What I remember being said twenty years ago, and very loudly at that juncture, was that the promiscuous lifestyle of SOME homosexual men must stop so HIV/AIDS can be either reduced and/or eliminated. (Discussions concerning quarantine of infected individuals were prevalent and hotly debated during that period, too.)
This whole situation caught my attention. I was in the Navy when AIDS began to infect sailors, some gay and some straight. I vividly recall the debate as I was stationed in Europe and most the cases occurring there were either sea-going sailors OR land-based Army personnel in Germany.
Certain anti-homosexual US public figures tried to use the AIDS epidemic to smear the US homosexual community. But the reason I said the above to Stavka is because he has told me HIV is mainly a problem for homosexuals and so they are a serious risk to the Russian population. Therefore, he proposes to ban homosexuality in Russia, ignoring the fact that sexual transmission of AIDS in many countries mainly occurs through heterosexual intercourse.
What I remember being said twenty years ago, and very loudly at that juncture, was that the promiscuous lifestyle of SOME homosexual men must stop so HIV/AIDS can be either reduced and/or eliminated.
Yes, you are right, but the fact that AIDS mainly spread by heterosexual intercourse (that was the single biggest risk factor) in Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia etc, at that time, was unfortunately ignored by the US government. In fact, they played down the risks for heterosexuals for the first few years of the epidemic in the USA and Britain. It seems the Russians are doing the same thing.