In my previous post I took issue with all culties being anti-gay. I should learn to read the entire post.
Lee, you are correct about homosexuals being born gay or predisposed to becoming gay at some point in life. Most gay people will tell you they did not choose to be gay. But to say choosing to be gay is like choosing to be a leper is nonsense.
Comparing sexual orientation to a disease is wrong .
The aids issue being a result of promiscuity is not accurate. Promiscuity among persons of the same sex may increase the chances of contracting the aids virus, but a first time sex act with someone of the opposite sex can also lead to contracting aids.
Yes, safe sex is a good idea as most people would agree.
Heterosexual people are promiscuous and contract aids. Does that also upset you? I sense a wee bit of an anti-gay tone in your post. Tell me if I'm wrong.
Comparing a sexual orientation to a disease is not WRONG, but it can be inaccurate. In my case it was not.
My comparison of homosexuality to leprosy was in regards to how society treats lepers and how it treats gays. My point was that just as no one would choose to be a leper, neither would anyone choose to be gay. If being gay were a choice, then wouldn't it make more sense to choose not to be gay than to stay "in the closet" about it?
What I said about AIDS being a matter of promiscuity IS accurate. You can't catch it from a toilet seat, a handshake, or a hug. It is a fragile virus that does not persist in the environment. The only way that it can be contracted is through the transmission of bodily fluids. Now that transmission can take the form of a blood transfusion, or through IV drug users sharing needles, or it can be the result of sex.
The risks of contracting it from a blood transfusion are minimal because blood banks test their supply religiously. It can happen of course, but it is highly unlikely. Being an IV drug user is a giant dose of FAIL, a pass/fail IQ test, loserville. For normal people, this leaves sex as the only likely means of transmission.
But even with sexual activity, the risk of transmission is not 100%. Males are far more likely to pass it onto a female than the other way around. With condoms, the risk drops enormously.
Unfortunately for gays, anal sex is far more likely to result in the virus being transmitted due to the abrasion and bruising that this act creates. Break the skin and toss a little HIV infested semen on it, and voila you've got a new patient on your hands! But even then condoms are an effective preventative measure. Unfortunately there has been a recent trend away from condom use by gay men. They even have a name for this shift: the barebacking movement. When half your potential sexual partners are HIV positive, having sex without a condom is a game of Russian roulette. I cannot fathom why anyone would do this. If half the women I met were infected, I'd stay home and masturbate for the rest of my life.
Were more people monogamous instead of promiscuous, the transmission of HIV though sex would slow to a crawl, and the disease would be essentially contained. This is especially true of gay men, for whom this disease is still a plague almost 30 years after it first arrived on the scene. You would still have the problem of HIV being spread through shared needles of course, but that can be improved by simply making needles more readily available. Needle exchange programs don't make people into junkies, but they can sure help prevent junkies from spreading AIDS. Contaminated needles can also be sterilized by soaking them in bleach, provided that the bleach solution is passed through the needle itself. This also helps protect against Hepatitis-C, which is the other major plague for IV drug users. Sadly the junkies most likely to get infected are the ones least likely to possess the lucidity to do this consistently.
It all comes down to personal responsibility and making wise choices. I've known several gay couples who were in a committed relationship. Neither partner was HIV positive and neither was concerned about contracting the virus. They didn't have to be because they weren't doing anything that would put them at risk. They only had sex with each other and as long as they remained monogamous they had nothing to fear. Just being gay doesn't make someone more susceptible to the virus, but being promiscuous sure as hell does.
This is a big part of why I support gay marriage. If the ability to get legally married will help gay men to settle down and stop chasing cock, then by all means do it. Of course one does not need the state to certify a relationship in order to be sexually responsible, but if it will help some people to do this, then I'm all for it, even if it only saves one life.
None of what I'm saying here is any secret, nor should it come as any sort of a surprise to you. Look around yourself, pay attention, find the cause-and-effect relationship between actions and consequences. They aren't hard to spot.
As for whether I'm anti-gay, I'm not. But neither do I see being anti-gay as a moral failing. I'm not a leftist so I don't worship at the altar of political correctness and moral relativism. I'm not caught up in the craze to canonize gay people and praise their culture. I judge people based upon their character and the choices they make, and sexual orientation is not a choice. But what someone DOES as a result of that orientation is a choice. Being gay does not mean that someone has to make bad choices. Neither does it require them to be of low character. One can be gay and act with responsibility, honor and integrity, both inside the bedroom and out.
Like I told someone else, I don't have a "button" on homosexuality. Just because I don't like Opera music doesn't mean I would deny others the right to enjoy it. The same is true of sex. What I like does not have to be what anyone else likes, and vice versa. But I do want people to make good choices about what they do, and avoid putting themselves and others in harm's way. And I most certainly reserve the right to disapprove of bad choices. Being "non-judgmental" is not a moral virtue, but an act of cowardice. In the case of STDs, making good choices means being monogamous. If someone can't be monogamous, then they should be careful and practice safe sex. Short of this they're being profoundly stupid, putting themselves and others at risk, and should be taken to task for it. Gay or straight makes no difference.