Tuesday, July 17, 2007

When all else fails, blame gay men for it all

In the wake of the Catholic Diocese of Los Angeles paying out over 600 million to the victims of sexual abuse by its priests, you just know someone had to attempt bring up the lie that gay men molest boys at a high rate.

And surprisingly, the person is not one of the usual suspects. The person lodging the accusation is a new player in the politics of being anti-gay - Dinesh D’Souza:

In the vast majority of [abuse] cases we aren’t dealing with pedophilia–an extremely rare disorder that is no more prevalent in the Catholic church than it is elsewhere in society–but rather with homosexual priests taking advantage of their authority to seduce teenage parishoners and altar boys.

D’Souza even claims that based upon this, the country is in for negative consequences if "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" is repealed:

Now consider what would happen to that other predominantly-male organization, the U.S. military, if it got rid of "don't ask, don't tell" and allowed open homosexual relations between soldiers. We can easily imagine all the problems, but is there an upside? The Spartans are one of the few groups in history to allow homosexuals in the military. They tried to use it to fighting advantage. The idea was that men would be more willing to die for the sake of partners to whom they had become sexually attached. So the Spartans fought as couples, with each young soldier romantically linked to an older veteran. Typically the older veteran played the "male" or dominant role and the youthful recruit the "female" or passive role in the relationship.

Now before folks like Harry Jackon and Ken Hutcherson offically welcome D’Souza into the brotherhood of homophobia, perhaps they should read his book, The End of Racism.

You see Dinesh belongs to that breed of intellectual thinkers collecting huge paychecks courtesy of conservative think tanks for pushing "interesting" ideas under the guise "encouraging debate."

"Interesting" ideas such as claiming that segregation was created to protect African-Americans (i.e. The End of Racism).

Imagine waking up and thinking that Bull Connor and Lester Maddox were actually heroes of the civil rights movement.

No doubt, the irony of all of this will be lost on Jackson, Hutcherson and company. I guess as long as he is blaming another group for societal ills, it is all good with them.

And speaking of scapegoating, apparently the anti-gay industry are still pissed about the James Holsinger situation:

This is from our Concerned Women for America friend Matt Barber:

"We're looking for a surgeon general who is going to give unfettered and nonpolitical scientific information," he states, "and the reality is, based on a recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that, for instance ... 71 percent of people with HIV/AIDS in the United States are male homosexuals -- and that is up 11 percent from 2001."

Now check out this post from a commentator from the One News Now site. He was responding to another person claiming that Barber was misusing statistics:

. . So your argument is that just because 71% of homosexual men have AIDS does not mean the homosexual lifestyle is unhealthy? Wow.

The statistic actually says:

MSM accounted for 71% of all HIV infections among male adults and adolescents in 2005 (based on data from 33 states with long-term, confidential name-based HIV reporting)

That statistic tells us that we need to do more to curb HIV and AIDS.

One thing that needs to be done is stopping misinformation.

The statistic is bad but it is a long way from saying 71 percent of people with HIV/AIDS in the United States are homosexual males or 71 percent of homosexual men have AIDS.

But like I have said so many times before, who cares about facts when you are fighting for the kingdom of God?