A former president of Botswana, Festus Mogae, is openly calling on his countrymen to stop treating homosexuality as a crime (as at present it is). Similarly, Zimbabwe’s prime minister Morgan Tsvangirai told the BBC that his country’s constitution ought to protect gays and lesbians–quite a turnabout, considering his homophobic public comments in the past and his coalition government with homophobe Robert Mugabe of “dogs and pigs” fame . Mogae’s reasons are more practical than tolerant; he says he doesn’t “understand” homosexuality, but cites the spread of HIV/AIDS as a key reason to work openly with LGBTQ people.

“We can preach about behavioural change, but as long as we confine gays and lesbians into dark corners because of our inflexibility to accommodate them, the battle on HIV and AIDS can never be won,” said Mogae at the time.

Nor the battle for civil equality, of course, but in countries this conservative, a forthright recognition of the realities of public health is a welcome start.

The thing about wingnuts is that they have very little in the way of humanity or compassion toward other human beings:

North Carolina state Rep. Larry Brown (R), whose controversial comments have offended members of the gay community in the past, has announced plans to remove HIV/AIDS treatment from state-funded medical coverage.

“I’m not opposed to helping a child born with HIV or something, but I don’t condone spending taxpayers’ money to help people living in perverted lifestyles,” Brown told the Winston-Salem Journal.

Brown told the Journal he doesn’t believe HIV/AIDS patients should be covered for diseases caused “by the way they live,” saying that any patients who contracted such illnesses “sexual behavior or drugs” should pay the full cost of treatment themselves.

Nice. No further commentary is necessary here, as people like Larry Brown damn themselves with their own unfiltered words in the eyes of sane people.

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I read the New York Times with my morning coffee and came across an interesting editorial, “Advances on the AIDS Front”.

The first major advance was a pill that would potentially stop HIV- men from contracting the disease. The second step forward was a vaginal gel which cut a woman’s risk for infection. The third leap towards the future was not a scientific breakthrough, but a decision not to stifle science:

Pope Benedict XVI expressed the view that condoms could be used to prevent disease transmission. That could make it easier for ecclesiastical workers and AIDS prevention programs to promote their use.

The Pope should be applauded for leaving the fifteenth century and all positive steps are welcome. But isn’t it ironic that the Vatican finally stopped its blind attacks on condoms at the very moment there was a pill to potentially limit the spread of  the disease?

My point is that the juxtaposition of these new discoveries and Rome finally seeing the light highlights how appallingly late they are to the game. I first heard of AIDS when I was eleven or twelve. I am now 40-years old and millions of people are now dead — and the Pope has finally come around to agree that male prostitutes should wear condoms.

I bristle when I think of the countless lives that could have been spared had the Vatican spoken while I was in Middle School instead of middle age. If Rome had really been pro-life than thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands, of human beings — men, women, children and even babies — would have survived.

Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI had the power to raise awareness about condoms. Their stubborn prudishness led to piles of dead bodies — Holocaust size in scale — that could have been prevented.

When I think about what could have been accomplished with an enlightened Vatican it breaks my heart. But for some pathological reason, pontiffs always seem compelled to reject science and finally come around after a body count. Sadly, the Vatican’s two responses to HIV/AIDS prevention efforts have been sleep walking or walking off a cliff.

History will judge these actions quite harshly and severely tarnish the church’s image.

The Pope’s tardy comments are better late than never. But, unless the Pope can get Jesus to raise the dead, we will never get back the beautiful, innocent lives that were lost due to the Vatican’s stand on condoms. My one message to the Vatican:

There is no rule in the Bible that claims you must fight to undermine every scientific advance since the Enlightenment. History shows that you will eventually embrace the truth anyway, so why not sooner than later? In the future, why not try the wise — instead of the ignorant, reactionary — course of action — particualrly when lives are at stake?

So typical. From a slanted article at OneNewsNow:

A United Nations Aids [sic] agency complains that homosexuals, drug users and prostitute [sic] don’t seek help because of laws that criminalize their practices.

Michel Sidibe of UNAIDS is quoted as saying it is unacceptable that 85 countries still make homosexual conduct illegal, but Peter LaBarbera, president of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), does not accept that thinking.

“They’ve got everything backwards,” he contends. “Rather than have a campaign — for example an anti-sodomy campaign, an anti-prostitution campaign, an anti-drug abuse campaign that targets the bad behaviors themselves — instead they target countries that are trying to implement conservative policies that target homosexuality.”

In compatibility with his logic, Sidibe suggests that laws against the immoral behavior be changed.

“Mr. Sidibe is just completely confused,” LaBarbera notes. “He says that in states where there are not repressive laws, HIV is contained. Then he goes on to express shock that more than 50 percent of infections in the United States are among homosexuals. So he contradicts himself.”

Peter: stick to leather porn. The grown-ups who are experts on AIDS prevention will handle the grown-up issue of AIDS prevention.

Thx!

At The Daily Beast, Max Blumenthal calls the Obama administration on the carpet for affirming Rick Warren and allies’ efforts to deny access to condoms and prevent Africa’s heterosexual and LGBT people from protecting themselves against HIV/AIDS.

Blumenthal notes that Warren has never been required to prove the efficacy of his anti-condom program. Instead, independent investigation into Warren’ involvement in Africa revealed alliances with Christian Right clergy who sidelined science-based approaches to combating AIDS in favor of abstinence-only education.

These clergy sabotaged Uganda’s once highly successful initiative to combat HIV/AIDS. Comprehensive sex education — consisting of lessons in abstinence, monogamy, and condom use — slashed HIV infection rates during the 1990s and up until 2003, when Christian Rightists in the Bush State Department and Congress began to sabotage the initiative. By 2005, Blumenthal notes, federal aid was being redirected to deny access to condoms and to discourage their use. Progress against HIV infection rates then halted. (Read More)

In the first step toward a global index of stigma against HIV/AIDS, a new British report finds that, years after HIV/AIDS education programs were gradually shelved, prejudice and discrimination are returning.

According to today’s Observer:

Researchers found that one in five people with an HIV diagnosis had been harassed, threatened or verbally assaulted in the past 12 months. Many reported ignorance and prejudice from within the medical profession, particularly from GPs and dentists. One in five reported being denied medical treatment because they had HIV.

In findings to be unveiled in parliament tomorrow, The People Living With HIV Stigma Index, a two-year research project funded by the Department for International Development and the International Planned Parenthood Federation, found that only 39% of people felt confident that their medical records were being kept confidential, with 18% saying their HIV status had been revealed without their consent.

Lisa Power, head of policy at the Terrence Higgins Trust, said that the public was more ignorant about HIV than a decade ago. “This research is really important because it’s about people’s perception of the prejudice they face.”

Musician Annie Lennox will be one of several high-profile speakers at a briefing on the subject of HIV stigma at the Houses of Parliament on Monday.

According to PinkPaper.com:

The Stigma Index is designed as a global initiative, but the UK results are the first to be obtained.

It is hoped that the initiative will be both a catalyst for creating and fostering change in the communities in which it is used, by empowering both the individuals and communities most affected by the epidemic.

Hat tip: Mike Tidmus

The brewing human-rights disaster in Uganda has thus far been blamed squarely on those who launched the current campaign of violence and brutal punishment: Exodus International board member Don Schmierer, Massachusetts ex-gay activist and Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, the ex-gay International Healing Foundation led by Richard Cohen, Uganda ex-gay activist Stephen Langa, and Martin Ssempa, a longtime leader of Uganda’s religious war against its LGBT citizenry who is funded by U.S. evangelicals.

But as the crisis grows, so does U.S. foreign aid to Uganda: The State Department just promised Uganda $246 million with few if any human-rights strings attached. And so responsibility must now be shared not just by the masterminds of the campaign, but also by U.S. taxpayers. Let’s take a look back at how U.S. taxpayers like me — and many of you — became implicated in a violent evangelical war against Ugandan sexual minorities.

(Read More)

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.

In a CitizenLink press release issued today, Focus on the Family misdefined and distorted the proportion of reported HIV infections in 2006 that were attributable to men who have sex with men.

Focus falsely equated men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM) with “homosexuality” and then inflated the percentage of cases in 2006 that were attributable to these men. The Centers for Disease Control reported that 53 percent — barely half — of new HIV infections in 2006 were attributable to MSM. Focus on the Family inflated this statistic to “almost 60 percent” and falsely attributed this exaggeration to the CDC.

The category of MSM includes men who claim to be ex-gay while closeting their sex with men, as well as ostensibly heterosexual men living on the “down low,” and bisexual men. The category does not include homosexual men who are incidentally or purposely abstinent. Nor does the category distinguish between sexually active men whose practices put them at very low risk of infection, and men who place themselves at high risk.

Focus recklessly lumps all these categories of men under a “homosexuality” banner and implies that all are at equal risk due to the honesty of some regarding their orientation, and not due to very specific high-risk behaviors. (Read More)

Stephen Bennett is a Connecticut-based ex-gay activist who counsels no ex-gays and offers no evidence of a past gay life, but who nevertheless requires $180,000 per year to support his antigay political campaigns.

His latest attempt at fund-raising and self-promotion, reported by Good As You, seems to encourage an HIV-positive Christian man to believe that a miracle — and not antiviral medication — has reduced the virus to undetectable levels. Bennett further reinforces the man’s belief that God alone has protected his wife during unsafe sex and protected his newborn son from infection — thus, he believes, excusing himself from taking precautions during future intimate relations.

Instead of cautioning the man to take his medications and use practical measures to protect his wife and future kids, Bennett champions the man’s dangerous delusion of being cured of HIV as “The Reason We Continue to Press on! Praise God!”