Yes…and? This thread is about the Law. If the Law was followed, AIDS would either be non-existent or extremely rare. I don’t understand what point you’re trying to make. That because AIDS can be spread through hetero sex and that because it is most prevalent in Africa, homo sex is okay? Or are you just trying to say that Africa is less important than other parts of the world? I’m just trying to sort through all the different levels of your confusion.
I just don’t see why AIDS should be brought up as a special condemnation of homosexuality when most of the world’s AIDS cases are due to heterosexual sex. There is no special and intrinsic link between homosexuality and AIDS. AIDS is not a gay disease. It is a sexual disease that can be spread by both homosexuals and heterosexuals.
Fair enough. What do you consider to be a valid condemnation of homosexuality?
I thought that link between AIDS and homosexuality (AIDS is a gay disease) was no longer made. The disease is not even spread only by sexual transmission as intravenous drug users can tell you.
A pretty terrible one, honestly.
LOL I can’t exactly disagree with you.
Very sad. This world needs more people like Mother Theresa.
You’re right, it is about the Law. I wonder how many posters here believe that we should follow Leviticus 20:13 (i.e. put to death any man who has sex with another man) in order to limit the spread of AIDS.
I’m just trying to figure out what millennium.
I’ve always had this crazy idea where there was an end to both sodomy AND murder, but apparently that’s completely off the table. Humans have such a fondness for both. Oh well! Let’s just celebrate it all with a parade! :whackadoo::whackadoo::whackadoo:
When you say murder, are you referring to abortion? If not, what do you mean? Are you equating homosexual behavior with murder?
Only to the extent that Peter J was referring to–putting someone to death for their sexual behavior. And yes, in the sense that they are both sinful.
When the Sanhedrin reconvenes upon the establishment of the Third Temple in Jerusalem, then we can discuss putting to death men who sleep with other men. But before such time, it cannot be done. Further, even when it could be done, the threshold for proving such behavior took place was so high, including two witnesses to the crime, knowledge of the seriousness of the offense, and so on, that it was rarely, if ever, practiced. It is much like a mother who scolds her disobedient son by telling him: “Wait till your father gets home.” When father does get home, he is too exhausted to inflict any punishment and instead tells his son to listen to and obey his mother.You’re right, it is about the Law. I wonder how many posters here believe that we should follow Leviticus 20:13 (i.e. put to death any man who has sex with another man) in order to limit the spread of AIDS.
I’m just trying to figure out what millennium.
I should clarify: for me the big issue is Fundamentalist Christians.
You should stop pretending that everything was all hunky dory for gay people back in the 1970s and 1980s. It wasn’t and we didn’t all get along.
Mind reading doesn’t exist. My statements are accurate for the time period and I watched things go steadily downhill after that. You’ll have to be more specific about your last sentence.
Maybe gay people did not complain so much in those years (I would say in the 1950’s and 1960’s rather than the '70s and '80s) for two reasons. One is that they were afraid of retaliation by the police, by their boss, by their family, by strangers. The second reason is that there was no one to complain to: no gay leaders and no one in the mainstream straight community or government who would listen to them. They were hardly on anyone’s radar. So instead of complaining, they went about their daily lives and suffered in silence or led a double life.
In a 1967 documentary with Mike Wallace as the host, it was clear that homosexual persons gathered at bars, clubs and other places where they did what they wanted. So no, they didn’t have to suffer in silence and sometimes were caught out in the open performing homosexual acts. The American Psychiatric Association was the guiding body regarding homosexuality. Did they lie to the American people? To the police or anyone else? Homosexual persons are shown in this documentary carrying protest signs in public. I doubt no one took the lead or that there was no organized agreement to do so.
I’ll give you an example of how false your statement is. Ronald Reagan didn’t say anything about AIDS until May 31, 1987 near the end of his second term. By then, 36,058 people had been diagnosed with AIDS and 20,849 of them had died of it. We all know that if 20,000 straight people had died of some new disease, the president would have said and done something much sooner. To give another example, when there was an outbreak of Legionnaire’s Disease in 1976 and 221 people fell ill and 34 died, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) launched a massive investigation. They spent millions of dollars and 20 agents from the epidemiological division and many others at the state level were committed to finding the cause of this outbreak. There were 86 articles in the New York Times about it in the first month alone. By contrast, seven months after the first AIDS cases were reported and even though the death toll among gay men was four times greater than for Legionnaire’s Disease, the CDC had mounted an apathetic response and only six short articles about it had appeared in the New York Times.
I saw that documentary. Crude as it was, it was also daring to show something like this on television. Gay males were all stereotyped as effeminate, sleazy, criminal, mentally ill, and morally evil. They were called fags, faggots, fairies, and queers by most straight people in mainstream society, and not only behind closed doors. And no, gay people of that era did not “do what they wanted.” The ones who went to bars (and who knows how many did not frequent the bar scene) did the only thing they could do to meet other people similar to themselves: they congregated together to talk, to drink, to laugh, to share their troubles, and to have sex. But the sex they had “out in the open,” as you put it, was also not what they wanted to do. Rather, it was the only way for them to have sex. They could not easily bring people home to their family and neighborhood, or perhaps did not trust the partner they had sex with. The sleaziness of the bar scene thus became the norm for gay sexual behavior. In it was darkness and anonymity, lack of attachment, no love, just sex to relieve the built-up tension and some limited social interaction. Gay women did not even have this. There was no real leadership in the gay community for either men or women.