Advance Indiana has a very interesting in-depth article on homophobe and city-county council member Virginia Cain. Among her choice quotes:
Homosexuals have a shorter life span, are more likely to contract HIV/AIDS, experience serious bouts of depression and even suicide….
Thus, we need to help those who are entrapped in any kind of unhealthy lifestyle. I will never support something that is meant for destruction of human beings and our civilization.
I know that you probably know better than all this, but in case you don’t, let’s talk about the lifespan and AIDS issue. Half of the homosexuals in this world are lesbians, who have longer expected lifespans than heterosexual men and women, and who have the lowest instances of contracting HIV/AIDS of any group. That alone makes her statement false.
And when it comes to gay men, her statement makes it sound like AIDS is the fault of gay men, rather than something that has unfortunately happened to them. We don’t blame kids for contracting rheumatic fever, so why is she blaming gay men for the disease attacking them? Oh yeah, because she’s a bigot, that’s why.
Now lets talk about depression. We aren’t depressed because we’re gay. We’re depressed because people are filled with hatred and bigotry towards gay people, and they take it out on us by firing us from jobs, kicking us out of housing, throwing gay kids out into the streets, not letting us see our loved ones, stealing our children away from us, threatening us, beating us, raping us, and killing us.
In short, we’re depressed because of evil people like Virginia Cain. If she’d stop being a bigot, we’d be happy.
I think the only way her kind of evil can be stopped is by dragging her out of her coffin and into the sunlight. Social vampires like Ms. Cain can’t handle the light of truth.
Although it takes nothing away from the obvious bigotry of Ms. Cain, the problem of HIV/AIDS among gay men is not analogous to rheumatic fever or measles.
Measles and rheumatic fever are passively caught by being in a social situation with others who have the disease. HIV can’t, thankfully, be contracted this same way. It requires risky behaviors such as reuse of hypodermic needles and unprotected sex, although it can be transmitted through innocent means, namely condom malfunction and blood transfer.
Gay men who have unprotected sex are doubly at risk because while men who participate in only vaginal sex aren’t likely to catch the virus (unless the man has wounds on his penis), the anus has so much more bacteria of the bad kind that it somehow makes it easier to catch the virus (I’m not a doctor, so I don’t know the specifics of that process).
So while AIDS is not the fault of gay men, it is preventable and should not be the problem it has been.
Yes, and if you stay away from red meats, your cancer chances go way the hell down, but you don’t hear people elevating vegetarians and castigating carnivores as “deserving” of cancer. After all, it’s preventable and should not be the problem it has been…
Simply put, Virginia Cain is right-wing nutjob. She should know better seeing how high of a percentage of queers her district holds. I’d be willing to bet she doesn’t get re-elected after this.
Thanks Bil, I was going to make a similar point using other diseases transmitted by bodily fluids that don’t carry the same stigma as HIV because they don’t happen to have affected an oppressed minority.