‘Homophobic’ gay blood ban risks lives

Gay rights advocates have called on the Australian Red Cross Blood Service and Government to remove restrictions on gay men donating blood, describing the Red Cross policy as homophobic and discriminatory.

At present, the Red Cross ‘defers’ blood donations from men who have had sex with men in the past 12 months, effectively barring donations from sexually active gay men.

In 2012, a proposal by an independent expert committee convened by the Red Cross advocated easing the restriction on blood donations from 12 months to six months, and though this advice is yet to be acted on by the Red Cross, gay rights campaigners have criticised the proposal for perpetuating misleading stereotypes of HIV risk among gay men.

Michael Cain, the unsuccessful complainant in a landmark 2008 case that saw gay blood deferral brought before the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Tribunal, said reducing the deferral period to six months would merely be a cosmetic change to discriminatory practices.

“It will mean the overwhelming majority of gay men who, like me, have safe blood to donate and are still banned from donating … Gay men will continue to be stigmatised as a threat to public health, and the Australian blood supply will continue to stay only a day or two ahead of demand.”

The Australian Red Cross aims to have six days’ worth of supply of all blood types, and at present the blood supply of the universal blood type O-negative is running low with the blood bank currently possessing only three days’ supply of it.

Matthew Ng, committee member on the LGBT Catholic Ministry Acceptance Sydney, said the Red Cross has a responsibility to increase the total number of Australians donating blood from current levels of 600,000 by removing the ban on gay blood donations.

“Only one in 30 Australians donate blood, but one in three will need blood. As people grow more accepting of the LGBT community, more people will come out and won’t be able to donate blood, making the problem worse.

UNSW Arts/Law student, Sean, 20, agreed. “On one hand, it promotes a really homophobic view, being wrapped up in ideas of purity, and of gay men being impure. But on the other hand, it’s actually costing lives. Straight people are dying because gay men can’t give blood. So even homophobic straight people should wake up to themselves and realise that having a gay man’s blood in them won’t kill them — in fact, not having it will.”

This view was shared by Rodney Croome, spokesperson for the Tasmanian Gay Men Rights Group and researcher on Michael Cain’s case against the Red Cross.

“The gay blood donation ban has two consequences. It means gay men are stigmatised in public health, and it means that there’s less safe blood available for the public. The Australian Government needs to take a stronger position on this issue and insist that the Red Cross adopt a policy that is more appropriate.”

However, according to Jennifer Williams, Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Red Cross Blood Service, the risk of HIV infection among gay men is significantly higher than for heterosexuals, claiming that even in monogamous relationships between men, one partner may cheat on the other, increasing the risk of HIV transmission.

“The risk of acquiring HIV is up to 300 times higher for gay men than for people in a heterosexual relationship. In 2009, 90 per cent of newly diagnosed cases of HIV infection in Australia involved men who reported sexual contact with men,” Williams argued in an article published online by the ABC.

Croome contested this viewpoint as being patently prejudicial, noting the use of similar arguments by Red Cross lawyers in Cain’s 2008 anti-discrimination case, which were rejected by the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination Tribunal at the time.

“I’m usually judicious about the use of the word ‘homophobic’, but the Red Cross put forward a number of homophobic arguments, arguing that gay monogamy is a myth, and exaggerating the risk of HIV infection associated with gay sex.

“And the tribunal threw all those discriminatory and prejudicial claims out, saying it had good evidence that the risk of HIV infection associated with men in monogamous relations is less than the Red Cross claims,” Croome said.

Australian Red Cross media manager, Kathy Bowlen, argued otherwise, stating that the independent review commissioned by the Red Cross had recommended that “removing the deferral for men who have sex with men in monogamous relationships would introduce an unacceptable risk to the ongoing safety of the blood supply.”

UNSW student Sean said this recommendation is still rooted in discrimination between heterosexual sex and sex between men.

“It seems to me the risk factor would be unsafe sex, regardless of who you are and who you’re sleeping with — not who you’re sleeping with.”

Croome agreed. “The gender of a sex partner is irrelevant to the safety of blood. What is relevant is the safety of sexual activity. That’s what creates a risk, and that’s what the Red Cross should screen  for.”

Under the existing Red Cross policy, heterosexual men who have sex with multiple partners without the use of contraception are eligible to donate blood. By comparison, gay men who engage in protected oral sex with monogamous partners are immediately excluded from donating blood.

“The Red Cross should revise their policy to one that is based upon medical evidence of the causes of HIV transmission, and which applies consistently to everyone regardless of their sex, sexual orientation, or gender,” Sean said.

Micheal Do, raconteur and Art History/Law student at UNSW, agreed. “Given the current state of medical research, I don’t understand why this discriminatory practice rooted in homophobic and bigoted assumptions about homosexuality still exists.”

Jarron Rapley, 21, echoed this viewpoint, stating that while it is important the Red Cross maintains stringent testing standards in regard to blood donations, excluding sexually active gay men from donating is an archaic policy.

“The simple fact is that every time a gay man is denied the right to donate, a patient is denied a potentially life-saving blood transfusion.”

According to Matthew Ng, the deferral on blood donations is stigmatising and damaging for gay men.

“We’re being excluded from being part of the community,” Ng said. “And I already feel slightly less valued than the entire community, so this is just something that doesn’t make sense to me.”

Worldwide, 36 countries currently have a deferral or complete ban on accepting blood donations from men who have sex with men. In the United States, Canada and much of Europe, sexually active gay men cannot donate blood at all, while in the United Kingdom, a one year deferral is in place.

 Ammy Singh  -http://tharunka.arc.unsw.edu.au/homophobic-gay-blood-ban-risks-lives/

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UK female tourist suffers 14hr rape

A British woman was repeatedly raped at gunpoint at the Long Tom Pass in the Drakensberg Mountains, KZN during a savage 14-hour ordeal after she and her boyfriend were kidnapped at a South African beauty spot.

Now she faces a nightmare wait to see if she has been infected with HIV in a country where Aids is rife. The couple were blindfolded and bundled into their car by four (black) thugs and driven for 200 miles.
The only stops were when the gang visited illegal drinking dens (‘shebeens”) and when the 29-year-old woman was raped.

As the attackers got more drunk, they invited other drinkers from shanty town shebeens to come and taunt their two white victims trussed up in the back of the vehicle.

The men grew increasingly violent as the night wore on, stabbing the 26-year-old South African boyfriend in the leg and beating him repeatedly. The couple were told that they would be driven over the border to Mozambique and their bodies dumped.

“They escaped only because their attackers lost control of the car and it overturned. The tourists scrambled out of the wreckage and fled.

PASSING MOTORIST SHOT DEAD, PASSENGER WOUNDED:

A passing motorist, who stopped to help after seeing the crash, was shot dead and his passenger wounded as the attackers tried to steal their car.

The rape victim, from Gloucestershire, has told friends she feels she is under ‘a death sentence’ from Aids. She has been prescribed anti-Aids drugs. But it will be months before doctors can say if she has been infected.

The Foreign Office said yesterday it was reviewing advice to visitors to South Africa, and especially Mpumalanga province where the rape happened and where a British woman was shot dead in a robbery last month. The rape victim arrived in South Africa two weeks ago for a three-month visit.

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Medical consequences of homosexualism

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‘Puzzling’ that UK still pushing morning-after pill despite rise in STDs says study author

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NOTTINGHAM, UK, February 8, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – It is “puzzling” that government policy makers are still pushing the morning-after pill (MAP) on young people, when it has done absolutely nothing to reduce teen pregnancies, Professor David Paton told LifeSiteNews.com today. In fact, he said, the MAP project seems to be making the situation worse by increasing teen rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

Paton is Chairman of Industrial Economics at Nottingham University Business School and the co-author of a study published last week in the Journal of Health Economics, that showed a correlation between increased availability of MAP among young people and a significant jump in rates of sexually transmitted diseases.

Under government schemes, the morning-after pill, often called “emergency contraception” despite its proven abortifacient effect, is given free to girls as young as sixteen, often without parents’ knowledge or consent.

Paton told LSN that a lot of research has been done on the effects of widespread use of MAP and the results have been “remarkably consistent.” He said, “Schools are doing this, perhaps without being aware that the evidence is that youngsters in their schools will get pregnant at an early age and it will increase sexually transmitted diseases.”

The same conclusions have been made by “all the papers in this area,” he said. “Everyone agrees it (MAP) does not have the effect of reducing teen pregnancy rates. Not a single paper found a reduction.”

This leaves it an open question why lawmakers are insisting that the MAP is the solution of solutions.

“If I were a health care provider or a member of the local authority with limited resources, I would certainly be questioning whether this is the best use of money when the evidence is universal.”

In 1999, the Labour government under Prime Minister Tony Blair pledged to halve the rates of teen pregnancies in the UK, then at an all-time high. That pledge has manifestly failed to materialize, with the most recent available statistics showing a total of 41,325 women under 18 pregnant in 2008, a drop of less than 4 percent since the previous year. This slight downturn followed a steady rise since 2001.

The claim that increased sex education and access to artificial birth control would reduce abortion rates was also belied, with the same statistics showing 49 percent of these pregnancies ending in abortion.

A key aspect of the government’s program of “sexual health education” for young women and girls has been the easy availability of MAP. But this strategy, Paton said, has come with devastating unintended consequences.

Paton’s study, titled “The Impact of Emergency Birth Control on Teen Pregnancy,” compared areas of England where the morning-after pill was being made available to teens free of charge at pharmacies, with areas where the plan had not yet been introduced.

The research found that pregnancy rates for girls under 16 remained the same in both areas, while the rates of sexually transmitted diseases increased by 12 percent in those areas where the pill was made freely available.

“I’ve had lots of responses lots of interest in the study,” Paton told LSN. But it remains to be seen whether this will translate into policy changes.

“Attitudes are quite entrenched in the UK,” he added. “The thinking is that if you provide more sex health services for young people, you will reduce rates.” But the evidence does not support this belief.

“There’s a gap between concerns of parents and policy implementation.” The real challenge will be to bring the concerns of researchers and parents to government, he said.

The one response Paton has had so far in the week since the study was published was from a pharmaceutical negotiating committee, who “attacked the study and its findings.”

“There is simply no engagement with what we’ve said, with the evidence.”

“You do wonder why the hostility. One research paper doesn’t finalize a conclusion, but more than anywhere else there is the evidence” that MAP does nothing to reduce teen pregnancy. Indeed, with the addition of a higher risk of STDs, he said, the situation is being made significantly worse.

“So it’s very puzzling why policy makers are not keen to take this on board.”

Asked what policy the government ought to adopt, if sex education and artificial contraception don’t work, Paton replied, “The more important thing is to acknowledge what isn’t working and stop doing it.”

“Declare if something isn’t working, and is in fact having negative effects and making the situation worse.”

It should be remembered, he said, that “not insignificant amounts of money” are being spent on these projects. “It’s a clear case of money being used and having, at best, no effect.”

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Canadian Blood Services seeks end to gay donor ban

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by Rebecca Millette

Thu Jan 27 5:27 PM EST

OTTAWA, January 27, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A spokesperson for the Canadian Blood Services (CBS), the federal blood donor agency, told the Toronto Star yesterday that the lifetime ban on homosexual men donating blood is outdated and needs to be loosened.

The ban was put in place in 1985 after the Canadian Red Cross, in charge of the blood supply at the time, failed to properly screen donors. The result was that thousands of Canadians were infected with HIV and hepatitis C from contaminated blood.

The Public Health Agency of Canada reported in 2008 that homosexual men as a group had by far the highest rate of new HIV infections, 44%, and that 51% of people with HIV in the country were homosexual men.

“A lifetime ban extending by one year every year is just not sustainable,” Lorna Tessier, director of public relations at Canadian Blood Services, told the Star.

Tessier said that CBS is committed to working actively to shorten the current ban and find a more “appropriate restriction” to homosexual men donating blood after having sex with another man (‘MSM’).

CBS reportedly plans to conduct research with a $500,000 grant administered by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research and to approach Health Canada for permission to loosen the ban.

“There have been lots of changes in the environment, lots of changes in testing (and) lots of changes on the international front,” said Tessier. “We are committed. There is definitely no doubt about that.”

However, all challenges to the ban have been thus far rejected. The ban made national news last spring and summer in the court case between homosexual Kyle Freeman and CBS.

CBS had previously sued Freeman for lying about his homosexual conduct in a pre-screening process and giving blood despite the lifetime ban. Freeman launched a counter-suit against CBS saying the ban on ‘MSM’ giving blood discriminates against homosexuals and he has a right to give blood under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

In September 2010 an Ontario Superior Court of Justice decision upheld the ban in the case of Freeman, saying giving blood is not a constitutional right. “It is based on health and safety considerations; namely, the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and other blood-borne, sexually transmitted pathogens in the [men who have sex with men] populations, and the corresponding risk this creates for the safety of the blood supply system,” the judge ruled.

The court also noted that the Charter of Rights does not apply to the blood agency’s policies, because it is not a government entity.

Following the case, CBS chief executive officer Dr. Graham Sher praised the decision. “It is important to understand, and as the judge affirmed, our donor selection policies have always been about protecting the safety of blood recipients, and the [‘MSM’] policy is no exception.”

Gwen Landolt, vice-president and spokesperson for Canada’s REAL Women, told LifeSiteNews.com that CBS is “spinning the wheel for no reason.” “There has been no proof that people will be safe,” she said.

“It is going to cause a lot of confusion and a lot of problems with the public. Certainly it will undermine the credibility of the blood services. Who wants to give blood and who wants to take it when you’re so uncertain of the safety?”

Today the Canadian Hemophilia Society (CHS) issued a news release that expressed concern about the direction CBS was taking. CHS said that while they found that “blood, blood products and their alternatives are very safe and in sufficient supply,” CBS has taken a “giant step backwards” in accountability over the past year.

CBS by-laws, CHS reported, state CBS boards must have at least two positions filled by persons with “relevant knowledge or experience with organizations representing persons consuming blood and blood products.” In the past, these positions have been held by persons with “very close links to recipient organizations and extensive knowledge of safety and supply issues.”

However, the 2009 and 2010 Board renewal processes saw public directors named who have “no apparent links to recipient organizations and little knowledge of key issues from a recipient perspective,” according to CHS.

The organization said that the 2010 decision upholding the ban on ‘MSM’ blood donors “was welcomed by recipient organizations,” and that as a result of that decision, “decisions on screening procedures will continue to be made on the basis of the latest science and epidemiology.”

Xtra, Canada’s Gay and Lesbian News, reported today that CBS is now “backtracking” on the Toronto Star’s report.

Media coverage saying CBS wants to lift its homosexual blood donor deferral is not news, blood bank spokesperson Ron Vezina told Xtra.

“There is no change. It’s exactly what we said during the Freeman trial. We’re continuing down the same path. When the judge said a 33-year ban is unsustainable, we couldn’t agree more. But we need evidence to what we should change it to. Until we have an alternative, we’re stuck with it,” said Vezina.

LifeSiteNews.com did not hear back from the Canadian Blood Service before press time.

To contact the Canadian blood collection agency with your concern:

Canadian Blood Services
1800 Alta Vista Drive,
Ottawa, Ontario, K1G 4J5
Phone: (613) 739-2300
Fax: (613) 731-1411
Email: feedback@blood.ca

Copyright © 2010 LifeSiteNews.com, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Bozell Column: The Diseases of Pornography

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Derrick Burts, 24, started working as a porn-film actor in June. By October, he'd contracted the HIV virus. The AP story on Burts contained this jaw-dropping sentence: “He said he began to have doubts about the business after contracting chlamydia, gonorrhea, and herpes in his first month of work, but was convinced to keep working.”

Burts claimed "I wasn't stupid or oblivious, I knew what was out there. But it's not something you think about when they fill your head" with lucrative offers and promises that the work is safe. Lured into the porn world with the promise that he looked like money, Burts concluded his greed was unwise: "Making $10,000 or $15,000 for porn isn't worth your life."

Michael Weinstein, head of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, took up the Burts case. While he insisted his group isn't anti-porn, “we are astounded that the multi-billion-dollar film industry and its fig leaf of a clinic could not even get it together six weeks after his first HIV-positive test to link [Burts] to appropriate follow-up medical care."

Lawyers for the porn industry's clinic, the Adult Industry Medical Health Foundation, which performed the HIV test on Burts, insisted any claim he was not properly treated is “not truthful and self-serving.” But the California Department of Public Health just denied its application to operate. Once again, the porn industry looks shady.

Burts says the clinic told him he contracted the HIV virus at a gay porn shoot in Florida, but the clinic told the press that he must have become infected in his personal life. Translation: Who are you going to trust, a porn star? Or the porn industry? This evolving story comes six years after up to 14 porn actors tested HIV-positive, forcing several porn companies to close.

Porn moguls obviously want the "talent" to feel safe, but they don't want to film scenes with condoms – for monetary reasons. The pornographers at Vivid Entertainment said when they became a mandatory-condom company for nearly seven years, they saw their sales drop nearly 20 percent.

Pornography isn't just unhealthy for our culture; it's unhealthy for the “talent” that stars in these films, with the endless carousel of sex partners. It should be only a matter of time before the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (or their California equivalent) starts investigating – unless, of course, government officials are too afraid of appearing like squelchers of a Howard Stern version of “freedom of speech.”

It's ironic that our news media are such evangelists for "safe sex" with condoms, and very critical of anyone who's anti-condom as a menace to society, but they haven't forced that Latex gospel on the porn industry, despite the obvious threat of fatal sexually-transmitted diseases between strangers on the set.

Then there's the gay-porn industry – which as a rule requires condoms in films, but doesn't even HIV-test their stars. Without much irony, Jay Barmann of the San Francisco blog SFist reported “The HIV status of gay porn performers is a particular taboo subject, with a kind of don't-ask-don't-tell attitude proliferating in the industry, which mostly tries to keep performers safe by requiring condom use and which fears bad publicity from performers revealing their statuses.”

In response to this environment, the porn company Treasure Island Media recently took the shocking step of promoting a gay couple with one HIV-negative and one HIV-positive partner having “unprotected” sex as "role models." Paul Morris, the company’s owner, spoke of demolishing "the HIV-positive closet" and pledged "We will not allow reactionary individuals and organizations to dictate our behavior.” HIV and AIDS are “more or less manageable,” he said. “The real battle is against prejudice, ignorance and unfounded and useless fear.”

Barmann, no anti-porn “prude,” was shocked for the public health and for the rights of actors. “Say what he will about battling prejudice and fear, Morris stands to benefit financially from the unprotected sex his performers agree to have, and he is nonetheless an employer who knowingly puts his workers in harm's way.”

Our media just found it wildly controversial that the Pope might hypothetically suggest a male prostitute using a condom may be trying to show a health concern for others. But somehow, there is no controversy or debate when secular sexual progressives fail to crusade against pornographers on something so contrary to their own condom-promoting “safe sex” philosophy. The old AIDS slogan was “Silence equals death.” Who will speak out before the next greedy Derrick Burts gets infected?

Just how stupid are the Derricks of this world to get involved in death-trap industries like this?

Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brent-bozell/2010/12/11/bozell-column-diseases-pornography#ixzz17uQ7EpTU

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Harvard Academic: Pope is Right about Condoms

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While major media characterize Pope Benedict XVI’s prescription for combating HIV infection as “unrealistic and ineffective” and unscientific, an authority on the disease has a different message: “More and more AIDS experts are coming to accept . . .” that “the Pope is correct.”

“We have found no consistent associations between condom use and lower HIV-infection rates, which, 25 years into the pandemic, we should be seeing if this intervention was working.” If not for this statement’s academic style, you might think it was rendered by a Pope or prelate. Yet its author is actually Edward C. Green, director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, who was quoted by Kathryn Jean Lopez writing at National Review Online.

Such pronouncements may seem counterintuitive. With most people today having been weaned on Kinsey Institute inspired sex-education suppositions, they take as a given that there are no risky sexual behaviors, just risky ways of indulging them. Yet, in an example of the intersection between science and faith, Edward Green affirms the Pope’s recent assertion that condom use won’t solve Africa’s AIDS crisis. Writes Lopez:

‘The pope is correct,’ Green told National Review Online Wednesday . . . . He stresses that ‘condoms have been proven to not be effective at the ‘level of population.’’

‘There is,’ Green adds, ‘a consistent association shown by our best studies, including the U.S.-funded ‘Demographic Health Surveys,’ between greater availability and use of condoms and higher (not lower) HIV-infection rates. This may be due in part to a phenomenon known as risk compensation, meaning that when one uses a risk-reduction ‘technology’ such as condoms, one often loses the benefit (reduction in risk) by ‘compensating’ or taking greater chances than one would take without the risk-reduction technology.’

Additionally, Green said that empirical evidence shows the Pope was also correct in saying that the best solution to the African AIDS crisis is monogamy. In other words, the problem is promiscuity, not just how you manage your promiscuity. Ah, could this really mean that the church was right to be opposing the modern world’s “new ideas”? It much reminds me of G.K. Chesterton’s profound observation, “Nine out of ten of what we call new ideas are really just old mistakes.” Promiscuity is nothing new. The sexual revolution is misnamed – it should more properly be called the sexual regression.

Understanding that promiscuity is the problem places matters in perspective. To truly grasp the effects of advocating condoms as remedy, we have to consider that they’re an element of libertinism’s pseudo-intellectual philosophical arm, sex education, and understand the moral message sent by that arm.

Condoms aren’t billed as simply a method by which married couples may control births; sex education isn’t designed specifically to enlighten the betrothed. On the contrary, their main stated purpose is to combat the consequences of sex outside of marriage, things such as out-of-wedlock pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases.

This brings us to the message inherent in sex education. There’s no such thing as a value-neutral curriculum, and sex education is infused with the notion that sex is merely a matter of taste. Its apologists may bristle at this, saying that sex education says nothing about what you should do, only how you should do it. But this is the point. As Chesterton also observed, “It is the things we forget to teach that are learned best,” meaning that values are caught more than they’re taught. What is assumed is often more influential than what must be stated explicitly, and sex education speaks volumes about what we may do through those things that speak louder than words – actions.

To illustrate this, let’s analogize condom distribution. If there’s a problem with teenagers endangering themselves and others through street racing, the obvious solution is to discourage the behavior. Imagine, though, that we instead simply offered them options, saying, “Well, you could abstain. If you don’t, however, take this protective rubber shield and place it on your car; it reduces the risk of traffic-related fatalities.” Would we be surprised if the incidence of street racing and the deaths caused by it subsequently increased?

Nevertheless, libertines may say that condoms are wanting at the “level of population” only because people aren't using them consistently. If people were more educated in health, condoms would be more effective collectively. But that's always the catch, isn't it? I could just as easily say the problem is that people aren't adhering to God's plan for man's sexuality consistently. If people were more educated in morality, that plan would be more effective and we wouldn't have these problems in the first place. We're both saying the same thing, which is that our ideal isn't being applied ideally. But the question remains, what ideal is ideal?

Man has always found moral imperatives more compelling than health ones. People have died for moral principles but only hope that health ones will help them live longer. I would, for instance, have far more confidence that a man would quit smoking if he believed lighting up violated some transcendent moral law than if he simply believed it might add ten years to his life.

The point is that having a chaste society, a place wherein recognition of moral law, and strong social pressure and stigma keep sexuality within its proper context – not just in church one hour weekly but also at home, school and in entertainment 24/7 – has a track record of working on the population level. Dispassionate appeals to health concerns – of which condoms are a reflection – do not. (Note that the out-of-wedlock birthrate has gone from 5 percent to 40 in 50 years.)

Yet the libertines have a very compelling argument for rejecting the Pope’s proposition: free sex is fun.

Yes, and so is street racing.

At the end of the day, that’s what their argument boils down to: Christians must be wrong because they violate the pleasure principle.

It really has to make you wonder who the unscientific ones are after all.

Selwyn Duke is a columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show, at WorldNetDaily.com, in American Conservative magazine, is a contributor to AmericanThinker.com and appears regularly as a guest on the award-winning, nationally-syndicated Michael Savage Show. Visit his Website.

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United Nations Promotes Spread of AIDS

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Deliberately infecting others with HIV, the virus that leads to AIDS, is a particularly evil act — but not according to the baby butchers of Planned Parenthood or the wannabe one-world rulers of the United Nations:

A new campaign seeks to eliminate disclosure laws which require HIV positive individuals to inform their sex partners of their potentially deadly infection.

The campaign is led by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and UNAIDS, an umbrella group of UN agencies. Notably absent from this campaign is any recognition of the danger posed for the possible victims of a willful refusal to disclose HIV status.

As part of the campaign, IPPF released a collection of interviews entitled "Behind Bars", which implies that such criminal laws fuel stigma against HIV persons.

Better a horrific and lethal disease be spread far and wide than perverts and degenerates be "stigmatized."

"Behind Bars" is part of a larger IPPF campaign, "Criminalize Hate Not HIV", launched at the International Aids Conference in Vienna in July. IPPF describes laws that make willful transmission of HIV to another person as too-costly, hindrances to prevention, and stigmatizing. The video promo for the campaign depicts various sexual scenes. The video appears to promote homosexual sex, drug use, and prostitution, which are listed by the Centers for Disease Control as three of the most high risk behaviors responsible for the transmission of HIV.

They are also three of the behaviors most likely to earn you coos of sympathy from the international liberal elite ruling class.

The Planned Parenthood and the UN have teamed up before:

IPPF and UNAIDS collaborated in sponsoring the "Stigma Index", whose website contains a major section calling for the decriminalization of HIV transmission. …

In March, IPPF made available their sex guide [EXPLICIT], "Healthy, Happy, and Hot" at a UN event sponsored by the Girl Scouts. The brochure states, "Some countries have laws that violate the right of young people living with HIV to decide whether to disclose… These laws violate the rights of people living with HIV by forcing them to disclose or face the possibility of criminal charges."

The only way to make sense of their motives is to assume that for progressives, corruption is an end in itself.

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Secretary general of PFLP admits Arafat Died of AIDS

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One in Seven Men in London “Gay Scene” Infected with HIV/AIDS

Sexual health campaigners” continue to push condom message while rates climb

By Hilary White

LONDON, July 22, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Rates of HIV infection and AIDS have risen dramatically in the last seven years among London’s homosexual men according to a homosexualist health group. The Terrence Higins Trust (THT) released figures yesterday showing that one in seven men in the London “gay scene” are infected with the HIV virus, compared to about one in 20 gay men nationally. The figure rose from 299 new cases in 2000 to 710 new cases in 2007.

According to the AIDS awareness agency AVERT, at the end of 2008 gay men were estimated to account for 38% of HIV cases in the UK, despite their making up only a tiny percentage of the overall population.

The University College London and the Health Protection Agency (HPA) conducted the Gay Men’s Sexual Health Survey in 2009 in 36 London venues such as bars, clubs and bathhouses. The survey found a 15.2 percent HIV prevalence in such venues between December 2008 and February 2009 among 1,251 men tested.

Alan Wardle, Head of Health Promotion at THT said that men in the “gay scene” are “genuinely shocked” by the figure. “Yet the reality is that, after Brighton, London has the highest HIV prevalence of any city in the UK.”

The HPA presented its findings at the International AIDS conference in Vienna today.

The agency said that it has also found that AIDS infection rates have jumped 60 percent among those over 50 between 2000 and 2007.

Ruth Smith, a senior HIV scientist at the HPA’s Centre for Infections said, “We estimate that nearly half of older adults diagnosed between 2000 and 2007 were infected at age 50 or over and this highlights the importance of HIV testing – whatever your age.”

The agency reported that in 2008 there were 7,382 new diagnoses of HIV in the UK, with an estimated 32 percent of adults over 15 years being diagnosed later in life.

Despite the evident failure of condom campaigns to curb HIV rates either in Britain or in the developing world, both the Terrence Higgins Trust and the Health Protection Agency concluded that “safe sex” was the only solution. Wardle said that the THT is launching the “One in Seven” campaign to “remind” men in the London gay scene to use condoms.

Ruth Smith said, “We must continually reinforce the safe sex message – using a condom with all new or casual partners is the surest way to ensure people do not become infected with a serious sexually transmitted infection such as HIV.”

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How to Fight Epidemic Syphilis: Follow The Bible

http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/print/240374

Margie Mason recently reported that China is experiencing a major epidemic of syphilis infection (2010). She noted that every hour a Chinese baby is born with syphilis, and “the rate of mother-to-child transmission jumped from 7 to 57 cases per 100,000 live births between 2003 and 2008” (2010). At the present, syphilis cases in China are “rising by 30 percent every year.”

Mason also reported that syphilis infection is increasing in the United States as well (2010). To what did Mason and the experts she consulted attribute the surge of syphilis infection? She wrote: “Prostitutes along with gay and bisexual men, many of whom are married with families, are driving the epidemic” in China. And she noted that, in the United States, “more than 60 percent of cases linked [are] to gay sex” (2010).

What is the solution to epidemic sexually transmitted diseases like syphilis? The Center for Disease Control outlined a simple, effect way to eradicate such diseases:

The surest way to avoid transmission of sexually transmitted diseases, including syphilis, is to abstain from sexual contact or to be in a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with a partner who has been tested and is known to be uninfected (“Syphilis...,” 2008, emp. added).

The recipe for eliminating STDs bears a striking resemblance to the Bible’s instructions concerning sex being reserved for a life-long covenant marriage relationship between one man and one women (see Matthew 19:1-4; Hebrews 13:4; 1 Corinthians 6:15-20).

In truth, God’s instructions concerning sex and all other aspects of human life have always been intended to help humans be truly happy. In Deuteronomy 6:24, Moses wrote: “And the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that He might preserve us alive, as it is this day” (emp. added).

If God designed humans, and if He knows everything about them, then He is the only Being in the position to write the perfect guidelines that lead to human happiness.

Unfortunately, many people misunderstand God’s instructions and His purposes behind them. These people believe God is trying to keep them from enjoying life, or forcing them to avoid things that would bring them pleasure. In reality, however, God designed humans to be capable of achieving the most “abundant” life when following His gracious instructions (John 10:10).

So, why does God regulate aspects of human behavior like sex? The practical answer is so that humans can avoid many of the painful situations such as babies being born with syphilis that causes “irreversible damage” such as deafness, neurological problems, and bone deformities (Mason, 2010).

The theological answer is simply that God loves all people, and wants them to live the most abundant life possible on this Earth, as well as have the expectation of eternal life with Him (2 Peter 3:9).

REFERENCES

Mason, Margie (2010), “1 Chinese Baby Born With Syphilis Every Hour,” http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100506/ap_on_he_me/as_med_china_syphilis_scourge/ print;_ylt=AhT.dv9Gh0zQIfXB7BQyKz17_aF4;_ylu= X3oDMTBvajZzaTFyBHBvcwMxNQRzZWMDdG9wBHNsawNwcmludA--.

“Syphilis—CDC Fact Sheet” (2008), http://www.cdc.gov/std/syphilis/STDFact-Syphilis.htm#protect.

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