Tag Archives: HIV

News

British Medical Association opposes therapy for unwanted same-sex attraction

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Here’s an article from the Sydney Morning Herald written by Polly Vernon, talks about Grindr, which is an iPhone application that facilitates anonymous sex between strangers in the gay community. (H/T Secondhand Smoke via ECM) I want to talk about Grindr first, in order to set up the news story below.

Excerpt:

Ever heard of Grindr? If you have, I’m going to guess that you are male and gay; or male, technically straight and somewhat curious; or the straight friend of a gay man. If not, allow me to enlighten you.

Grindr (pronounced “grinder”) is a free downloadable iPhone app which, it promises, will help you “Find gay, bi, curious guys for free near you!” Grindr harnesses GPS, allowing you to establish who else in your direct vicinity is also using Grindr. It shows you — on a gridded display — who these men are and what they look like; it will tell you how far away from you they are standing; and it will allow you to “chat” them, if they take your fancy.

[…]Grindr was launched on March 25, 2009; now more than 700,000 (and counting) men in 162 countries are using it to phenomenal effect, if J, W, Kevin and the other gay men I’ve asked are any kind of a guide. “I’ve never, ever had so much sex in my life!” R told me gleefully. “I’ve probably had as much in the past eight months of Grinding as I have over the 20 years since I came out. Maybe more.”

[…]Others condemn it more directly. “Grindr’s addictive,” writes one man — the ex-boyfriend of a close friend — by email. “A lot of gay men have addiction issues . . . Things like Grindr . . . enable that sort of sex, sex which is compulsive and which dehumanises you; and means you in turn dehumanise the people you are having sex with.”

He puts me in touch with G, a man he met while seeking treatment for sex addiction. “I’ve lost entire weekends to sex,” writes G. “Downloading porn, going on Grindr, meeting men whose names I don’t find out, having sex; downloading more porn.”

“Low self-esteem,” says Todd. “I see it a lot in gay men – it’s inevitable after years of repression and shame. And what’s better for self-esteem than someone having sex with you?”

I noticed, in a Life Site News story, that people in Britain who would like to get therapy for their unwanted same-sex attractions may soon be blocked from doing so.

Excerpt:

The British Medical Association (BMA) has passed a motion asserting that therapy meant to treat unwanted same-sex attraction is harmful, calling on the Royal College of Psychiatrists and other professional bodies to repudiate such treatments and forbid them in their codes of practice.

More than two-thirds of the doctors who voted supported the motion. They also said that alleged cases of conversion therapy funded by Britain’s National Health Service should be investigated.

[…]The case echoes a similar suppression of therapies meant to help treat SSA in Spain. The Catalan government said in June that it would fine the clinic Policlinica Tibidabo if it was confirmed that it was carrying out such treatments.

Be sure and check out Wesley J. Smith’s ideas on how this will impact the culture as a whole.

See below for some research showing the differences between heterosexual relationships and same-sex relationships.

Comments to this post will be strictly monitored in accordance with Obama’s hate crime law.

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Commentary

Dawn Stefanowicz explains her experience being raised by a gay parent

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*** WARNING: This post is definitely for grown-ups only! ***

I was listening to the latest Dr. J podcast on “Why Marriage Matters”, and I heard about a woman named Dawn Stefanowicz, who was raised by her gay father in Toronto.

So, I looked around and found this interview with Dawn posted on MercatorNet. This is mature subject matter.

Intro:

Gay marriage and gay adoption are being fiercely debated in a number of countries. Usually these issues are framed as a human rights issue. But whose rights? Patrick Meagher, MercatorNet’s contributing editor in Canada, recently interviewed a woman who was raised by a homosexual father. She feels that her rights as a child were completely ignored.

Dawn Stefanowicz (www.DawnStefanowicz.com) grew up in Toronto. Now in her 40s, she has written a book, Out From Under: Getting Clear of the Wreckage of a Sexually Disordered Home, to be released later this year. Stefanowicz has now been married for 22 years, is raising a family, and also works as an accountant. She has also testified about same-sex marriage in Washington and Ottawa.

Sample:

MercatorNet: How did you feel about what was going on around you?

Stefanowicz: You become used to it and desensitised. I was told at eight years old not to talk about this but I knew that something was wrong. I was not thinking “this is right or wrong” but I was disturbed by what I was experiencing. I was unhappy, fearful, anxious and confused. I was not allowed to tell my father that his lifestyle upset me. You can be four-years-old and questioning, “Where is Daddy?” You sense women are not valued. You think Daddy doesn’t have time for you or Daddy is too busy to play a game with you. All this is hard because as a child this is the only experience you have.

MercatorNet: How did this affect your relationship with others?

Stefanowicz: I had a hard time concentrating in school on day-to-day subjects and with peers. I felt insecure. I was already stressed out by an early age. I’m now in my 40s. You’re looking at life-long issues. There is a lot of prolonged and unresolved grief in this kind of home environment and with what you witness in the subcultures.

It took me until I was into my 20s and 30s, after making major life choices, to begin to realise how being raised in this environment had affected me. Unfortunately, it was not until my father, his sexual partners and my mother had died, that I was free to speak publicly about my experiences.

And:

MercatorNet: Why do so few children speak out?

Stefanowicz: You’re terrified. Absolutely terrified. Children who open up these family secrets are dependent on parents for everything. You carry the burden that you have to keep secrets. You learn to put on an image publicly of the happy family that is not reality. With same-sex legislation, children are further silenced. They believe there is no safe adult they can go to.

I noticed that Bill Muehlenberg has an even more controversial review of Dawn’s book about her childhood, too. When I was doing research on these issues, I read Dr. Jeffrey Satinover’s “Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth” and Dr. Joseph Nicolosi’s “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality“. But I think I am going to buy Dawn’s book, too. It sounds like a tough read, but it may be necessary to understand what is really at stake, so my views can be formed by real data.

NOTE: Comments to this post will be strictly filtered in accordance with Obama’s hate crimes bill.

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News

Why didn’t the media cover the new CDC study on HIV transmission?

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Here’s the Center for Disease Control press release.

Excerpt:

A data analysis released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention underscores the disproportionate impact of HIV and syphilis among gay and bisexual men in the United States.

The data, presented at CDC’s 2010 National STD Prevention Conference, finds that the rate of new HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men (MSM) is more than 44 times that of other men and more than 40 times that of women.

The range was 522-989 cases of new HIV diagnoses per 100,000 MSM vs. 12 per 100,000 other men and 13 per 100,000 women.

The rate of primary and secondary syphilis among MSM is more than 46 times that of other men and more than 71 times that of women, the analysis says. The range was 91-173 cases per 100,000 MSM vs. 2 per 100,000 other men and 1 per 100,000 women.

While CDC data have shown for several years that gay and bisexual men make up the majority of new HIV and new syphilis infections, CDC has estimated the rates of these diseases for the first time based on new estimates of the size of the U.S. population of MSM. Because disease rates account for differences in the size of populations being compared, rates provide a reliable method for assessing health disparities between populations.

I noticed an analysis by Marcia Segelstein of why these numbers are not communicated more widely here. (H/T RuthBlog)

She writes:

In an effort to look at these figures from a purely scientific and public health perspective, let’s substitute smoking and cancer for homosexual sex and HIV.  If the CDC released information which made a direct correlation between smoking and extremely high rates of getting cancer, people would take notice.  The media would write about it.  Public health organizations would make sure the news was spread.  Campaigns would be launched to save lives by discouraging smoking.  Public funds would be spent to deter people from engaging in such dangerous behavior.  Schools would teach children about the dangers of smoking.

Of course, as we all know, that scenario is real.  Because of the now-known dangers of smoking, a warning from the Surgeon General appears on every pack of cigarettes.  Public service ads saturated the airwaves over a period of years discouraging smoking.  The dangers of smoking are a standard part of most health classes in schools.

I really recommend that everyone who is concerned about this issue read Jeffrey Satinover’s “Homosexuality and the Politics of Truth“, which talks about the health risks of certain behaviors. Dr. Jeffrey Satinover has practiced psychoanalysis and psychiatry for more than nineteen years. He is a former Fellow in Psychiatry and Child Psychiatry at Yale University and a past president of the C. G. Jung Foundations. He holds degrees from MIT, the University of Texas, the Harvard University. If you want to change your mind – and your will – on a topic, you study that topic by looking at the evidence from the experts in the field. Dr. Satinover’s book is compassionate and measured. It is a great place to start learning.

No one is trying to make anyone else feel bad by telling them the truth. On the contrary – by telling people the truth and by setting appropriate boundaries, we can protect others from harm. And that’s why everyone needs to be told the truth. We aren’t helping people by hiding numbers like these from them. Speak the truth in love, and let people decide for themselves.