Ed Vitagliano
AFA Journal news editor
September 2003 – Almost 750,000 people attended the "Gay Pride Day" celebration and parade in San Francisco in June, just two days after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all remaining sodomy laws in the country in the case of Lawrence v. Texas.
The festivities included what might be expected under the circumstances: the giddy revelry of those who had just won – without a doubt – the most significant legal victory for sexual libertinism in U.S. history.
According to pro-family witnesses, however, the celebration also contained much more than most ordinary Americans would expect to see at a parade. Displays of public nudity, men clad only with a sex toy and, peppered throughout the vast throngs of homosexuals in attendance, signs declaring such lurid sentiments as, "We had sodomy for breakfast," and "Sodomize me – It's legal."
Sexual rebellion
The well-guarded secret of the homosexual movement is that, regardless of how one understands the causes of homosexuality, the nature of it is, at its core, sexual rebellion. "Gays" and lesbians are driven to challenge and destroy every conception of what is considered to be sexual normalcy.
This is the essence of "queer theory," the underlying sexual ethic of the homosexual movement. Conservative writer and culture critic Roger Kimball said, "Maintaining a sufficiently 'trangressive' attitude toward everything the 'dominant society' considers normal is central to the purpose of queer theory."
Without such a deconstruction of normalcy – and regardless of what political victories are won – homosexuals "won't be free until we can be queer in the streets, not just in the sheets," said Richard Goldstein, a columnist for the homosexual magazine The Advocate and author of The Attack Queers.
"Gays" and lesbians reject not only the biology which underlies human sexuality, but also the traditional male-female model of relationships. Goldstein said that within the homosexual is "the impulse to shatter the strictures of male or female identity."
However, if concepts of natural sexuality are undermined, and then the male-female construction of relationships is crushed, what remains? For homosexuals, it is merely a sexual ethic that excludes norms. It is open defiance of social conventions regarding sex. It is sexual anarchy.
Pat Califia, a well-known lesbian author who underwent the transition to becoming a "man," said that American culture has not sufficiently normalized homosexuality because it refuses to recognize the totality of human sexual experimentation, such as sadomasochism, transgenderism, public sex and even "cross-generational" sex – meaning adult-child copulation.
She insists that "the general public is still deeply ignorant about and afraid of the complete range of human sexual experience," adding that homosexuals "haven't done the grassroots sex education that would get at the seeds of homophobia: fear and loathing of minority sexuality."
Califia, who boasts that she is a sadomasochist, sees the real movement for "gay" equality as being tethered to the fight to normalize all sexual tastes. "Until it's safe to be different [sexually], we will have no real freedom – no genuine equality," she said.
Sexual obsession
This rebellion against normal sexuality is the defining characteristic of the homosexual community. Its members have no common language, religion, music, or other typical unifying norm. What homosexuals have in common is the one thing that makes them different from the rest of the culture – their sexual preference.
Some homosexuals insist, however, that they are not what they do in bed. Homosexual columnist Dan Savage disagrees. "We are sex. That fact makes some gay men and lesbians uncomfortable," he said. "Sex is what makes us not straight people, after all."
Homosexual writer Gabriel Rotello, author of Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men, stated that sex "is the very thing that to many of us defines us as gay men, drives our politics and our erotics, gives us our modern identity, provides the mortar of much of our philosophy and community, animates much of our lives."
However, a "gay" self-identity that is determined by sexuality has produced another, not unexpected, result: an obsession with that same sexual impulse. "Gay liberation means sexual freedom. And sexual freedom means more sex, better sex, sex in the bushes, in the toilets, in the baths, sex without love, sex without harassment, sex at home and sex in the streets," said one activist.
Homosexual activist Larry Kramer admits that "gay" culture is "confined and centered so tragically on our obsession with our penises and what we do with them."
This obsession tends to produce a promiscuous lifestyle that is a feature of the homosexual community. One of the most comprehensive studies of male homosexual practices was conducted by Alan P. Bell and Martin S. Weinberg, and published in 1978 by the Kinsey Institute under the title, Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity among Men and Women. Incredibly, the study found that 28% of homosexual males had had 1,000 or more sexual partners, while 43% of white male homosexuals estimated they had had sex with 500 or more partners.
In a recent survey of sexually active homosexual men, published in the June issue of the American Journal of Public Health, study participants said they had averaged seven sex partners in just the previous six months – and 25% said they had had 18 or more sex partners. Similarly, the Associated Press reported on the results of a separate study of "gay" men in Los Angeles County: 50% of the men said theyíd had sex with an average of 28 partners – in a public place – over the preceding six months.
Even among so-called "monogamous" homosexual couples, a relatively promiscuous lifestyle is typical. A study of Dutch homosexual men, published in the May issue of the journal AIDS, revealed that "gays" coupled in long-term relationships still had an average of eight additional sex partners a year outside the "monogamous" union.
However, many "gay" leaders openly praise and promote unbridled sexuality as part of what the homosexual movement is all about. Even in light of the AIDS crisis, "gay" anthropologist Ralph Bolton has argued that calling for homosexual men to abandon promiscuity is doomed to fail.
"Resistance to limiting the number of partners was sure to arise because the sexual liberation for which gay men had fought so hard included the right to be promiscuous. Promiscuity was a key feature of gay culture as it evolved, and attempts to extirpate promiscuity should be interpreted as an attack on gay culture and gay liberation," he said, adding that "[c]alling for a reduction in the number of sexual partners implied a radical restructuring of all of gay social life."
To be fair, such promiscuity disturbs some leaders within the homosexual community. Lesbian author and feminist Camille Paglia insists that "[homosexual] activists must stop their systematic lying about the actual facts of the run-of-the-mill gay male recreation, which is constantly going on in public toilets, parks, alleyways and all-night clubs throughout the Western world. The dimensions and intensity of that orgiasticism would stagger the minds of many well-meaning liberals, I believe, were they to see it with their own eyes."
Sexual destruction
It is no wonder then, that, at least publicly, most savvy homosexual activists talk about abstract concepts such as tolerance, equality, civil rights – anything except sex.
However, the homosexual community is forced to discuss sex because of one very inconvenient fact: gluttonous sexual appetites lead to terrifying repercussions. As Kramer admits, "Nature always extracts a price for sexual promiscuity."
Rotello, one of the few homosexual activists to honestly admit this fact, said, "The appearance of a multitude of epidemic diseases almost immediately after gay men had carved out zones of sexual freedom has opened up the grim, almost unthinkable possibility that for gay men, sexual freedom leads inexorably to disease."
The prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among "gays" has become a painful reality. According to the Institute of Medicine, "Men who have sex with men are at greater risk for many life-threatening STDs, including HIV infection, hepatitis B virus infection, and anal cancer compared to heterosexual men. Other STDs of concern among men who have sex with men include anal syphilis, urethritis, and a range of oral and gastrointestinal infections."
The susceptibility of the gay community to these diseases lies in the fact that homosexual practices are unique in their rebellion against nature and, quite frankly, their debauchery. Even some "gay" leaders have admitted this truth.
Homosexual Jack Hart, author of Gay Sex: A Manual for Men Who Love Men, said, "Many sexually transmitted diseases...occur more often among gay men than in the general population. Several factors contribute to this difference: Gay men have the opportunity to engage in sex with more people than do most heterosexual men, and some practices common in the gay community – especially rimming [placing the tongue in the anus for the purpose of sexual stimulation] and anal intercourse – are highly efficient ways of transmitting disease ...."
AIDS, of course, is one of those diseases that afflicts the homosexual community. Homosexual writer Michelangelo Signorile has pointed to the obvious "epidemiological reality" for homosexuals living under the shadow of HIV: "[t]hat a culture of unbridled, multipartner anal sex directly contributes to the ongoing [AIDS] epidemic, which, far from abating, is threatening more – and younger – gay men."
As expected, promiscuity – already rooted in a lack of sexual restraint – tends to produce risky sexual activities that seem to openly defy the warnings of the health community and government agencies.
For example, a report two years ago from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that 46% of homosexual men had participated in unprotected anal sex in the six months prior to the study. And a new study released in July found that 78% of homosexual males said that they did not always practice safe sex, and almost 50% admitted that they had recently participated in receptive anal intercourse without using condoms.
A growing number of homosexuals are also using the Internet to find anonymous sex partners. One study, released at the 2003 National HIV Prevention Conference in July, found that 39% of "gay" and bisexual men admitted that they had met partners over the Internet and engaged in unprotected sex, according to USA Today.
Some homosexuals are engaging in risky sex because they believe newer drugs will make it easier to deal with having AIDS if they become infected. Others claim that concerns about using condoms interfere with their enjoyment of sex.
Still others refuse to worry about getting AIDS altogether, and actively pursue HIV infection in order to "get it over with." Called "bug-chasers," a recent article in Rolling Stone cited Dr. Bob Cabaj, director of behavioral-health services for San Francisco County, who estimated that 25% of all newly-infected "gay" men had purposely gotten the virus. Cabaj also contended that AIDS groups and homosexual public health officials are covering up the phenomenon.
Perhaps most ominous for the homosexual community was what some men failed to do after contracting HIV. A study conducted in Los Angeles revealed that more than 54% of HIV-positive homosexual men had not revealed their infection status to the men with whom theyíd had sex.
A grim future?
Promiscuity, anonymous sex, anal sex, sex without condoms, chasing the HIV "bug," hiding HIV-positive status from sex partners – all these destructive practices on the part of homosexuals may explain the disturbing signs of an increase of AIDS cases among homosexuals. The CDC recently said that new cases of HIV infection among "gay" and bisexual men has risen nearly 18% over the last three years.
Staggering numbers of young homosexuals can expect to become infected. A seven-city study conducted by the CDC and released in 1999 showed that, among young homosexual males age 15-22, a full 7% were already infected with HIV – and another 3% become infected each year.
Similarly, the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes reported in June that 15% of homosexual males ages 18-29 in South Beach, Florida, were already infected with HIV.
The future is grim. More than a decade ago, using data collected from homosexual men in Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh, researcher Donald R. Hoover and his associates constructed a model to predict the spread of AIDS among homosexual men. Reporting in the American Journal of Epidemiology, Hoover said that a 20-year-old homosexual man, by the time he reaches age 55, has a 50% chance of becoming infected with HIV.
Hooverís estimates, however, were based on the premise that homosexual men would not increase their participation in unsafe sex and would dampen their promiscuity. Neither of those assumptions appears to apply today.
According to a study that appeared in the International Journal of Epidemiology, homosexual behavior risks cutting years off the lives of "gay" men. Examining the homosexual community in Vancouver, Canada, the study said:
"In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality were to continue, we estimate that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not reach their 65th birthday. Under even the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men in this urban centre are now experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by all men in Canada in the year 1871."
Sexual rebellion indeed has its consequences. But with "gay" activists and straight politicians spouting glib rhetoric rather than confronting the grim reality of homosexual conduct, the looming disaster of AIDS will only come that much more swiftly.