Black gays launch ‘marriage equality’ campaign

A newly formed coalition of African-American gay leaders announced plans this week for a $100,000 media campaign to promote support in the black community for same-sex marriage and to fight a constitutional amendment banning such marriages.

At a Dec. 8 news conference in Washington, D.C., members of the National Black Justice Coalition said their goal, among other things, is to refute claims by anti-gay groups that the majority of African Americans oppose same-sex marriage.

“Do not be fooled by a few recent poll numbers into thinking that marriage will divide the black community in the upcoming election year,” said Keith Boykin, a White House aide during the Clinton administration and co-founder of the coalition. “We are here to correct the record in the media and to tell the public that marriage is not a wedge issue for African Americans.”

Boykin said the coalition’s media campaign calls for raising and spending $100,000 for advertisements targeting the African-American media and to develop a Web site to “counter right-wing misinformation about blacks and marriage equality.”

He said the coalition would hold future news conferences to announce new supporters of the campaign, including prominent African-American politicians, civil rights leaders and entertainers.

“By the beginning of the New Year, we will launch the first-ever Web site to counter right-wing misinformation about blacks and marriage equality,” Boykin said. “And soon after the New Year, we will be holding new events to announce new supporters of our campaign.”

Among those who have already endorsed the coalition’s efforts and who pledged support for same-sex marriage, according to literature released by the coalition, are Coretta Scott King, widow of the slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.; comedian and actress Whoopi Goldberg; Democratic presidential candidates Carol Moseley Braun and the Rev. Al Sharpton; U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.); and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.

Coalition to oppose FMA The coalition will urge all major national African-American political and civil rights leaders along with African-American religious leaders to support the campaign, Boykin and other coalition members said. They said the coalition would also urge these same leaders and groups to take a strong stand

Donna Payne, senior constituency field organizer for HRC, said conservatives are trying to use the gay marriage issue to divide the black vote in the 2004 elections. (Photo by Michael Wise) against the Federal Marriage Amendment, the proposed constitutional amendment seeking to ban same-sex marriage that lawmakers have introduced into the Senate and House of Representatives.

“The right-wing fired the first shots in this battle, but today we fire back,” said coalition member Donna Payne, senior constituency field organizer for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay political group.

“Make no mistake about it,” Payne said, “the proposed constitutional amendment is being used by the white religious right in an attempt to scare the African-American community into voting for their ultra-conservative agenda.

“We will not allow the out-of-touch radical right to divide the black community on this issue.”

In addition to Boykin and Payne, coalition members speaking at the news conference, which was held at the National Press Club in downtown D.C., included the Rev. Michaele Moore, pastor of God’s Living Spirit Church in D.C.; Mandy Carter, gay civil rights activist and national steering committee member of Freedom to Marry, a group coordinating efforts to legalize same-sex marriage; and Maurice Franklin, former executive staff member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Kenneth Reeves, the former mayor and current member of the Cambridge, Mass., City Council, was scheduled to attend the press conference but was held over in Boston due to a snowstorm. Reeves, an attorney, submitted a written statement pledging his support for the coalition’s efforts on behalf of same-sex marriage.

“Contrary to popular belief, black elected officials are not all homophobic,” Reeves said in his statement. “In fact, the Congressional Black Caucus has been one of the most supportive demographic groups on gay issues of any group in the United States Congress. Now I invite and encourage the caucus members and other black elected officials to speak out against the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment.”

What Homosexuals Do

The major surveys on homosexual behavior are summarized below. Two things stand out 1) homosexuals behave similarly world-over, and 2) as Harvard Medical Professor, Dr. William Haseltine,³³ noted in 1993, the "changes in sexual behavior that have been reported to have occurred in some groups have proved, for the most part, to be transient. For example, bath houses and sex clubs in many cities have either reopened or were never closed."

Homosexual Activities (in %)

		US¹⁶ US¹³US    US¹⁸ Denmark²⁰ US¹⁹  London²⁷  Sydney/London²⁶                                                            Canada²⁵                                                      
		1940s1977 83/84  1983  1984   1983    1985       1991                       
		ever ever  ever in yr in yr  in mo   in mo   last 6mo                                                                                  
oral/penile       83   99  100/99  99    86             67                 
anal/penile       68   91   93/98  95    92     95     100                 
oral/anal         59   83   92/92  63           69      89       55/65       
urine sex         10   23    29/                                              
fisting/toys      22   41/47 34                                       
fecal sex-eating        4     8                                                       
enemas        	       11    11                                               
torture sex       22   37    37                                              
public/orgy sex   61   76    88                                               
sex with minors   37   23    24/

ORAL SEX Homosexuals fellate almost all of their sexual contacts (and ingest semen from about half of these). Semen contains many of the germs carried in the blood. Because of this, gays who practice oral sex verge on consuming raw human blood, with all its medical risks. Since the penis often has tiny lesions (and often will have been in unsanitary places such as a rectum), individuals so involved may become infected with hepatitis A or gonorrhea (and even HIV and hepatitis B). Since many contacts occur between strangers (70% of gays estimated that they had had sex only once with over half of their partners^17,27), and gays average somewhere between 106 and 1105 different partners/year, the potential for infection is considerable.

RECTAL SEX Surveys indicate that about 90% of gays have engaged in rectal intercourse, and about two-thirds do it regularly. In a 6-month long study of daily sexual diaries,³ gays averaged 110 sex partners and 68 rectal encounters a year.

Rectal sex is dangerous. During rectal intercourse the rectum becomes a mixing bowl for 1) saliva and its germs and/or an artificial lubricant, 2) the recipient's own feces, 3) whatever germs, infections or substances the penis has on it, and 4) the seminal fluid of the inserter. Since sperm readily penetrate the rectal wall (which is only one cell thick) causing immunologic damage, and tearing or bruising of the anal wall is very common during anal/penile sex, these substances gain almost direct access to the blood stream. Unlike heterosexual intercourse (in which sperm cannot penetrate the multilayered vagina and no feces are present),⁷ rectal intercourse is probably the most sexually efficient way to spread hepatitis B, HIV syphilis and a host of other blood-borne diseases.

Tearing or ripping of the anal wall is especially likely with "fisting," where the hand and arm is inserted into the rectum. It is also common when "toys" are employed (homosexual lingo for objects which are inserted into the rectum--bottles, carrots, even gerbils⁸). The risk of contamination and/or having to wear a colostomy bag from such "sport" is very real. Fisting was apparently so rare in Kinsey's time that he didn't think to talk about it. By 1977, well over a third of gays admitted to doing it. The rectum was not designed to accommodate the fist, and those who do so can find themselves consigned to diapers for life.

FECAL SEX About 80% of gays (see Table) admit to licking and/or inserting their tongues into the anus of partners and thus ingesting medically significant amounts of feces. Those who eat or wallow in it are probably at even greater risk. In the diary study,⁵ 70% of the gays had engaged in this activity--half regularly over 6 months. Result? --the "annual incidence of hepatitis A in...homosexual men was 22 percent, whereas no heterosexual men acquired hepatitis A." In 1992,²⁶ it was noted that the proportion of London gays engaging in oral/anal sex had not declined since 1984.

While the body has defenses against fecal germs, exposure to the fecal discharge of dozens of strangers each year is extremely unhealthy. Ingestion of human waste is the major route of contracting hepatitis A and the enteric parasites collectively known as the Gay Bowel Syndrome. Consumption of feces has also been implicated in the transmission of typhoid fever,⁹ herpes, and cancer.²⁷ About 10% of gays have eaten or played with [e.g., enemas, wallowing in feces]. The San Francisco Department of Public Health saw 75,000 patients per year, of whom 70 to 80 per cent are homosexual men....An average of 10 per cent of all patients and asymptomatic contacts reported...because of positive fecal samples or cultures for amoeba, giardia, and shigella infections were employed as food handlers in public establishments; almost 5 per cent of those with hepatitis A were similarly employed."¹⁰ In 1976, a rare airborne scarlet fever broke out among gays and just missed sweeping through San Francisco.¹⁰ The U.S. Centers for Disease Control reported that 29% of the hepatitis A cases in Denver, 66% in New York, 50% in San Francisco, 56% in Toronto, 42% in Montreal and 26% in Melbourne in the first six months of 1991 were among gays.¹¹ A 1982 study "suggested that some transmission from the homosexual group to the general population may have occurred."¹²

URINE SEX About 10% of Kinsey's gays reported having engaged in "golden showers" [drinking or being splashed with urine]. In the largest survey of gays ever conducted,¹³ 23% admitted to urine-sex. In the largest random survey of gays,⁶ 29% reported urine-sex. In a San Francisco study of 655 gays,¹⁴ only 24% claimed to have been monogamous in the past year. Of these monogamous gays, 5% drank urine, 7% practiced "fisting," 33% ingested feces via anal/oral contact, 53% swallowed semen, and 59% received semen in their rectum during the previous month.

OTHER GAY SEX PRACTICES

SADOMASOCHISM as the Table indicates, a large minority of gays engage in torture for sexual fun. Sex with minors 25% of white gays¹⁷ admitted to sex with boys 16 or younger as adults. In a 9-state study,³⁰ 33% of the 181 male, and 22% of the 18 female teachers caught molesting students did so homosexually (though less than 3% of men and 2% of women engage in homosexuality³¹). Depending on the study, the percent of gays reporting sex in public restrooms ranged from 14%¹⁶ to 41%¹³ to 66%,⁶ 9%¹⁶, 60%¹³ and 67%⁵ reported sex in gay baths; 64%¹⁶ and 90%¹⁸ said that they used illegal drugs.

Fear of AIDS may have reduced the volume of gay sex partners, but the numbers are prodigious by any standard. Morin¹⁵ reported that 824 gays had lowered their sex-rate from 70 different partners/yr. in 1982 to 50/yr. by 1984. McKusick¹⁴ reported declines from 76/yr. to 47/yr. in 1985. In Spain³² the average was 42/yr. in 1989.

Medical Consequences of Homosexual Sex

Death and disease accompany promiscuous and unsanitary sexual activity. 70%25 to 78%x,¹³ of gays reported having had a sexually transmitted disease. The proportion with intestinal parasites (worms, flukes, amoeba) ranged from 25%¹⁸ to 39%¹⁹ to 59%.²⁰ As of 1992, 83% of U.S. AIDS in whites had occurred in gays.²¹ The Seattle sexual diary study³? reported that gays had, on a yearly average:

fellated 108 men and swallowed semen from 48;
exchanged saliva with 96;
experienced 68 penile penetrations of the anus; and
ingested fecal material from 19.

No wonder 10% came down with hepatitis B and 7% contracted hepatitis A during the 6-month study.

Effects on the Lifespan

Smokers and drug addicts don't live as long as non-smokers or non-addicts, so we consider smoking and narcotics abuse harmful. The typical life-span of homosexuals suggests that their activities are more destructive than smoking nd as dangerous as drugs.

Obituaries numbering 6,516 from 16 U.S. homosexual journals over the past 12 years were compared to a large sample of obituaries from regular newspapers.²³ The obituaries from the regular newspapers were similar to U.S. averages for longevity; the medium age of death of married men was 75, and 80% of them died old (age 65 or older). For unmarried or divorced men the median age of death was 57, and 32% of them died old. Married women averaged age 79 at death; 85% died old. Unmarried and divorced women averaged age 71, and 60% of them died old.

The median age of death for homosexuals, however, was virtually the same nationwide--and, overall, less than 2% survived to old age. If AIDS was the cause of death, the median age was 39. For the 829 gays who died of something other than AIDS, the median age of death was 42, and 9% died old. The 163 lesbians had a median age of death of 44, and 20% died old.

Two and eight-tenths percent (2.8%) of gays died violently. They were 116 times more apt to be murdered; 24 times more apt to commit suicide; and had a traffic-accident death-rate 18 times the rate of comparably-aged white males. Heart attacks, cancer and liver failure were exceptionally common. Twenty percent of lesbians died of murder, suicide, or accident--a rate 487 times higher than that of white females aged 25-44. The age distribution of samples of homosexuals in the scientific literature from 1989 to 1992 suggests a similarly shortened life-span.

The Gay Legacy

Homosexuals rode into the dawn of sexual freedom and returned with a plague that gives every indication of destroying most of them. Those who treat AIDS patients are at great risk, not only from HIV infection, which as of 1992 involved over 100 health care workers,²¹ but also from TB and new strains of other diseases.²⁴ Those who are housed with AIDS patients are also at risk.²⁴ Those who are housed with AIDS patients are also at risk.²⁴ Dr. Max Essex, chair of the Harvard AIDS Institute, warned congress in 1992 that "AIDS has already led to other kinds of dangerous epidemics...If AIDS is not eliminated, other new lethal microbes will emerge, and neither safe sex nor drug free practices will prevent them."²⁸ At least 8, and perhaps as many as 30 ²⁹ patients had been infected with HIV by health care workers as of 1992.

The Biological Swapmeet

The typical sexual practices of homosexuals are a medical horror story --imagine exchanging saliva, feces, semen and/or blood with dozens of different men each year. Imagine drinking urine, ingesting feces and experiencing rectal trauma on a regular basis. Often these encounters occur while the participants are drunk, high, and/or in an orgy setting. Further, many of them occur in extremely unsanitary places (bathrooms, dirty peep shows), or, because homosexuals travel so frequently, in other parts of the world.

Every year, a quarter or more of homosexuals visit another country.²⁰Fresh American germs get taken to Europe, Africa and Asia. And fresh pathogens from these continents come here. Foreign homosexuals regularly visit the U.S. and participate in this biological swapmeet.

The Pattern of Infection

Unfortunately the danger of these exchanges does not merely affect homosexuals. Travelers carried so many tropical diseases to New York City that it had to institute a tropical disease center, and gays carried HIV from New York City to the rest of the world.²⁷ Most of the 6,349 Americans who got AIDS from contaminated blood as of 1992, received it from homosexuals and most of the women in California who got AIDS through heterosexual activity got it from men who engaged in homosexual behavior.²³ The rare form of airborne scarlet fever that stalked San Francisco in 1976 also started among homosexuals.¹⁰

Genuine Compassion

Society is legitimately concerned with health risks-- they impact our taxes and everyone's chances of illness and injury. Because we care about them, smokers are discouraged from smoking by higher insurance premiums, taxes on cigarettes and bans against smoking in public. These social pressures cause many to quit. They likewise encourage non-smokers to stay non-smokers.

Homosexuals are sexually troubled people engaging in dangerous activities. Because we care about them and those tempted to join them, it is important that we neither encourage nor legitimize such a destructive lifestyle.

Well, let's just counter that "left wing" propaganda about gays really 'just wanting to be like hetrosexuals and be in monogamous, loving, marriages'! Check out what happened to the HIV/AIDS control officer for Public Health - Seattle & King County, when he even dared to suggest that gay men be monogamous to stem the tide of AIDS:

article

"I've come to realize that rates of HIV infection in gay men in Seattle, King County, and other large urban areas, are on average above the sub-Saharan Africa levels of infection. (emphasis mine)

My fifth "prescription" to the gay and bisexual male community to address the problem of increasing STD, and likely increasing HIV infections locally, consisted of the following recommendations (slightly restated):

---That we gay and bi men significantly reduce our number of sexual partners and work toward longer-term relationships. Long-term partnerships would permit us to have sex while reducing exposures to more people and more bugs.

---That we return to using condoms consistently and correctly with new partners.

---That we tell our partners whenever we know we carry an infection; most of us would want that for ourselves. That people who experience risk get tested for HIV and other STD regularly.

---That we work individually and collectively to reduce the amount of disease in our community to counter the image some have of us that we are full of infections; and That we help the larger community see that it cannot be truly healthy until our potential to be healthy is supported and achieved."

...."On to the other responses. Paul Feldman, whom I've known for a decade, wrote the SGN to get readers to continue to "reaffirm ourselves as sexual beings. It's not how many people you f***, it's how you do it..." He didn't think my "prescription for us to be in committed relationships is helpful... And, come on, do you really think sportf***ing is going away any time soon, no matter what you or anyone else says about it?" He then proceeded to present his five suggestions for HIV prevention."

"....I agree with Paul that sexual freedom, and non-relationship sex have been important, even normative hallmarks of the gay community since at least Stonewall,..."

"Some of the responses to my last article were long and complex, but one I got by email was short, fairly direct, and not signed. A "fag who can think for himself" was the first to write to me to say he though I was "so funny!" He wondered if it hadn't occurred to me that some "men who love men" [his quotes] don't want a "long-term relationship" and prefer to have sex with as many partners "as we like...we'd prefer to take out chances [with STDs and/or HIV] rather than be 'good little boys' like you'd prefer us to be and settle down for a boring, unfulfilling sex life (similar to what you must experience). So, here's your prescription: do us a favor and f*** off and die already!..."

"Another email comment came from a fellow who had "a problem with … [my] statements about single people [which] seem uninformed and insensitive." While he felt the information I presented was valid, I displayed "a bias and classism that can only make it more difficult for [me] and the County to address the problem of HIV prevention." He said, "Don't patronize your target group, and keep your sanctimonious middle-class judgments out of this please."

"So, how do Seattle gay men compare with those sub-Saharan Africa rates? Our estimate is that about 14-15% (one of seven) of an estimated 40,000 gay and bisexual men locally are currently infected with HIV. Further, among the 2,000 or so gay and bisexual men who have the additional risk of injecting drugs, about 40-50% are HIV-infected. These rates of HIV infection in men who have sex with other men are similar to those seen in most other large urban areas in developed countries, and perhaps less in Seattle than in bigger and more gay cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, and New York."

Also, how about the "Bug chasers" who WANT HIV, so that they can 'feel a part of the gay community'! I saw this on the John Walsh show. Here is a synopsis:

"12-2-2003 People Who Want HIV < Talk Show First > It's called "bug chasing" and it's a disturbing trend in the young, gay community. It's when gay men deliberately set out to become HIV positive. When Doug was 19, he had unprotected sex with many men in the hopes of contracting HIV. His wish came true and he has been battling the deadly disease ever since. Doug told John that many young, gay men think being HIV + will make them popular in the gay community. Despite his initial high hopes, the disease has been nothing but a curse for Doug...Brian appared in silhouette so no one would recognize him. He was also a "bug chaser" and said he was happy when he found out he was HIV positive. Brian said that many gay men have approached him wanting to be infected with the disease. He said he has been offered thousands of dollars to spread HIV, but has not given in yet although he may in the future..."

And get ready, gay marriage is just the start, if you want to go down that road! Here is the next "marriage" that your tax dollars will pay for. We will have to provide benefits for all of these "spouses"...maybe not at first, but once marriage is undefined and allowed to be changed legally from one man and one woman, anyone could sue to get this kind of marriage with medical benefits for all!:

Another John Walsh show:

11-8-2002 "Polyamory: A Different Kind of Love" Janet and Sasha are married, but recently blended their family with Cindy and Juan. Cindy and Juan moved in and both couples became sexually intimate with each other! They all hugged when they came on to the set. Cindy and Juan's son and daughter, Cody & Jennifer, say they accept what their parents are doing as long as they are happy. To make things even more complicated, John introduced both couples to Melanie, who wants to join in with them!

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