Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Politics Some Thoughts on Tolerance
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 6:43 AM
Some people seem confused about what, exactly, tolerance is. Stacey Campfield, for instance, says "I just figured this is just another example of the open-minded tolerant left. They claim tolerances for divergent points of view. ... Until someone actually has one. Then they don't know how to handle it."
But Stacey Campfield doesn't just have a point of view. This isn't like your Republican uncle (or hell, mine) who has a big heart and a signed photograph of George and Laura Bush in the hall. I tolerate that my Republican uncle thinks Obama is the worst president ever, and he tolerates that I'm "probably a communist." He'd still give his left arm for me and I'd give my right for him.
Stacey Campfield has been repeatedly acting on his point of view to the detriment of a lot of Tennesseans. As Sean Braisted says:
Stacey Campfield, who I've met, talked to, and actually kind of like as a human being, is a person of power in this state who has used said power to promote discrimination, misinformation and outright hatred towards his constituents and other Tennesseans. Knoxvillians who wish to eat out have a whole host of different options from which to choose. But Tennesseans who want equal representation and rights have only one legislature to look to. While there are many representatives, theirs, Stacey Campfield, has made it a mission in his life to make life harder for those who don't fit his own personal view of 'normal.'
And Braisted also directly addresses this notion that this whole restaurant issue was somehow a result of intolerance for Campfield's ideas:
Stacey Campfield was not denied service because of his ideas, he was denied service because of his actions. Such as, going on a radio show and saying that AIDS is the result of people getting it on with monkeys. Or actions such as sponsoring the "Don't Say Gay" bill, which would prohibit teachers from allowing the word, or concept, of homosexuality to leave their lips.
Exactly. If someone is actively seeking to harm you, your loved ones, or your friends, you aren't under any moral or legal obligation to let him patronize your business in the name of "tolerance." That's ridiculous. Should I "tolerate" a thief in my home just because he has different ideas about who should have possession of my things than I do?
Anyway, Campfield is now draping himself in the mantle of the civil rights movement.
In the '60s my grandfather sat at the lunch counters with the blacks in Knoxville to help break up the segregation of the races. I guess some people still support segregation. Just segregation of thought. Some people have told me my civil rights were violated under the 1964 civil rights act in that a person can not be denied service based on their religious beliefs. (I am catholic and the catholic church does not support the act of homosexuality) I had not thought about that much.
I'm sure his grandfather was very proud, then, when Campfield gave this interview to WBIR and said that people from Africa aren't "regular people." Well, maybe not proud. But perhaps tolerant.
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Comments (51)
Showing 1-50 of 51
Leaving your feelings regarding homosexuality aside, how exactly is the act of spreading misinformation about HIV/AIDS on a radio show connected to a "religious belief"? I'm a little confused here, Mr. Campbell.
If you're still assuming that HIV/AIDS is a "gay disease", then there are millions of heterosexuals in Africa alone that'd like a word with you. I'd encourage you to avail yourself of the legislature's excellent research department sometime and educate yourself with materials somewhat later than 1988.
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Well said, Sean + Betsy (and, ahem, Jonathan). Now someone, quick, forward this memo to gast before he gets a word in edgewise!
"Segregation of thought." I'm going to be trying to wrap my head around that one for quite a while. I nominate Campfield for 2012 Boner of the Year!
"...Campfield is now draping himself in the mantle of the civil rights movement."
What, exactly, is the author draping over himself?
I have no problem with intolerance for promoting hate, ignorance and discrimination.
If a restaurant wants to refuse service to the likes of Stacey, isn't that just freedom at work? And won't the market reward or punish the exercise of that freedom? Judging by the long lines at her restaurant in the past couple of days, it sounds like the owner made a very wise business decision.
I'm hoping this thing will generate enough support to turn the name "Campfield" into a noun and verb synonymous with bigotry fueled by ignorance; e.g., "Mae Beavers is a notorious campfield," or "David Fowler was observed campfielding last week."
How about a campaign to get Nashville and Knoxville restaurants to display stickers bearing the image of Bro. Stacey with a red, circle/slash "no" sign imposed over it and the words "No Campfielding Allowed Inside."
bubbadog, I just took a big Campfield in the office men's room.
How can people (including me) be so exercised about a proposal to ban transsexuals from some public restrooms, while at the same time applauding the exclusion of Stacey Campfield from a restaurant?
This is a dangerous precedent.
Gays, transsexuals, Democrats - none of these are a legally protected class. Would we applaud a place of public accommodation which excluded them, even if the business owner was within his legal rights to do so?
Voting against Campfield is fine. Bashing him in print and by the spoken word is fine. Confronting him face-to-face for the vicious swine he is, is just dandy. Denying him access to places of public accommodation, while legal, is a bad idea. The law of unintended consequences has no mercy, but it does have a sense of humor.
If this behavior becomes widespread, it will come back to bite us.
Mark, as I've said before and I'll happily say again, if I don't want to take the money of a dude who hates me, if I don't want him sitting around my customers, whom I know he's actively hostile to, then I feel completely justified in kicking him out and I don't give a rat's ass about whether it's a "dangerous precedent."
Please name for me one time in the history of the United States when people polited and non-threatened evil bigots who were actively hurting them into changing their behavior. I don't care about changing Campfield's heart. I don't care about changing his supporters' minds.
I want him to stop hurting people and, if he's not going to, then I want him to know he doesn't have the support of everyone in his community.
Campfield isn't a class of people. Being an evil asshole isn't a trait; it's a philosophy.
Honestly, the idea that we should all be nice to Campfield or others will be mean to transgender people is hilarious. They're threatening to stomp mudholes in transgender people now. They're killing transgender women in Memphis like it's a sport now. They're trying to kick transgender people out of bathrooms now.
The volume of hate against transgender people is at 10 now. The knob doesn't go to 11. And, like I said, no one is going to shape up because everyone sat around nicely and said nothing.
TNGA Senator Stacey Campfield is a transplant New York yankee who works very hard at giving East Tennessee hillbillies a bad (or even worse) reputation...
Betsy: Who said anything about being nice to him?
Confront him. Scream at him. Ridicule him. Expose him for the jerk he is to every man, woman, and child in the state. Vote against him. Hit the road and raise money for his political opponents. Picket his office, his home, and the lot where he parks his car. Spit on his shadow when he stands in the daylight. Damn all those who won't light a candle so they can sit up all night damning him. Flip him off to his face and every other way you can think of. I'll join you.
All of which has nothing to do with excluding people from public accommodations because of their (wrongheaded, racist, sexist, immoral) beliefs.
It's wrong when Campfield tries to do it. It's wrong when Richard Floyd tries to do it. It was wrong when George Wallace and Lester Maddux did it. Congress finally caught up to morality and made it illegal to do this based on race, but it was wrong long before it was illegal. What was wrong for the past 100 years will still be wrong tomorrow.
Showing the world just what a vile person Stacey Campfield is might actually achieve some benefits. Denying him access to a restaurant will not. This doesn't mean you have to invite him home for tea - your kitchen is not a place of public accommodation.
We have to make the distinctions that people like Campfield refuse to make. Because we are better than they are. We need to take the most vigorous, provocative, iron-willed actions we can take, without crossing the line into precisely the kind of behaviors we are trying to stop.
That's all.
Mark,
Campfield isn't be excluded because of his BELIEFS, he's being excluded because of his public actions. Therein lies the difference. Kicking somebody out of your privately owned restaurant because they have demonstrated that they are a threat to your other patrons seems like a no-brainer. A pet store owner has no legal or moral obligation to let Michael Vick browse the selection. Am I right?
Business owners aren't required to serve people they don't like; they just can't discriminate against people b/c they are of a certain gender/race/religion/ethnicity/etc.
Betsy, as is the case with most of your passionate spiels, you take a disagreement and turn it into "hate." I doubt if anybody connected in opposition to the passionate thrusts of your arguments hates you or homosexuals. But they do have moral standards of which you and Beavis and Butthead can't tolerate. As far as the guy "stompin' a mudhole," yeah, that was a little much. For the most part though, liberals speaking of intolerance is, in itself, intolerable.
Dolphin: Picking on Michael Vick is racist and intolerant. There are plenty of white guys who are cruel and inhumane to their dogs. (Am I right, Betsy?)
Drawing a distinction between beliefs and actions in this case is analogous to the conservatives who say it's all right to be gay as long as you don't have sex with someone who is the same sex you are. Or that gay people are free to marry, as long as they marry someone of the opposite sex.
I'm not sure your pet store example fits into the classic definition of a "place of public accommodation.[
"(1) any inn, hotel, motel, or other establishment which provides lodging to transient guests, other than an establishment located within a building which contains not more than five rooms for rent or hire and which is actually occupied by the proprietor of such establishment as his residence;
(2) any restaurant, cafeteria, lunchroom, lunch counter, soda fountain, or other facility principally engaged in selling food for consumption on the premises, including, but not limited to, any such facility located on the premises of any retail establishment; or any gasoline station;
(3) any motion picture house, theater, concert hall, sports arena, stadium or other place of exhibition or entertainment; and
(4) any establishment (A)(i) which is physically located within the premises of any establishment otherwise covered by this subsection, or (ii) within the premises of which is physically located any such covered establishment, and (B) which holds itself out as serving patrons of such covered establishment." Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To which I would add restrooms or dressing rooms intended to accommodate members of the public and not explicitly reserved for the staff of a business establishment.
Keep in mind that race isn't what was important about the Civil Rights Act. It was the rights themselves that were important.
We have a shameful past in this country of excluding people from such places. Those days are thankfully gone for the most part. Nonviolent noncooperation with such barbaric practices is what got the laws changed. That doesn't mean being, as Betsy puts it, "nice" to the barbarians. As Gandhi said, "I, for one, have never advocated passive anything. We must never submit to such laws. And I think our resistance must be active and provocative!"
But as he also said, "An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind." We must not become what we behold in confronting the Campfields of this world.
I don't have a problem with conservatives who want to prohibit people from having gay sex inside their establishments. In the case of a restaurant I think sex would probably violate health code anyways ;). But when most of the time gay people have sex, they tend to do it in private. It doesn't hurt anyone.
I have a hard time coming up with some "fairness" related reason why any private establishment should feel legally or morally obligated to serve an INDIVIDUAL who has demonstrably taken steps to harm their patrons. The individual part is important. If an asian man rapes your daughter, that's not grounds to ban all asians from your property, but if THAT PARTICULAR asian man shows up at your door; you have every right to kick him out.
Dolphin: use whatever analogy make you feel the most comfortable, whether it's Michael Vick and a dog, or some putative Asian rapist. But don't pretend that the rage and schadenfreude now being directed at Stacey Campfield doesn't have everything to do with his shameful and ill-informed publicly-expressed opinions.
We need to focus our attention on beating this guy and his ideas, not keeping him away from the quiche.
'I'm hoping this thing will generate enough support to turn the name "Campfield" into a noun and verb synonymous with bigotry fueled by ignorance; e.g., "Mae Beavers is a notorious campfield," '
I thought "Mae Beavers" was already a noun and verb synonymous with being dumber than a coal bucket.
If Stacey wants to hide his bigotry behind his religion, he may want to reconsider. He feels he has a right to be served by the very people he denounces. Having a religious belief against something or someone doesn't give him free reign to cause harm. We, as citizens, have as much right to protect ourselves from the inflicters of hate as they do to protect themselves from seeing two people of the same gender in love. Many beliefs are supported by religion. Would we question the restaurant owner if she was removing someone conducting an animal sacrifice?
I assure you that the schadenfreude of the situation DOES have to do with his opinions. So what? Doesn't change the fact that there are distinct differences between turning away a patron because they are black or gay and turning away a patron because they have a history of harming your other patrons.
A police officer can pull me if I'm going 70 in a 35. Maybe he doesn't like me and he takes great delight in writing me a ticket. Doesn't change the fact that he was completely in the right for pulling me.
She didn't discriminate against him because of his religion. She discriminated against him because he's a hateful idiot. If the blind can't drive, then stupid hateful people shouldn't be allowed to legislate.
Dolphin: About gay people having sex not hurting anyone. Fifty percent of the AIDS/HIV in America from two percent of the population is taking more than a fair share of the research health dollars, dollars that could be used for research in breast cancer, autism, et al.... Also if gays' health problems were in proportion to their population figures we would have forty-eight percent less AIDS/HIV infections in America. The only entities that wouldn't benefit from a cessation of their activities are the pharmaceutical companies manufacturing their required medicines.
gast, gay sex does not cause HIV. You're venturing into Campfield crazy there. Also gay people make up 7-10% of the population, not 2%.
Packrat: Lesbians are probably the safest of us all. I wouldn't want anything to happen to Min. She's one of the few libs that ever has anything cogent to say.
Dolphin: If you emerge from your delusional state maybe you can tell us how the seventeen percent of gay men now infected with HIV?AIDS came to be that way. Wait...dirty toilet seats?
gast, you do like to throw around numbers without producing a source, don't you? Did you know that 43% of statistics are made up on the spot (like that one was)?
Gay men infected with HIV became that way the same way straight people with HIV became that way of course; they had unprotected sex with an infected individual, shared a needle, or otherwise were exposed to an infected individual's blood, semen, vaginal fluid, or breast milk.
You believe that two uninfected gay men can have sex and spontaneously develop HIV, and I'm delusional? I don't really have the time to give you a lesson on pathology but HIV is caused by a virus. Most illnesses are caused by either viruses or bacteria (there are a few exceptions). Bodily disfunction caused by behavior is generally classified as trauma.
While the restaurant probably didn't do anything illegal in refusing to serve Campfield, I don't think it was a good thing to do. That is too close to real discrimination for comfort. It would be different if they had refused, say, to do business with a restaurant fixtures company owned by Campfield. All that said, though, it must have been extremely satisfying to kick him out, and I certainly understand the impulse.
If the restaurant were refusing to serve a whole category of people — like Republicans or people with tattoos — maybe, MAYBE, someone could make a legitimate complaint about slippery slopes. The owner refused to serve one particular person who happens to be a particularly repulsive asshole. Good for her!
I don't see this as a slippery slope situation. I just think it's unfortunate to risk ceding the moral high ground.
Dolphin: Those aren't my numbers, they're right out of the Center for Disease Control. Everybody except you seems to know that.
Sorry gast, the CDC doesn't track the number of gay people as a part of the global population. Nice try though.
"I nominate Campfield for 2012 Boner of the Year" - you know, this could be taken two ways (one of which would make Campfield very, very nervous). Just sayin'.
@Dolphin: No kidding, Dick Tracy. This blog and others are about Tennessee and America; the numbers I use apply well. I have nothing to gain one way or the other but people ignorant of the situation can learn. Knowledge is good, right. Oh, I guess not when it contradicts what you want to be the truth. Do you want to ignore the fact that one out of six gay men are HIV positive. How would that benefit anybody?
The benevolent gast, here only for our edification. No agenda, no partisan rhetoric, only striving to elevate the discourse for the sake of knowledge. Sacrificing your valuable time to lead us, (the unwashed, the unworthy,) into the light. Your altruism is truly inspiring. You are a beacon of hope to our youth, a comfort to the elderly, and boon to all who seek truth, justice and the American way. You are our rock, our salvation.
I don't want to ignore anything. I just think if you are going to say that only 2% of the population of America (and your comment specifically addressed the nation, but hell, I'll even give you TN) is gay, when that contradicts every objective study ever done on the matter, and then cite the CDC as your source, I wanna see a link or something.
You can't just make up really obviously incorrect numbers like that and then claim a respectable source and just expect everyone to agree with you.
Though, in all honesty, the CDC isn't really even a great source (all the more reason to provide a link) as they track infectious disease and (despite what you and Stacey Campfield might think) being gay is not an infectious disease and therefore wouldn't be tracked by the CDC. You can't use "HIV positive" and "gay" synonymously. The majority of gay people do not have HIV.
Knowledge is good. I'm certified by the Red Cross to teach HIV/AIDS Awareness, for that very reason. But saying it's "virtually impossible" to become infected with HIV through heterosexual sex is not knowledge, it's misinformation.
@Dolphin: You're absolutely right. Five out of six gay males are not infected with HIV/AIDS. Feel better?
This is a wonderful exploration of the nature of our political positions and our broken discourse. It is brilliant. For all the blow hards on either side (that's me too) - this makes sense.
http://billmoyers.com/segment/jonathan-hai…
Nice job just ignoring the most inane of your stats. I'll let it slide. But sure, I don't believe, based on my research, that 1 in 5 gay men are infected with HIV. I've scoured the web to find such a stat and, while I think I know which study it is that you are incorrectly applying to a larger population than the sample warrants, I'm more enjoying the fact right now that 4 or 5 comments in and you still refuse to cite your source. Makes me believe you already know the study doesn't say what you claim it to say.
@Dolphin: It's not one out of five, it's one out of six. Approximately 17%, and it's from one of the sites linked to the CDC. BTW, here's something you'll be glad to know: Men account for 3/4 of new infections and male on male sex accounts for 3/4 of the 3/4. That's 9/16, or slightly more than half of the new infections are from homosexual male sex, and that's a lower percentage than in the past. Figuring there's a million people in America infected and then knowing that over half of them - one half million - are gay men, what percentage is one half million of the total numbers of gays? If there were 5,000,000 gay men in America, then 10% of them are infected. But there's not 5,000,000. There's probably not 3,000,000. If there were 3,000,000, one out of six would be infected. In 2008 there were 14,751 HIV/AIDS victims in Tennessee with 4,515 living in the Nashville - Murfreesboro area. That means we have about 2,250 infected gay men in the area. The last bit comes from statistics the CDC provided the program started in memory of Ryan White. Careful who you lay a lip-lock on.
I figure you want to believe this is all made up and can't be true but if you want to prove me wrong, Google awaits your visit. I would like to see what you come up with.
I think I'm just gonna start counting the number of times you throw out that stat without providing a simple link. I HAVE googled it and can't find a link that says that 1 in 6 gay men (in the general population as opposed to certian specific subgroups of the gay population) are infected with HIV. You say it's simply a google search away but YOU can't seem to find the study yourself, so I'd say put up or shut up. (oh but I will throw out that I agree there are not *just* 5,000,000 gay men in America. If the estimated population of America is 312,962,000 and most studies indicate that about 7% of people are gay, that gives us 21,907,340 gay Americans. Divide that in half to account for lesbians, and you have 10,953,670 gay men in America, which is probably on the low side given that most studies have found that gay men somewhat out number lesbians).
Secondly, you have been very successful changing the topic. I've been trying to so hard to get you to offer ANY sort of credible source for anything you've been saying, that we're no longer talking about how assinine it is that Campfield thinks HIV can't be transmitted through straight sex or that you think that HIV is caused by gay sex. So congrats you got me good. Now let's go back to how straight people can't infect one another with HIV and how HIV spontaneously generates when two uninfected gay people have sex.
Dolphin: Once again you stumble over your own brain. Your taking 7% of the total population, including babies in the cradle, not the sexually active part. And, of course, you're using stats from gay web sights. Try the following link. It's from the Huffington Post, a decidedly liberal publication and itching to champion your cause.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/07/g…
Gast, you don't have to be sexually active to be gay, and I'm using stats from a variety of objective studies dating back from Kinsey's original breakthrough study on the topic, through the modern day.
You're getting your vocabulary crossed. The study mentioned in the huffington post piece is explicited cited as estimating the number of Americans who publically identify themselves as "gay." Yet any study done on HIV infection rates are going to talk about gay men in terms of "men who have sex with men." The males among 4 million number of Americans who identify as gay (a number itself which the study's author admits is liable to be inaccurate), are subpopulation of "men who have sex with men." Further it's a subpopulation that is LESS likely to be infected with HIV than men who have sex with men but do not identify themselves as gay. When gay people feel free enough from discrimination and stigma to identify themselves as openly gay, they are far more less likely to engage in risky behaviors that but them at a higher risk for HIV infection. The rate of HIV in the self-identified gay community is far less than the rate of HIV in the men who have sex with men community at large.
You can't have it both ways. You can't talk about men who have sex with men when talking about HIV infection rates and talk about self-identified gay men when talking about population numbers. That's like saying half of all dogs weight over 40 lbs, therefore 2 of 4 of a chihuahua litter will grow to over 40 lbs. It's asinine.
Also still waiting for your explanation of how two uninfected men can transmit HIV to one another. I'd really like to hear your explanation because if gay sex truly causes HIV, you will rewrite every pathology textbook in the world.
@Dolphin: What's wrong with you? I've never said that homosexual acts cause HIV/AIDS. All I've done is produce numbers. The figures you cite from the Huffington Post article is actually for gays and lesbians, not gays alone. And another web site says that exit polls during the 2004 and 2008 elections had 4% of the voters identifying as gay or lesbian. And there's some scholarly looking work at wikipedia that repeats the 4% estimate. But whatever figures you want to use, half the HIV?AIDS infections are from man on man sex. Mother Nature is your biggest enemy, not me. There are over 500,000 infected gay men. I had nothing to do with that. You're trying to shoot the messenger to avoid the ugly truth.
On January 31, 2012 at 9:57 PM, I said (in response to your assertion that gay sex hurts people, citing HIV stats) "gay sex does not cause HIV" to which you responded, "If you emerge from your delusional state maybe you can tell us how the seventeen percent of gay men now infected with HIV?AIDS came to be that way." (January 31, 2012 at 10:32 PM) If you believe my statement was delusional the implication can only be that you believe I was wrong and that gay sex does in fact cause HIV. Now you say you never said that. You're forgetting that when you post something in written form it makes it alot harder to out and out deny you said it later.
You've done more than provide numbers. You're incorrectly using those numbers to reach false conclusions. You're (intentionally?) confusing "people who identify as gay" with "men who have sex with men" not taking into account that not all (statistically, not even most) men who have sex with men (especially those at the highest risk for HIV infection) identify as gay. If we're talking about self-identification, you are dead wrong that there are over 500,000 infected gay men. We don't know the exact stat of infected, self-identified gay men, because the medical community doesn't track the professed identity of the patients, only the behavior they engaged in. If we're going to define "gay men" as men who have sex with men, then it's true to say that there are (sadly, for those of us with a heart) over 500,000 infected gay men; but then it's NOT true that we limit the population count based on self-identification, because most men who have sex with men do not consider themselves gay. Further, high risk behavior is more common among those men who have sex with men who do not consider themselves gay than it is among openly self-identifying gay men.
As for bigotry and hatred having nothing to do with it, the CDC states "social and economic factors, including homophobia, stigma, and lack of access to health care may increase risk behaviors or be a barrier to receiving HIV prevention services." Further intentional misinformation (like saying it's virtually impossible to contract HIV through heterosexual sex) or omitted information (like abstinence-only education) is a major factor in the spread of all STDs. So, yes, you (as part of the larger group of bigots) have alot more to do with things than you give yourself credit for.
@Dolphin: You're parsing words to obtain a solution to a problem, that problem being how to reduce the attention on the amount of gay men infected with HIV/AIDS. I'll parse a different way: having sex with a person infected with HIV?AIDS can cause you to become infected, too. Do you disagree that having sex with an infected person can cause you to be come infected? Sure, it doesn't happen every time and a few lucky ones seem to have built in resistance, but do you really want to take that chance. Your arguments are so much whistling in the dark - deflecting attention while hoping for the best. In the beginning in America the big problem was gay men. Twenty years ago the HIV?AIDS percentage of infections was 85% gay men, 7% drug users, 8% heterosexual. Things have changed because there are so many more heterosexuals than homosexuals. But soon AIDS will be the scourge of the black community as many of the new infections are black men. Basically it boils down to evilution in progress.
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/topics/surveillance…. Pay attention to the pretty red color in the circular chart. And remember, it's not my chart.
gast has a built in resistance to empathy, credibility, honesty, logic and reason, just to name a few.
The problem isn't how to reduce attention on the amount of gay men infected with HIV/AIDS, the problem is how to reduce the number of people (gay or straight, black or white, young or old, etc) who get infected with HIV. And the solution is and has always been education. Education on HIV helps people learn how to make safer decisions. Education on same-sex orientation helps remove the discrimination and bigotry that force too many gay men into the closet where they are more likely to engage in higher risk behavior. Education on both HIV and same-sex orientation help remove the stigma that prevents regular testing to prevent the spread.
You want to spend all your time focusing on the fact that gay men are disproportionately affected by the disease (what I don't really get is why you want to fudge the numbers to exaggerate your point, because you'd still get to rejoice in the suffering of others even if you used real numbers). Here's the thing. We all already know that gay men are disproportionately affected by HIV. Why do you think the gay community has been one of the strongest forces in combating the disease? Until a cure/vaccine is developed gay men will ALWAYS be disproportionately affected by HIV simply because of the level of role versatility in gay sexual dynamics, that is inherently absent in heterosexual sexual dynamics, allows the disease to spread more rapidly through that community. For gay men (as a population) to have similar rates of HIV to the straight community (as a population), they would have to have over 10x less sex than the straight community has.
Those are all facts. It's important to be aware of them, but my question to you is, other than making you feel all giddy that people you hate are dying (the same way a racist might get excited that anemia disproportionately effects black people or a misogynist might get excited that breast cancer disproportionately effects women), how does making the conversation begin and end there solve anything at all? Further how does making false statements like "it's virtually impossible to contract HIV through heterosexual sex" or "1 in 6 gay men have HIV" help solve anything? It doesn't. And not only does misinformation not help anything, it is dangerous.
@Dolphin: I've nothing to do with the health problems of any segment of the community. And neither does lack of education, everybody knows how to contract HIV. For you to attribute imagined emotions to me is childish.
As a Red Cross certified HIV/AIDS Awareness instructor, I know for a fact that you are wrong. But hey, I don't even need to provide anecdotes of all the inaccurate or incomplete information people have had in my experiences. You and Stacey Campfield have already provided ample examples!
Always interesting to hear the myth that we don't need education because "everybody already knows" (about any topic). As if people are just born with the information stuck in their heads. If "everybody already knows" (and that's rarely the case), it's only because they were educated on it.
Yup. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Education is always the answer. Educated people make better choices.
