Steve Jordahl of Focus on the Family declared yesterday:

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) announced this week that gay- and bisexual-identified men are 50 times more likely to have AIDS than any other group.  One-half of the HIV cases diagnosed each year in the U.S. are within the gay community.

The average Christian-rightist speed-reader might conclude that half or more of the gay population in America is infected — and that AIDS is caused by being “identified” as gay or bisexual.

But Timothy Kincaid of Box Turtle Bulletin points out:

…The rate of new infections in the population of gay and bisexual men in 2007 was 0.69%. Or in 2007 one out of every 144 gay/bi men seroconverted.

That still is very high. And it is consistent with our calculations that about 12% of gay/bi men (or about 6% of all gay/bi people) are infected with HIV. (So play safe kids… or better yet, find someone to have and hold from this day forward.)

Focus on the Family purposely mischaracterized the nation’s same-sex-attracted population as predominantly diseased. The organization did so, because it wants Americans to condemn, fear, and punish same-sex attraction and sexual honesty. The organization does not want its audience to ponder the actual cause of most HIV infection, which happens to be the unprotected sex which Focus encourages every time it seeks to exclude condoms from the nation’s public-health, disease-prevention, and sex-education programs — and every time it seeks to prevent discussion of homosexuality among teachers, public-health authorities, and students.

Jordahl suggests that education and disease prevention are a waste of money:

Dr. David Stevens, CEO of the Christian Medical & Dental Associations, said that is throwing good money after bad.

“We spend millions and millions of dollars on education and prevention programs,” he said, “but those are often ignored by the homosexual community.”

Instead, Focus wants the federal government to divert billions of taxpayer dollars into failed “abstinence-only” programs which promote the very same sexual ignorance which led to the teen pregnancy of Bristol Palin, daughter of GOP presidential hopeful Sarah Palin.

New cases of sexually transmitted infections are rising among women and African-American heterosexuals, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

CNN reports:

The CDC began a national syphilis elimination program in the late 1990s, targeted at African-American heterosexuals, especially women and their babies. As a result, the condition was nearly eradicated as an ongoing health problem in the United States.

But in the last two years, the trend has reversed, said Dr. John Douglas, director of the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention.

“The success we’ve been experiencing for a number of years in African-American heterosexual populations, particularly women, is beginning to be eroded,” he said.

Syphilis resurfaced as a danger in 2001, and cases went up by 15.2 percent between 2006 and 2007, the CDC said.

Reported cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea together surpassed 1.4 million in 2007, the report said. Both of these conditions can cause infertility when left untreated. The CDC will address HIV rates in the United States in a later report.

The rise happens to coincide with the growth of federally funded, abstinence-only programs which claim to promote abstinence by denying teen-agers access to information about disease and pregnancy prevention. Instead, these programs result in unsafe sex and an increased risk of pregnancy and abortion.

Whatever the role of abstinence-only “education,” experts say shame surrounding sexual behavior appears to be contributing to an atmosphere of silence and ignorance among youths-at-risk, parents, and doctors.

According to Dr. John Douglas, director of the CDC’s Division of STD Prevention:

If the parents assume that’s the doctor’s business, or the teacher’s business, and don’t roll up their sleeves and get in there themselves, and if our schools aren’t giving comprehensive education, and if our clergy and other community leaders who are interested in youth well-being aren’t including sexual health on the agenda, we’re going to create missed opportunities.

For more than three decades, the so-called pro-life movement — of which I was once a participant — has claimed to uphold sexual morality and the sanctity of human life, even as it promoted policies which encourage unsafe sex, untimely pregnancy, and abortion among women who are presented with no alternatives.

A new study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health finds that “pro-life” abstinence-only programs — marketed by the religious right, funded by the Bush administration, and imposed upon public schools in conservative school districts across the United States — may achieve the opposite of their intended objectives.

According to The Washington Post, the study focused on “virginity pledges,” a core element of abstinence-only education:

The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a “virginity pledge,” but that the percentage who took precautions against pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases was 10 points lower for pledgers than for non-pledgers.

“Taking a pledge doesn’t seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior,” said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose report appears in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. “But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking.”

The study is the latest in a series that have raised questions about programs that focus on encouraging abstinence until marriage, including those that specifically ask students to publicly declare their intention to remain virgins. The new analysis, however, goes beyond earlier analyses by focusing on teens who had similar values about sex and other issues before they took a virginity pledge.

Focus on the Family continues to promote unsafe and disease-prone sex — and resulting unwed pregnancy — even as it condemns comprehensive sex-education programs which teach youths how to prevent disease and avoid pregnancies that — as such a young age — often end in abortion.

In a Dec. 16 article, Focus on the Family blames comprehensive sex education for disturbing stats on pregnancy and abortion at a school in urban Alexandria, Virginia — but fails to tell readers that the outcomes of abstinence-only programs are generally just as bad or worse. Focus also falsely insinuates that comprehensive sex ed does not educate teen-agers about abstinence. (Read More)

If the empty mantra, “Just Say No,” failed to keep teenagers off of drugs, it certainly is not going to work for sex. Yet, our government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on “abstinence only” programs that promote ignorance over education, while offering a warped view of sexuality. Like all programs steeped in religious extremism, these are fear-based, anti-science and prone to great exaggerations.

Congressman Henry Waxman (D-CA) released a report in 2004 that found 11 out of 13 curriculums that preached “abstinence only” were rampant with scientific errors. In another study, researchers found that those who took so-called “virginity pledges” refrained from sex merely eighteen months longer than those who had not made such a pledge. However, the pledge-takers were six times more likely to engage in oral sex. “ The Values Virgins” were also much less likely to engage in protected sex when they finally broke their pledge or to be tested for an STD. Disease rates between the two groups were similar.

Unfortunately, the New York Times Magazine reports that “condemn the condom” clubs are taking root at premier universities. As usual, they rely on breathless, overblown tales of breaking condoms, saying, “safe sex is not safe.” Well, actually, condoms are pretty effective for those of us who had comprehensive sex education and know how to use them. I’ve yet to find one Bible-waving fanatic who can show me an HIV epidemic that broke out among people consistently wearing condoms. (Read More)