the fact that there are homosexuals, and move on with our lives.
* Old figures from Wikipedia.
And if you care about your partner, use a condom when getting oral sex. There's just as much risk of giving your partner STDs that way as when you're having PIV intercourse.
Um...no, there isn't. The risk of transmission of most STIs via oral sex isn't zero , but it's still far, far lower than PIV or penile-anal insertive sex. Safe oral is still a good idea, but even unsafe oral isn't even on the same page as below-the-waist penetrative sex. (Yes, this means that the traditional defining gay male sex act is less likely to result in disease transmission than the act that heterosexuals have been drilling into the minds of the last few generations of gay men as the defining gay male sex act. And yes, this means that heterosexuals bear some moral responsibility for the spread of HIV among gay men due to said campaign of heterocentrist redefinition. But no, it doesn't mean that straight people are entitled to rewrite biology to cover up their own guilt.)
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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