« Nancy Pelosi Takes Charge of Congressional Cafeterias | Main | FARC Curriculum Vitae »

OT: Catholics play vital role in helping migrants to U.S

Apparently there are reasons for the natural revulsion healthy people feel toward homosexuality, and for the stringent taboo against it in cultures throughout the world.

Sticking your most intimate member up another man's most intimate and smelly orifice, probing and mashing around in his feces... I wonder why it could possibly be considered taboo.

So how come traditional ethnic culture is superior to Western values except when it comes to sexual depreavity?

See, you have a lot in common with the Islamofascists. They hate gays too.

They get their so-called "morality" from an ancient book of nonsense too.

They "love" thir countries, too.

They support their troops or "martyrs" or whatever you want to call them.

Why can't you guys get along..?

Gee, i've never heard of any disease being spread through heterosexual contact...

have you?

This article is inaccurate and misleading.
MRSA is already in the general population.
I few months ago I saw a news story about athletes getting it in lockerrooms. I know 2 coworkers who got it in the past year, and I recently had it and we're all straight. One coworker had to be treated intravenously and the other one and I were treated with pills and topical creme developed specifically to treat MRSA. The one who had to be treated intravenously almost died.

"ANNALS of Internal Medicine"?? LOL!

Liberal Moonbats have alot in common with Islamofascists - they both hate Christians and want them all dead or at least in prison camps as free labor.

so much for God's punishment to the gay population...

Funny thing about leftards. They get really pissy when you point out the deviant and unhealthy practices of a substantial fraction of the gay sub-culture. Yet, they love to insult people who disagree with them by insinuating that they are homosexuals themselves or that their children (John Roberts's son for example) are homosexuals.

Of course MRSA is in the general population as is AIDS - but it points out homosexuals are 13 times more likely to have MRSA in cities with large homosexual populations where its spread more easily. Like its similar with AIDS - at least in civilized countries. 3rd world and the entire continent of Africa are an exception. Disease is more rampant because many there live like animals, humping everything with a head.

Fuuny thing about Wingnuts: They hate homosexuals, calling them deviant, revolting, and depraved.

and one of the few subjects where they actually refer in a positive way to the previously ridiculed and rejected, "other cultures" in the world.

As if there were "other cultures", huh, boys?

Hey anon, have you ever been to Africa? Do you live in a "civilized " country? You sure as hell don't sound like you come form one.

Pointing out biological truth is not hate. No one said heterosexuals didn't pass diseases.

Because of the nature of the flora and fauna of the lower intestines and the tearing of tissues not intended for intercourse, there are additional opportunities for the spread of diseases, beyond what happens with heterosexual promiscuity.

There are solid biological reasons for many of the long-standing taboos that cross cultural boundaries. We are sorry that it interferes with your hedonism, that is just the way it is.

[That includes smoking or eating too much hashish. Been there, done that - thirty years ago.]

Is that dude a twink? or a bear?

Okay so I was going to go on with that, to make a joke and have everybody laugh and feel grossed out at the same time, but after I wrote that first part
I felt like I needed to go scrub myself down with steel wool.

Gross story, VH, yikes.

Actually, Anon, I know a few gay conservatives, at least through the innernets. They will tell you, to a person, they take way more sh-t from gays for being conservative or Republican than they take from conservatives for being gay.

The "conservatives hate gays" meme is a left-wing myth, a bogey-man they use to keep gays on the Democrat plantation. "Don't vote Republican or the religious right is gonna gitch ya!"

Fred Phelps, after all, is a registered Democrat, who ran for office as a Democrat, and who ran for office as a Democrat.

The right-wing does not want to rush into a re-ordering of society to accommodate the whims and fetishes of the gay culture. But that in itself is not hateful. Wishing cancer, misery, and death on people with different political opinions is hate... and the left pretty much owns that piece of real estate.

biological truth is not hate.

Caliing a significant portion of the population depraved, and deviant,based on sexual preference between consenting adults is.

so tell, me then, Mr. Biologist, what are the biological reasons for cross cultural taboos? I'd say most " taboos" are not based on scientific rationale at all, but religious beleief and superstition. There are actually very very few cross cultural, taboos that transcend time and culture. Just about everything has been permissable somewhere at some time.

Actually, given homosexualites widespread, mainstrema acceptance by the majority of US population, I wouldn't call it a taboo at all. In "civilized" countries that is.

Here is what Freud has to say about taboos:

"Taboos, we must suppose, are prohibitions of primæval antiquity which were at some time externally imposed upon a generation of primitive men; they must, that is to say, no doubt have been impressed on them violently by the previous generation. These prohibitions must have concerned activities towards which there was a strong inclination. They must then have persisted from generation to generation, perhaps merely as a result of tradition transmitted through parental and social authority."[5]
And so, "Anyone who has violated a taboo becomes taboo himself because he possesses the dangerous quality of tempting others to follow his example."

So maybe, a deeper examination of yourself, would explain why you think homosexuality in America is taboo.

A gay Republican in El Paso was responsible for part of my evolution from Classical Liberal to Conservative. He was part of a theatre group in which my wife performed.

I asked him "How could he belong to the same party as Jesse Helms?" He replied that "he wasn't thrilled with Jesse Helms, but as a small business owner, he liked the economic policies of President Reagan (lower taxes, less regulation)." That was an awakening moment.

"I say we nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."

Fire purifies filth.

In a practical sense, taboos are established to limit behaviors that have a negative impact on the culture. Incest causes genetic defects; therefore incest is taboo in all cultures. Muslim and Jewish prohibitions against eating pork were established because of the presence of trichinosis. All societies discourage homosexual behavior because it diminishes a culture's reproductive capacity, erodes core institutions centering on the family unit, and furthers the spread of disease. Ancient taboos can be made obsolete by changing circumstances (like the relative safety of a nice ham sandwich) but some retain validity. The point of this post is that homosexual behavior still carries with it a much higher risk of serious disease. This is not really debatable. While I believe a free society certainly must tolerate behaviors (including homosexuality) that involve an individuals right to decide what he or she wants to do in their private moments (and that don’t cause injury to other people), the interests of the vast majority are served by withholding approval of those activities that have the potential to cause widespread harm throughout that society (like Will and Grace or Ikea outlets). Homosexuality is accepted as a fact of life in our culture. We don’t crush homosexuals under stone walls or throw them off the tops of buildings. We also don’t let them get “married”, because that makes a joke of a core institution. There are still valid reasons why a society would have an interest in not celebrating homosexuality as an equivalent, consequence-free lifestyle choice.

Hey Hashfanatic Imposter,

Islamofascists and leftwingers both want a U.S. defeat in Iraq. Does that make them the same?

Context is something you are always sure to lack. So its no surprise that you fabricate a false alias to praise yourself. The psychological implications are hilarious!

is Freedom Now your real name? How is hashfanaticFAN a false alias? I am not the same guy as hashfanatic. i am his biggerst fan.

do you know what the word "alias" means?

yes, i know fern - that's his real name.

the consequences of one's behavior will always catch up with them.

i smoke and will more than likely develop a lung disease. i like smoking.

sphincter spelunking has its own consequences.

Both the Roman and Greek empires fell when homosexuality became accepted behavior done out in the open. Looks like America is well on the road to hell.

Of course gays like their perversions of packing another mans fudge and squirting their fluids all over the place so naturally they arent going to agree. Thats not to say normal heterosexuals dont get into perversion too like the Rusty Trombone or a man packing a woman fudge, just another indication of how perverted society has become.

Yes indeed ladies, if your man keeps asking to pack your fudge or actually does it, run the other way - he is likely really a gay man and one day you will likely catch him mounting the pool man or the mail man.

"Both the Roman and Greek empires fell when homosexuality became accepted behavior done out in the open"

That is so funny.
What do you know about the classic civilization? What do you know about Adriano and Antinous? Their time is one of the greatest peaks of the civilization.
Where do you base your statements on?

What do I base my comments on? Both the Greek and Roman empires are gone - kaput, history. Homosexuality ran rampant then the decline began. Many say America today is at its peak and its all downhill from here. History says they are probably right.

" Both the Greek and Roman empires are gone "

Are you talking seriosly? The language what you use to say that, is largely based on the language of the Roman empire, the Law code utilized in the western world is based on the Roman Law, the knowledge of the actual world is a mirror of the Greek philosophy and its methodology.

" Homosexuality ran rampant then the decline began"

If you want to attack the homosexuality, I do recommend you forget the greek and roman world, and to look for another arguings.

I think the widespread acceptance of homosexuality in Greek and Roman cultures was a symptom of decline, not a cause.

Then, the triumphs on the battlefield of warriors as Alejandro Magno or Julio Cesar can be seen as a symptom of decline too, since they had an active homosexual life.

To echo Beef, I suspect many religiouis precepts actually arose from public health considerations. For example, many Jewish and Muslim dietary law essentially prohibit eating things that at that time one was ill-advised to eat in general (e.g., pork) or to do so in a hot climate lacking refrigeration (filter-feeders such as crabs). (Extending this notion to public policy considerations neatly explains prohibitions against, e.g., murder, adultery, and theft.)

The same thing is probably true of homosexuality, and we’re seeing the reason for it here. In normal sexual relations men are the throttle, women the brakes. Male homosexuality is all throttle, which means diseases spread like wildfire among its practitioners.

That doesn’t mean that the diseases are necessarily confined to homosexuals, but that through the promiscuity for which male homosexuals are renowned (which male heterosexuals can only dream of matching) any disease that enters that subpopulation spreads like a shot.

MRSA is only the latest in a long line of such diseases, joining AIDS, hepatitis B, and gonorrhea. In fact, epidemiologists used hepatitis B as the model for trying to understand the spread of AIDS, because the same people engaging in the same practices were spreading it.

Homosexuals shouldn’t be picked on, but they shouldn’t be held up as worthy of emulation either, and their practices should not be taught as just another lifestyle, equally valid and equivalent to a normal one (any more than use of heroin is, and for much the same reason). I think perhaps a discreet silence on the subject is more appropriate, rather like the polite way to handle someone breaking wind at a dinner party - everyone acts as though he didn’t notice it.

Carlos,
Who the hell is Julio Cesar? Do you mean Julius Ceasar?

Gaius Julius Caesar, yes.

The another guy is Megalexandros, Alexander the Great.

Thats bisexuality Carlos. In the ancient world it was still considered to be a social stigma to be an effeminate gay man.

The bisexuality, as conceived today, was not existing in the greco-roman world, remarkably in the first one. This because the role attributed to the women in a so sexist society as the greco-roman, although this was not always in a so homogeneous way. The ideal relationship to a free man was of homosexual type.

Why do you compare the homosexuality with to be an effeminate man?
Were Achiles and Patroclo effeminate men? Were the teban soldiers?

The way of thinking was that the women were necessary for the perpetuation of the group, but unfortunately, the woman was not considered as a being at the same level than the man, then only between two male free citizen a "pure" relationship can happen, a relation between equal ones. The ancient world was very different to our actual societies in many ways.

Well, I am afraid this would deserve much more room, but it is too much late where I am, good night!

I imagine that you are talking about Sacred Band of Thebes.

What I was referring to was that the practice of exclusive homosexuality and those who displayed effeminate traits was frowned upon by ancient society as evidenced by contemporary authors of the time like Plutarch, Xenophon and the research of later scholars like Edward Gibbon.

Clearly the Sacred Band of Thebes were not effeminate and highly regarded as soldiers. They justified their relationships through the benefits that the bonding gave them to fight for one another. The fact that they had to justify this behavior proves that there was a social stigma to such relationships.

The human desire to procreate has always been dominant, although I suspect that will change with the advances in reproductive medicine. It will take time for our natural instincts for the survival of our species to be overcome.

Regardless, it is also true that homosexual acts represent more risky behavior for STDs, hepatitis and anal cancer.

" The fact that they had to justify this behavior proves that there was a social stigma to such relationships"

Yes, it had to be a very big stigma, but surely the warriors, that did celebrate the holy homosexual marriages before the tomb of Iolao, had not a good information about that stigma, because they did go doing it for centuries on.

In the ancient Greece and Rome, God had a very active homosexual life. The male homosexuality was part of the social structure of the greek-roman world, in all the ways, society, politics, military, religion...etc. Any interpretation that pretends deny this reality is just absurd. If somebody wants to say the homosexuality was not accepted in a society, he should forget the greek and roman societies, and look for another better and less homosexual society, maybe the Iran of Ahmadineyad.

If you are reading Plutarch, go reading on, you will find very interesting things. Do read Plato, Eric Bethe, Kenneth Dover...,etc, too.

"it is also true that homosexual acts represent more risky behavior"

And the heterosexual acts represent a highly risk for vaginal cancer and a lot of male diseases, should the women refuse to have sex with men? Not, because it is not the conduct homosexual or heterosexual, but the individual behaviour of each person, homo or hetero, what determines that risk.
Really, is it necessary to go having to explain things like this on? Maybe yes, some people seems to think the homosexual people are just a focus of diseases, it is very funny when that people are not able to understand that the hospitals are full of homosexual doctors and nurses caring for the health of that people.

Sorry, I would like to go on but again it is very late here. Good night!

Anal sex is much riskier than vaginal sex. I'm surprised that you deny that.

Also the homosexual lifestyle is traditionally much more promiscuous. I'm not saying all of them are, but it was another factor that contributed to the rapid spread of AIDS in the 80s.

Ancient authors like Plutarch are so great because of their love for gossip. Its completely unprofessional, but its great to read something thats almost 2,000 years old and get such an insight into their world. People were not really that much different than today. Only time and technology separate us.

"Anal sex is much riskier than vaginal sex. I'm surprised that you deny that."

Anal sex is not riskier than vaginal sex, again it is your individual behaviour what determines the risk, if you use prophylactics, condoms, etc.., the risk is very reduced in both cases. If you do not use it, then the anal sex and vaginal sex have a similar incidency of risk.

"Also the homosexual lifestyle is traditionally much more promiscuous. I'm not saying all of them are, but it was another factor that contributed to the rapid spread of AIDS in the 80s"

The homosexual lifestyles are so promiscuous like the heterosexual ones, you can see it any night of a weekend. The first known analysis of blood containing HIV, was taken in 1959 to a heterosexual british sailor, followed by another heterosexual norvegian sailor in 1979, the AIDS was transmitted for different heterosexual sailors reaching the first cases on homosexual men in 1981, then somebody put the blame on the homosexual people calling it as "gay cancer", forgetting conveniently the previous cases on the heterosexual people without calling it as "hetero cancer", and accusing the homosexual lifestyle to bring the sickness to the heterosexual people, should now the homo people to sue and put the blame on the hetero people because they did bring a deadly sickness on the homo people?

" but its great to read something thats almost 2,000 years old and get such an insight into their world. "

Yes, it is how to learn unknown things about our familiy, our grandparents and the parents of our grandparents. The people in the ancient time, they had one only life, after nothing, they had time of peace and time of war, they did the same questions about the life, the death and the world, and their brightness and mistakes, are very similar to our own brightness and mistakes.

some people seems to think the homosexual people are just a focus of diseases

I believe those people are called "epidemiologists," Carlos. New English word for you.

Basically, give it up. Babbling about Plutarch & Co., and talking about some anonymous sailors from 50 years ago, etc., doesn't make it.

In the last analysis, homosexuality is unnatural, unhealthy, and spreads diseases that would not normally be that big a problem, all because of the notorious promiscuity of the homosexual lifestyle.

Read And the Band Played On. Gaetan Dugas, aka "Patient Zero," boasted that he'd engaged in homosexual relations (I won't dignify them by calling them "sex") with 5000 different men in the previous three years. Do the arithmetic: that's almost five guys per day, every day for three years. Promiscuous? I'm thinking, yes.

"I believe those people are called "epidemiologists,"

Epidemiologists are people that use statistics and count with a scientific formation, any reliable epidemiologist would say "the homosexual people are just a focus of diseases". May you provide me a link with a known epidemiologist saying that?

"Basically, give it up. Babbling about Plutarch & Co., and talking about some anonymous sailors from 50 years ago, etc., doesn't make it."

Ify you do not know what I am talking about, it is better for you to keep in silence, that anonymous sailors are anonymous for you, not for that epidemiologists that you mention in your first paragraph. I do talk about sailors from 40 years ago, because it was 40 years ago that that blood samples were taken, I can not change that to the liking of you. Do you prefer the scientific community and we just omit talk about that samples on the basis of "it was 40 years ago". That samples are admitted in Europe, North America, Japan... Now I ask you, may you prove that that samples are irrelevants and why?

"In the last analysis, homosexuality is unnatural, unhealthy, and spreads diseases that would not normally be that big a problem, all because of the notorious promiscuity of the homosexual lifestyle."

What analysis are you talking about? I do not understand.

"Gaetan Dugas, aka "Patient Zero," boasted that he'd engaged in homosexual relations (I won't dignify them by calling them "sex") with 5000 different men in the previous three years."

Gaetan Dugas said have had sex with 2500 men in all his life. You seem want to associate Gaetan Dugas as representative of all the homosexual ones, I do not know when he was voted for that. What do you want to mean? That Gaetan Dugas was a promiscuous man? I have no doubt, so promiscuous as a lot of heterosexual men all over the world. Are you going to talk about them in the same way?

In his book, great and interesting book, I remember that Randy Shilts stated the date of the bicentennary celebration in New York, in 1976 as a hypothesis to the arriving of the AIDS to United States. Now we know that the infection arrived to United States in 1969, much before that Gaetan Dugas was diagnosed as HIV carrier.
He was a vain and stupid man, but he was not the zero patient.

Easy there, big fella. If homosexuality doesn't increase the likelihood of disease, you and your playmates have nothing to worry about, right?

So organizations such as Gay Men's Health Crisis, ActUP, and all those outfits agitating for research on diseases attacking the "gay" community, were misinforming us because those diseases were no more prevalent among their constituency than among any other. That's great news! We can then cut funding for AIDS research and refocus efforts on cancer and heart disease that affect everyone, right?

Btw, it was Shilts who identified Dugas as Patient Zero, although frankly I don't care whether or not he really was the index patient in the epidemiological sense.

"We can then cut funding for AIDS research and refocus efforts on cancer and heart disease that affect everyone, right?"

It is very right for me, Jay, I do not live in your country, it is not me who will pay the bill of AIDS in the next years, if US does cut the fundings now and leave the sickness progress in your country.
There is many homosexual people with cancer and heart disease that can be very happy with your idea, but there is many heterosexual people with AIDS that probably will not think you had a great idea.

" We can then cut funding for AIDS"

You do speak as if only you and "your playmates" are putting the money. There is so many gay people fighting against the AIDS because they have not so much fear to be stigmatized as the hetero people been associated with AIDS. That people pays their taxes and they expect a return of their own money for the things that they are interested, as to fight for a sickness that can infect anybody, or do you think the homosexual people are going to pay taxes only for the things what you are interested in?

" it was Shilts who identified Dugas as Patient Zero"

It was not Shilts who did it, Dugas was identified as "zero" by the medical team researching the origin of the infection, Shilts did take the term for his book, and the media did the rest, blaming wrongly one only man.

Small correction, I said "your playmates," not mine.

Homosexuals do pay taxes, and deserve to be looked after in how those taxes are spent. On the other hand, we spend on AIDS an amount vastly disproportionate to the public health problem it poses (compared to, e.g., cancer and heart disease), and that's because homosexual activists have agitated for it.

But you've (no doubt willfully) missed the point: that homosexuals are "interested" in AIDS research not because they're "stigmatized" by it, but because they're disproportionately at risk from it.

Which is where we came in. Homosexuality is associated with exceptionally high risks of a variety of serious diseases (gonorrhea, hepatitis B, AIDS, and now MRSA infections). Except for gonorrhea, the risk profile is much like that of IV heroin users, another lifestyle that is not recommended, and for many of the same reasons.

"Small correction, I said "your playmates," not mine."

And I do say the same thing about you and your friends, do not you like it?

"we spend on AIDS an amount vastly disproportionate to the public health problem it poses (compared to, e.g., cancer and heart disease),"

You can not able to understand the difference between diseases considered as structural ones, and a sicknes of viric character, that is a danger for people with cancer and heart disease as well as for people without that diseases. A virus can mute in any moment, become stronger, become infectious by air as a grippe, a viric disease is not predictable and we have to investigate it and control it. We are having much luck relatively until now.

"they're disproportionately at risk from it."

Everybody can be infected, the virus does not differences. The infection is associated to behaviours of risk, if a homosexual does not that behaviour he is not at risk, if a heterosexual does that behaviour he is at risk.

" Homosexuality is associated with exceptionally high risks of a variety of serious diseases (gonorrhea, hepatitis B, AIDS, and now MRSA infections)."

Exceptionally high risks? Please, do you want provide me a link? I am very intrigued to know where do you take that statements from. The sexual orientation has any known relation with any type of sickness, again it is the behaviour of risk.

Good night!

become infectious by air as a grippe

Last time I looked, AIDS wasn't transmitted by heavy breathing, although I suppose it is associated with heavy breathing.

Seriously, though, we should investigate AIDS, but at a more reasonable (i.e., lower) priority than at present. Normal people aren't at much risk from it, at least at present, and since homosexuals aren't either, according to you, then there's no urgency, is there?

Sure AIDS may be become a wide risk in the future, but cancer and heart disease are the major causes of death right now. Surely it makes more sense to focus on present risks rather than potential future ones.

Everybody can be infected, the virus does not differences.

Silly statement. Of course everyone can be infected, we're talking about who is most likely to be infected. Guys cruising gay bars in the Castro taking on all comers (?), yup. Nuns in convents on mountaintops in Switzerland, not so much. We're talking about relative risks.

The infection is associated to behaviours of risk, if a homosexual does not that behaviour he is not at risk,

Are you trying to convince me or yourself?

"Surely it makes more sense to focus on present risks rather than potential future ones"

If you think so, it is ok for me, I think it is a similar sentence to what the authorities of Paris said a months before that the nazi troops did march on the Champs-Elysees. Nothing to worry about.

"we're talking about who is most likely to be infected."

Jay, again, everybody. Trying to understand your reasoning, you mean that a homosexual guy has more probbabilities to be infected than a heterosexual. That is the behaviour that you freely choose to have.
There is homosexual ones in Castro that are not worried by that, and they have a risk behaviour, there is homosexual ones in Castro that have a promiscuous life, but they do not have a risk behaviour.
Both groups are homosexuals, but only one of that groups are at risk. In the another hand you have the same analogy with the heterosexual lifestyles.

"Are you trying to convince me or yourself?"

About the behaviours of risk I am trying convince so much people as I can.

Better pray for good quality control at the condom manufacturers, Carlos, and pray hard.