Tuesday, December 25, 2007
AIDS isn't limited to homosexuals
From the RoundTable blog
Read the latest entries
Teresa M. Hoback
Hoback, who lives in Roanoke, is a gay rights activist and a member of the Roanoke Pride Committee.
Debbie Thurman's commentary "One true way to prevent AIDS" (Dec. 11) is nothing more than a gay-bashing, homophobic waste of paper.
Thurman wrote that World AIDS Day "enriches organizations that purport to fund useful research and effective education. It provides lip service to prevention while ignoring the failure of the most lavishly funded programs aimed at slowing the spread of the HIV retrovirus."
World AIDS Day is much more than a way to supply funds to organizations that only "appear" to fund useful research and effective education. It is much more than supplying "lip service" to programs aimed at slowing the spread of the HIV retrovirus.
World AIDS Day is a day in which people all over the world -- gay, straight and in-between -- do something constructive in an attempt to stop the deadly disease that has already claimed too many souls. It's a day of coming together for the greater good of the world's public health.
Thurman also asked "if we had forgotten where AIDS originates." I would like to educate her and others about the fact that there is no evidence to suggest gay men started the pandemic. Research does suggest that it started with a chimp infected with the simian version passing it to a man via a bite.
While Thurman was correct in saying that gay men make up the biggest percentage of those who have HIV/AIDS, it is not limited to them. This is a global problem, hence the words World AIDS Day.
She also tells us "AIDS cases soar to the stratosphere in the gay ghettos, those urban areas where most homosexuals congregate and where gay bathhouses still operate with impunity. These are also the enclaves where intravenous drug use abounds."
However, more than one-third of all AIDS deaths in the United States have occurred among injecting drug users and their sexual partners. These folks are primarily minority Americans. World Health Organization data indicates that in 1993, 80 countries reported the existence of injecting drug use, and 52 of these countries reported human immunodeficiency virus infection among intravenous drug users. In 1999, 136 countries reported injecting drug use, and 93 of these countries reported HIV infection among intravenous drug users.
In addition, drug use and HIV infection can spread rapidly within a community. Introduction of and rapid increase in injecting drug use is believed to be responsible for dramatic increases in HIV infection in some areas. Therefore, such drug use is becoming one of the primary risk factors for HIV infection.
While Thurman blames "the gay PR machine" for convincing the world that all of us are at risk, she forgets yet more vital information. About 60 percent of men and 40 percent of women will have an affair at some point in some marriage, but I guess Thurman is too blind to see that straight folk contribute to the same pandemic she wants to blame on gay men.
As for James Hartline, who claims to be persecuted by the gay community, all I can say is gay doesn't go away. You can choose abstinence or another way of life, but down deep I guarantee he is still gay just like the rest of us.
While I must agree with Thurman's comment that cutting funding to programs advocating abstinence is "medically assisted suicide," I have to add that not practicing safe sex is the same thing as playing Russian roulette. After all, it is only human nature to have sex.
Thurman reminds us, "Jesus told the adulterous woman to go and sin no more." While this is true, Jesus also reminds us repeatedly not to be judgmental, as it is not our place, and to abound in love one toward another.
With this said, can the world for once put away the blame and bring out the love and solidarity? We need to eliminate this global deadly disease that all walks of life have enabled.
