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AIDS Awareness News: Sharing Disease is Not a Civil Right

First, men having sex with men are practicing anal intercourse, or sodomy. The anus and rectum are not suited to receive the penis. The anus functions to control emission of gases and expulsion of feces from the intestine. The ring of muscles called the anal sphincter serves as a valve, meant to direct one-way expulsion. The excretory system carries waste, putrefying matter, and live disease captured and expelled by the body¹s defenses. These organs are designed wondrously for expulsion, not penetration. When penetrated by the penis, the anus and rectum reflexively contract. But neither of these organs secrete any lubrication, as does the female vagina. Anal intercourse results in minute tears and lesions deep in these delicate interior tissues, causing bleeding and giving disease germs and virus return access to the man¹s bloodstream.

Sodomy has been illegal for generations. But in 1976, then-governor of California Jerry Brown struck down the anti-sodomy laws which had prohibited gay sex.

In 1986, on the federal level, the Supreme Court, in Bowers vs. Hardwick ruled there is no constitutional right to engage in sodomy, even though allowable as a personal choice. The Court at that time effectively declined to give a protected status to that behavior.

Medical records show that gays have HIV/AIDS and STDs disproportionately higher than the rest of the population. Reported among ³MSM,² men having sex with men, are 82.2 percent of California¹s AIDS cases cumulative 1981-¹95. This includes 8.4 percent gays who were also intravenous drug users (Health Profile ¹96, Department of Health Services, Sonoma County, 85). In 1997 MSM represented the largest proportion (60 percent) of men diagnosed nationally with AIDS (AIDS Prevention Fact Sheet, 1997-1998, Centers for Disease Control). Representing less than five percent of the total national population, homosexuals have been infected with 50 percent of the nation¹s syphilis cases (Atlantic Monthly, J ¹88). This high-risk group carries over half the nation¹s cases of intestinal infections and gonorrhea of the throat. (Kassler, Gay Men¹s Health, 38). A majority, even 90 percent of men having sex with men demonstrate chronic or recurrent viral infections with herpes, hepatitis, and genital warts (Ostrow et al, Diseases in Homosexual Men).

In the first decade after the legalization of sodomy, the San Francisco venereal disease rate increased to 22 times the national average. Over a ten-year period, the annual rate of hepatitis A increased 100 percent; hepatitis B increased 300 percent; amoebic colon infections increased 2500 percent. Each year of that ten-year period, the city¹s venereal disease clinics received 75,000 patients; nearly 80 percent were gay males. Twenty percent of these carried rectal gonorrhea. (San Jose Mercury News, Apr 24, 1980), (San Francisco Chronicle/ Examiner, Apr 23,¹79).

Furthermore, homosexual monogamy, particularly among males, is myth. One survey reported to the American Public Health Association that in a lifetime a typical gay may have 49 sexual partners and that 8 percent-12 percent have more than 500 partners in their lifetimes. (McKusick, ³AIDS and Sexual Behavior Reported by Gay Men in San Francisco,² American Journal of Public Health, May ¹85).

Early in the AIDS epidemic, investigative research conducted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control of Atlanta found the typical homosexual had over 500 different partners. In that same study group, that portion who were diagnosed HIV positive averaged 1100 different sexual partners (reported in Psychology Today, Jan ¹84, 56). An April ¹94 article in gay-oriented magazine Genre concluded that relationships between gays who live with partners are possible because the partners have ³outside affairs.² Psychologist Guy Baldwin, whose practice is largely a gay clientele, says in the Genre article, ³With all the talk about legalizing marriage for gays, there¹s an assumption in the minds of most (gay) people that I talk to that only rarely does that legalization include monogamy.²(34)

Destructive to personal physical health, the high-risk lifestyle is also destructive to social stability. That children learn by example, by imitation, is a well-known fact of child development. It is therefore not in a child¹s best interest to be raised by same-sex couples, who would model a high-risk, disease-prone lifestyle. Such an upbringing would deprive the child of best opportunities to develop male or female identities. Gay men and women may have wonderful personalities and talents to share, but these are best shared as aunts and uncles, not parents. They may make great contributions to society, but raising children best not be one of them. There need not be stigma in acceptance of this simple limitation.

Disease prevention seems an adequate reason that society should deny endorsement of ³sexual orientation² as a protected status. Is the spread of disease a civil right? It is clear anti-sodomy laws were based on wisdom, not prejudice.

Anatomy alone speaks simply, yet eloquently against homosexual expression. The Potter who shaped the Clay and called it good wondrously designed two to become one flesh. The Master Designer also gave prescriptions against homosexuality and sodomy. In His omniscience could He have known what we are learning the hard way? Men having sex with men spawn disease. Women having sex with women cannot become one flesh. Neither gay men nor gay women may produce the fruit of one-fleshness or share in the miracle of procreating life. Those unions are unhealthy, unsound, and unnatural. While society can respect and encourage the bonding and affection that may occur between two of the same sex, these relationships do not warrant sexual expression, let alone constitutional designation as an inalienable civil right.