LGBT training in the schools

Michael Smith writes:  “I found the recent article about Iowa Safe Schools, the gay advocacy group disguised as an anti-bullying resource, to be intriguingly disturbing. This group has been teaching Humbolt, Iowa middle school students about homosexual relationships and anal sex under the watchful eye of government school administrators – and without the knowledge or approval of parents. According to the article in the Daily Caller, when approached with concerns of parents about such an agenda, “Nate Monson, executive director of Iowa Safe Schools, said parents who worry about middle school kids hearing about anal sex with strap-ons and analingus are ‘disgusting.’”

I’ve been watching with interest the recent SCOTUS ruling on same-sex unions and the very recent decision by the Boy Scouts of America to drop all prohibitions of homosexual scout leaders. I’ve noticed a pattern that develops as a social deviancy is mainstreamed. While it is true that the existence of homosexuality is a historical fact, it is also a fact that members of this group are a distinct minority and their behavior has been viewed as a deviant behavior for almost the entirety of the two centuries of America’s existence.

I am confident my observations are unoriginal – and my views are based on a premise that America is being subjected to a particular form of progressive ideology that demands individuals submit to the cognitive dissonance of the two mutually exclusive concepts that libertine behaviors are to be promoted yet regulated at the same time. I have deduced 6 laws from these observations:

In any given progressive-libertine societal system:

1. Deviant minorities will tend to erroneously define the majority’s tolerance of a specific deviancy as acceptance of the entire minority and/or a specific deviancy.

2. Majorities rarely unconditionally accept deviancy, but they do allow it.

3. The fallacious assumption that allowance constitutes acceptance of the entire minority and/or a specific deviancy leads to an equally fallacious assumption that such allowance mandates active celebration of the deviancy by the majority.

4. When a previously forbidden deviancy is allowed, the aggrieved minority will not treat it as with a passive acknowledgement of equality, it will be expressed as overt promotion of that particular deviancy.

5. Minorities are generally incapable of accepting equality as a contemporary status, they believe reparations and/or retribution for past prohibitions of the aforementioned deviant must be co-equal with the new “equality”.

6. When the deviant minority is challenged, they exhibit transference of guilt and responsibility by accusing the majority of equal or greater sins for retaining any opposition to the allowed deviancy.

For clarity, I do not use the words minority, deviant and deviancy as pejoratives, rather to describe aspects of society that are numerically small and distinctly different from the prevailing social mores of the majority.

LGBT activists have assured that the entertainment industry and government schools have moved quickly from allowance to acceptance to promotion of gay lifestyles, seeking to mainstream behaviors of an admittedly extremely small minority population. With the SCOTUS decision, the pattern is evident as they seek to do the same with commercial and religious activities. One wonders how soon the Boy Scouts will have a Gay Pride badge and what the requirements will be to get it.”

A new meaning for “social media”

The internet is allowing more hookups for sex. The appearance of Craigslist in a given region was associated with a 15.9% increase in HIV incidence. More than 6,000 new cases of HIV infection could likely be attributed to the site each year. Most are for young gay and bisexual men, especially minorities. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2035585

Indiana isn’t targeting gays. Liberals are targeting religion.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-new-intolerance-1427760183

The Indiana law is a version of the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) that passed 97-3 in the Senate and that Bill Clinton signed in 1993. Both the federal and Indiana laws require courts to administer a balancing test when reviewing cases that implicate the free exercise of religion. . .

The federal RFRA followed the Supreme Court’s Employment Division v. Smith ruling in 1990 that abandoned its 30-year precedent of reviewing religious liberty cases under strict scrutiny. Congress responded with RFRA, which merely reasserted longstanding First Amendment protections.

In 1997 the Supreme Court limited RFRA’s scope to federal actions. So 19 states including such cultural backwaters as Connecticut, Rhode Island and Illinois followed with copy-cat legislation, and Indiana is the 20th. Courts in 11 states have extended equally vigorous protections.

As I noted earlier. . . this is political, it’s about the 2016 election and having a “gotcha” question for Republicans, because the Democrats have NOTHING except sex.

Gay sex and syphilis

After being on the verge of elimination in 2000 in the United States, syphilis cases have rebounded. Rates of primary and secondary syphilis continued to increase overall during 2005–2013; although rates stabilized during 2009–2010, rates have increased since 2011. Increases have occurred primarily among men, and particularly among MSM [men who have sex with men], who contributed the vast majority of male primary and secondary syphilis cases during 2009–2012.

http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6318a4.htm?s_cid=mm6318a4_w

Black men not telling their ladies the truth

By race, age and risk group, young, black gay and bisexual men (ages 13-29) are the only population in the United States in which new HIV infections increased between 2006 and 2009.

Take a look at this chart of subpopulations.  Notice anything strange?

Although only 2%  of the population, black gay and bisexual men have 61% of the new infections; but black heterosexual women  have more infections (5400) than white heterosexual women (1700)—and although I’m sure there is plenty of cross-racial sex, the majority is within same race relationships. Black men are not telling black women the truth.  If they can’t be honest about their sexuality, why should they expect everyone else to change their views?

The HIV infection rate among African Americans was almost eight times as high as that of whites in 2009, and among African American women it was 15 times higher than among white women.

Also, transgender individuals are heavily affected by HIV. A 2008 review of studies of HIV among male-to-female women found that, on average, 28 percent (from 11% to 78%)  tested positive for HIV. So do these women push up the stats of heterosexual women with HIV?

http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/policies/hip.html

Who is homophobic? Society or the gay men.

Men who have sex with men is the primary way HIV/AIDS is spread.  Although less than 14% of the population, blacks (men and women) have 44% of the new infections.  New HIV infections among 13-24 year olds increased 22% from 2008 to 2010, and half of those were African American.  If the gay black or bi-sexual man is afraid to go to the doctor/clinic and continues to risk his life and the lives of the men and women he is having sex with, then who is being homophobic?  The black man with the disease, that’s who.  That excuse might have been good 20-30 years ago, but not in 2013.   Stop blaming others in society for their unwillingness to be healthy, chaste and faithful to their partners.  If they don’t think enough of themselves and their boyfriends or casual sex partners, why is the CDC (the government) expecting others to? The increase from 2008 to 2010 shows young men are being careless with the hard earned truths of the 70s and 80s.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/newsroom/docs/HIVFactSheets/TodaysEpidemic-508.pdf

HIV Infections and ART

Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men (MSM) represent approximately 2% of the US population, yet are the population most severely affected by HIV.

• In 2009, (men who have sex with men) MSM accounted for 61% of new HIV infections in the US and 79% of infections among all newly infected men. Compared with other groups, MSM accounted for the largest numbers of new HIV infections in 2009.
• Among all MSM, white MSM accounted for 11,400 (39%) new HIV infections in 2009. The largest number of new infections (3,400) occurred in those aged 40–49.
• Among all MSM, black/African American MSM accounted for 10,800 (37%) new HIV infections in 2009. Whereas new HIV infections were relatively stable among MSM overall from 2006–2009, they increased 34% among young MSM—an increase largely due to a 48% increase among young black/African American MSM aged 13–29.
• Among all MSM, Hispanic/Latino MSM accounted for 6,000 (20%) new HIV infections in 2009. The largest percentage of new infections (45%) occurred in those aged 13–29.

I’ve looked through the guidelines given to doctors to combat HIV/AIDs in gay men.  They include counseling for condoms, screening and treatment for other sexually transmitted diseases, hepatitis vaccine, and PrEP, short for Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, the combination medication tenofovir disoproxil fumarate plus emtricitabine (TDF/FTC).   PrEP was approved in July, 2012 and treatment costs about $14,000 a year, requires constant monitoring, and absolute adherence to the drug regimen. Giving it to uninfected people who don’t have HIV might prevent those already infected from receiving it. 

In the guidelines I saw nothing about chastity or celibacy, the only two methods which are 100% effective in combating HIV and have no toxic side effects.

Leaving the church because of sex

A blogger I’ve  known only through our shared cyber-space as librarians on discussion lists and as bloggers mentioned at his blog that he has moved over to an Anglican church from the Catholic church due to the Roman Catholic’s position on women clergy, on marriage of gays, and the sexual abuse scandals.

That’s putting a lot of stock into current cultural beliefs in the face of 2,000 years of church history and teaching, plus all the Hebrew/Jewish traditions that came before that.  In fact, it flies in the face of the history of the human race and all religions, not just Catholicism.  There’s virtually no mention of homosexuality in the Old Testament except in veiled references to temple practices of other religions which the Jews were supposed to avoid at all costs.  But dalliances with young men and male temple prostitutes were certainly well known and even accepted in Greek and Roman cultures.  Gracious!  Have you seen some of those murals in collapsing ancient buildings? The Greeks and Romans lived in sex saturated times, male, female, animal, child, multiples—made no difference (if we can believe their art and literature, and why shouldn’t we?). They probably inherited profligate and perverted sex from the civilizations who came before them.  God chose the Jews for a reason—they were the only ones, even in sin who seemed to really get the story of creation. 

That said, even with trips to the temple for sex with young, beautiful temple prostitutes, male and female, when it came to building blocks for the society, it was marriage between a male and female.  Yes, some engaged in polygamy, or polyandry, some had mistresses and concubines and some men may have preferred a male concubine, but the state/monarchy/emperor or tribal elder recognized the marriage.  There was a distant memory and command in the mind of all cultures.

As for women priests, show me a church that is growing under female leadership.  Sure, maybe you support it, but have you joined one?  Have you encouraged your call committee in that direction?  Even men who claim to be “feminists” don’t like sitting under the authority of a woman, often not at work, but certainly not at the church.  They’ll never admit it, but quietly, the numbers begin to drop.

Child abuse?  The Roman Catholic church is a huge target; and it’s rich.  Why sue a school system where the abusers, at least until recently, are just passed from school to school, protected by their unions?  We’re just beginning to hear how many female teachers are predators as the stories are leaked to the papers.  How many Protestant clergy have been caught with their hand in the . . . well, and just quietly moved on to the next small church thinking the problem will go away if we just warn him.  Although many young girls have certainly been molested at the hands of clergy, teachers, babysitters, etc., the number of boys and gay men involved is way out of their proportion (1.5%) in the general population.

But this particular librarian who has left the church, who became a convert to Catholicism and took all the instruction in 1992, now thinks that the profound spiritual wisdom of the 20th and 21st centuries exceeds that of the church he committed himself to just 20 years ago and in which he agreed to raise his children and be faithful to his wife (who has remained Catholic).

Imagine all the stuff a Protestant is exposed to in RCIA which must completely have baffled him—like 7 sacraments, or the teaching about the perpetual virginity of Mary, or all the stages to go through to become a saint, or all the special holidays, seasons and observances he’d never heard of.  Think about undoing all the teaching Christians hear in Baptist or Lutheran or Nazarene churches about evil, unscriptural Catholicism.  That’s a huge leap for gay marriage and the ordination of women priests!

And  he threw it all over for a fad, fable and fantasy.  I’m not a Catholic, but it appears he wasn’t either.

Safer sex vs. safe sex

I noticed in the JAMA article about topics doctors need to cover to prepare for barriers that LGBT patients face, safer sex was on the list. Wasn't familiar with that, so I googled it.

It's another term in our ever changing lexicon. It is now used instead of "safe sex."

"When people speak of "safe sex" today, they are referring to abstinence. Abstaining from sex and sexual play is the only sure method to avoid catching an STD and to prevent an unplanned pregnancy. Although it may not prevent a pregnancy, having sex within a committed, monogamous, long-term relationship with someone who has tested free of any STDs is also generally considered to be safe sex."

Actually, because an inflected comparative such as "safer" or "handsomer" or "brighter," would mean "more than safe," or handsome or bright, the term "safer sex" to mean something less safe than no sex (abstinence), really makes no sense at all. This might be difficult to understand for a non-native speaker--or even a native speaker!

There is no Gay Teen Suicide Epidemic

This morning in a class at church a retired teacher commented on the gay teen suicide epidemic. I told her there were no statistics to back up this claim that gay teens are bullied and then commit suicide. "Oh yes," she said, "I've attended workshops on this." Now that I believe. However, the so called statistics are urban legends and are from a jumble of bad information. This was disproved 8 or 9 years ago. Ritch Savin-Williams says gay teens are just as psychologically healthy as other teens and just as resilient.

Just like the phony "death by abortion" statistics we got in the 1960s, these are politically based and biased for a different agenda. Even one suicide, for what ever reason, is too many, but there is no gay teen suicide epidemic. As a demographic, gay men and women are very successful, the best educated and highest paid group in our society. I suspect that as teens they were rather resilient, smart and brave. . . maybe more so than other groups. Also, they do their share of bullying, of each other, and straight teens.

Do you know what is killing and maiming teen-agers at an alarming rate? Automobile accidents and sports injuries. Each Year over 5,000 teens ages 16 to 20 die due to fatal injuries caused by car accidents. About 400,000 drivers age 16 to 20 will be seriously injured. These are not urban legends--these are reportable, verifiable statistics, plus they are deaths that in many cases could be prevented if we had the collective guts to raise the driving age to 18! Snowmobiling, with speeds of 90 miles per hour and vehicle weights of more than 600 lbs., causes 200 deaths and 14,000 accidents yearly. And school buses? In 2002, 26 children ages 14 and under were killed, and in 2001 an estimated 4,500 were injured in school bus-related incidents. More than 40 percent of these deaths were child pedestrians.

What about dog bites? From 1979 to 1996, 304 people in the USA died from dog attacks and 30 in 2009 alone. How does that compare to deaths by suicide caused by bullying--a statistic that just doesn't exist?

How do you know a gay teen doesn't commit suicide from unrequited love--just like straight teens--he is madly in love with someone who rejects him. Because of his youth and inexperience, life seems without value and meaning. If he was teased or bullied on Tuesday and commits suicide on Thursday after a text message from his boyfriend who is dumping him, is it the bullying, the boyfriend, or his own insecurities?

Is There a Gay Teen Suicide Epidemic? | Homosexuality, Lesbian & Gay Teen Suicide, Sexual Orientation | LiveScience

Good writing of dirty stories?

I think I'll pass.

Samuel Steward [OSU alum] became a tattoo artist, a gay porn writer, a researcher with Alfred Kinsey on his landmark sex project, a friend of Gertrude Stein and other modernist writers, and the lover of Rudolph Valentino, Thornton Wilder, and Rock Hudson, to name just a few."

No, considering the amount of disease and grief that promiscuous gay sex has brought to modern life, I don't think I'll attend Justin Spring's lecture.

Wexner Center for the Arts: Public Programs - Writer's Reading / Justin Spring on / In Search of Samuel Steward: Rediscovering an OSU Professor Turned Sexual Revolutionary

From PW publicity at Amazon.com: "Life in the closet proves boisterous indeed in this biography of an iconic figure of the pre-Stonewall gay demimonde. Steward (1909–1993) was an English professor, a novelist who wrote both well-received literary fiction and gay porn, a confidant of Gertrude Stein and Thornton Wilder, a furtive but exuberant erotic adventurer whose taste for sailors, rough trade, and violent sadomasochism endeared him to sex researcher Alfred Kinsey; later in life, he became Phil Sparrow, official tattoo artist of the Oakland, Calif., Hell's Angels. Spring (Paul Cadmus) fleshes out this colorful story by quoting copiously from his subject's highly literate journals and sex diaries—his Stud File contained entries on trysts with everyone from Rudolph Valentino to Rock Hudson—which afford an unabashed account of Steward's erotic picaresque and the yearnings that drove it. (His swerve from academia into tattooing, with its mix of physical pain and proximity to nubile male flesh, was essentially a fetish turned into a business.) Spring's sympathetic and entertaining story of a life registers the limitations imposed on homosexuals by a repressive society, but also celebrates the creativity and daring with which Steward tested them."

4150 OSU students

That doesn't seem like a very high number--on a campus of 50,000+. The weasel word is "chose." I'm guessing several thousand were either busy working, studying or didn't have the opportunity.

OSU now has a fund to provide $500 for a student who has experienced sexual assault or "intimate partner violence." This is to cover things like broken stuff, cell phone with prepaid minutes, emergency housing, help in breaking a lease, court costs, etc. This supplements other funds and insurance for students in distress. "Any OSU student who has alleged to a university official that they have experienced sexual violence can apply for assistance. A police report is not necessary in order to access the funds." Hmmm. There is a list of people--university staff and officials--who are consulted. If the student didn't report anything to the police, does the official have to? Wonder if the parents get to know too? And if he/she returns to the abusive one, do they get a second request for funds?

The Sexual Wellness Program at the Ohio State Student Wellness Center is devoted to promoting safer sex and healthy relationships. This program is home to The Condom Club, which offers condoms to OSU students at an extremely low cost--50 condoms for $5.00 and also access to free oral dams, latex gloves, finger cots and lubricant. Must be going after the GLBT group. And because 44% of the couples who use condoms do so incorrectly, The Center has volunteers called "sexperts" to help with this problem.

I worked with hundreds of student employees over my career at OSU (and U of I)--it was the small town and rural stock that worked the hardest and had the best values. Asian and Indian students were also outstanding, if you could keep them before a higher tech unit snatched them up. 99% were serious about their education and didn't party on week-ends or sleep around. When they graduated, many started at more than I made, but librarianship has always been at the bottom.

Do you suppose there was this much assault, violence, STDs, and abortions for college men and women back in the bad old days of the 40s and 50s when women had hours, didn't share dorms or apartments with men and the doors were locked at an appointed hour? Sometimes fences are more useful than ambulances.

Taken any tests lately?

Like HIV? Me either. At least, not that I know of. But apparently, according to CDC Guidelines health-care providers (i.e. doctors) should routinely screen all patients aged 13-64 years for HIV. I'm not sure about those of Medicare age--maybe we're too old to count and they like to bump us off the rolls, or we're staying out of bath houses and not shooting up. Here are the risk factors for HIV:

A man having sex with another man even just one time.

Taking street drugs by needle even one time.

Trading sex for money or drugs even one time.

Sex, even one time, with someone who would answer yes to any of the above.

You have hemophilia and have received clotting factor concentrations.

According to a report in JAMA (CDC/MMWR) Nov 5, 77% of persons with HIV risk factors were not tested in the preceding 12 months, and the recommendation for them is an annual test. However, 40% of the general population has been tested. 60.7% of pregnant women were tested for HIV in 2006 (lower than other infectious disease). In 2006, non-Hispanic blacks accounted for 49% of all reported cases of HIV/AIDS, and the HIV prevalence among non-Hispanic blacks was 2.1% compared with 0.4% in the over all U.S. population. (I'd cite the sources, but they aren't printed with the article which is really dumb.) Depending on how often you go to the doctor for allergies or the flu, you might be tested multiple times, and someone else scoring BINGO on all the risk factors, is never screened. Something's very wrong here. They can't keep track of the MSM who are doing all sorts of disgusting things with body parts, so they decide to test everyone? And they still can't get the gay and bisexual guys to come in for screening by changing the rules? These tests must be awfully cheap.

They don't need to have you sign anything or give you anything in writing either. Here's the rules.

Here's the take from the ACLU.

If you've gotten a 3 page list of "services provided" for the last time you were in the hospital, here's the coding guidelines.

These guidelines from 2006 were part of Bush's Domestic HIV Initiative. (Approximately $18.9 billion (83%) of the FY 2007 HIV/AIDS request was for domestic programs; $3.9 billion (17%) for global programs. Only 4% was for prevention, however. Here) The CDC allocated funds to: 23 jurisdictions in clinical settings; 67 grantees in 25 states through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration; 41 family planning clinics grantees in 34 states through the Office of Population Affairs. And the funds were allocated primarily to test blacks. Of course, testing isn't research or treatment or behavior change--it's just to figure out if they have successful strategies in place to overcome barriers to--testing.

Test product

This is the only article I found on the cost effectiveness of testing the entire population. And obviously, if it's your life, or that of someone you love, you think the cost is worth it.

The low down on the uptick in AIDS

The newest JAMA isn’t available to me yet, but for the typical New York Times hysterical editorializing of health information news, see yesterday’s paper. I read about the "big government cover up" (subtext: it’s all Bush’s fault) story at the coffee shop this morning.

Opening paragraph: “The AIDs epidemic in the U.S. is about 40% worse than the government has reported.”

First of all, there is no epidemic in the U.S. AIDs or HIV affect a tiny percentage of the population--mostly promiscuous, young, risk-taking gay men and IV drug users. Studies as early as 15 years ago in public health journals showed that after all the valiant efforts of the gay community to clean up their behavior or die (and many of them did both), the younger gay men rushed right back to the bath houses and sex without condoms once the drug cocktails became effective in extending their lives, but they also spread the disease and picked up other STDs which lowered their resistance. You don’t find out the role of gay men in this story until about paragraph 15 (53% of new infections are in young gay men, an extremely small demographic).

Second, you find out if you read far enough, more accurate measures account for the increase changing the results and numbers. There’s no government plot folks, move along. The CDC, which did the most recent study and all the previous studies, IS THE GOVERNMENT (think FEMA with a little black bag and clip boards) .

Third, the author of the NYT article attempts to hint at a conspiracy to keep this quiet because 2 peer review journals returned it when it came out in October 2007. That’s not the least bit unusual--I used to be a peer reviewer. Often they are sent back because the statistics or procedures are not clearly explained, they exceed the word limit, the citations are incorrect, or the data false or misleading. The redo improves the piece. That JAMA will report it is also not unusual--its editorial policies are about as liberal as the NYT. It was embargoed so it could be presented at a conference, but someone violated that--all in the public’s best interest, of course (sarcasm alert).

Fourth, in true NYT fashion, President Bush is faulted for the billions spent on AIDS in foreign countries, rather than attacking the epidemic at home. The guy just can't win.

Fifth, here’s the best line in the article. Someone in CDC is quoted as saying “We’re not effectively reaching men who have sex with men and African Americans to lower their risk.” Yeah, like no gay man knows that gay bars and bath houses and downlow (closeted homosexual) with the ladies is risky behavior. And I just know that gay teens and 20-somethings would most certainly stop having sex if CDC just put out enough posters, TV ads and brochures. Just the way the government has successfully controlled smoking and obesity.