Originally posted by Beowulf:And the suggestion that is it primarily a "gay" disease is strictly due to a common misconception that resulted from many of the first cases being reported in the gay community.
If you take a jaunt over to Africa, it is decimating heterosexual men and women. I beleive I recall reading that homosexuality is far less common there. If this were a "fag killer" as many bible thumping firebrands tell us, why would it be killing so many non-homosexual Africans?
Maybe God is like George Bush and hates black people.
That is why I specifically stated modernized countries, not third world countries where basic standards of living are at the heart of the many of the reasons for the spread of the HIV/AIDS virus due to extreme poverty and lack of infrastructure to properly support human life. That is another discussion altogether and I'm not prepped to discuss that issue in length at the moment unfortunately.
I will say that if you check the CDC's data on the actual confirmed number of AIDS cases in Africa, it is dramatically lower than what you hear in the news, and many of the symptoms associated and assumed to be AIDS related in Africa are in fact the very same symptoms of many of the diseases that extremely poor third world nations struggle with. Tuberculosis, hepatitis, other STD's, etc., have extremely similar disease patterns from a sympomatic standpoint to the HIV/AIDS virus and given the widespread issues of clean water, sewage removal, shared living arrangements, lack of medicines, etc., that Africa struggles with, the AIDS virus is often assumed to be the cause of sickness and death, but there is no way of determining whether or not this was in fact the case. Recent studies funded to provide data for these assertions have indicated that the AIDS epidemic, while extremely important to address in Africa, may be wildly overestimated in this respect. My point here is don't believe everything you hear, look to the actual factual evidence as provided by the NIH and the CDC and you'll see quite a different picture. Once again, I'm not saying we should table efforts to find a vaccine and to eliminate the HIV/AIDS virus, it will be a joyful day for many when this occurs, but we need to keep perspective and take a hard look at the facts surrounding these matters.
That is fine, after all, this is a discussion that is supposed to be about why we are allowing government at all levels to discriminate against a significant minority in America. This should not be a discussion about AIDS, religion or the wives of Solomon. The bible has no place in legislation other than the simple right that all Americans have the right to worship in the manner they see fit (as long as that worship does not result in behavior that is illegal such as murder, rape or the abuse of children and so on). Even "rights" have limits. When we are discussing consentual behavior between adults that does not customarily result in death or dismemberment, the government and the religious right should stay away.
And since we are discussing the privilege of marriage between consensual adults of the same gender, the only litmus test that should apply is "does having this privilige bring direct harm to America?"
No, it does not. They are going to have sex, and since it seems that the sexual act is such a hang up for "Christian" America, perhaps they should ignore it. I know many homosexuals are disgusted at the thought of "straight" sex.
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