Silence Equals Death

The Center for Disease Control and the American Medical Association issued a recommendation today that all Americans between the ages of 13 and 64 should be routinely tested for HIV to help stop the spread of the deadly virus.

The recommendation exposes a fact that the Christian right doesn't want you to know, and carefully evades when proselytizing against same-sex marriage: HIV is no longer a "gay" disease in the United States.

The incidence of HIV infection remains highest among men who have sex with men and among drug users, to be sure. But the greatest increase in HIV infection is among straight, sexually active young folks and African-American women of all ages.

And that is what the Christian right wants to keep hidden.

The fact that HIV/AIDS is no longer a "gay" disease should come as no surprise. Globally, HIV/AIDS has always been a predominantly "straight" disease, simply because there are a lot more straights than gays and lesbians.

HIV/AIDS became a "gay" disease in the United States by epidemiological accident -- the disease was carried into the United States, through Canada, by a gay flight attendant who used the baths for sex, and the disease spread quickly into the gay communities in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and other metropolitan areas through that vector.

It is, of course, politically inconvenient for the Christian right to characterize HIV/AIDS as a "human" disease, because the Christian right depends on using HIV/AIDS as a means of convincing straight folks that gays and lesbians live a "dangerous lifestyle".

But the Christian right, by characterizing HIV/AIDS as a "gay" disease, has, in fact, helped spread the disease. Few straights believe that they are at risk, because the facts about HIV/AIDS have been obscured for political convenience. The role of African-American churches has been particularly marked in this respect, because churches have, historically, been a critical source of information within the African-American community.

Silence equals death.

Things are going to get ugly ...

James Dobson's Focus on the Family has entered the Wisconsin battleground over our amendment to ban same-sex marriage and civil unions.

FocFam filed papers with the state Elections Board last week to create a referendum committee. The filing will allow it to dump money by the bucketful into the fight in Wisconsin.

I'm not surprised. Polls show that the vote will be close, and FocFam and its conservative Christian allies cannot bear the thought of losing.

So things are going to get ugly, if FocFam's performance in other states is any indication. FocFam has a long history of flooding the airwaves with nasty, negative ads right before an election.

Meanwhile, gays and lesbians will continue to work at the "ground up" campaign we've been waging for months now, and we'll see what happens, I guess.

An interesting sidelight is that Mike Muscanero of Baraboo is listed as Focus on the Family's committee treasurer in Wisconsin.

Muscanero is a master of misdirection, if his letters to the editor at the Baraboo News-Republic are any indication. Mike is pushing the view that forcing gay and lesbian couples to raise families outside of marriage will somehow solve the wreckage of straight divorce.

For example, this is from the letter "Vote for the Marriage Amendment and our Future": "Divorce became easy and our divorce rate has increased steadily since then. We now can see that {not all} but most children from homes without a mother and father are the biggest challenge our society has. ... Our juvenile court system has exploded, and of course we can't build prisons fast enough to handle the result ... It used to be that families were net contributors to society, the building blocks for the future, mothers, fathers, children, grandchildren, extended family, this type of marriage is not only American, and Judeo Christian, but it is also natural. Should we mess with "mother nature"?" Leaving aside from Mike's unfortunate flirtation with neo-paganism, note how quickly Mike slides away from the problem -- divorce -- and to the "solution" -- keeping gays and lesbians from getting married.

Mike, in an earlier letter, "Who are the Real Victims of Gay Marriage Amendment". echoed the now-standard Christian right line that Christians are "victims" of homosexuals, saying: "The majority never asked for this, it is being forced on them, they are victims." and "The majority did not ask for these changes. So who is being victimized?"

Mike is big on suggesting that same-sex marriage will lead to man-boy marriages -- he's mentioned that link in at least two letters now -- and Mike also suggested, at one point, that gays and lesbians should leave Wisconsin.

As I said, it is going to get ugly. Real ugly.