Loading ...
By: Hannah Clay Wareham (Associate Editor) http://www.baywindows.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=glbt&sc2=news&sc3=&id=108610
The anti-gay Family Research Council (FRC) last week launched a campaign to preserve “Don’t ask, don’t tell” (DADT), the military’s ban on gays and lesbians serving openly.
The FRC used a question-answer tactic in a recent video, Karen Ocamb of LGBT POV (www.lgbtpov.com) reported:
Q. What are the health implications if the law is changed to allow open homosexuality in the military?
Homosexuals are identified by the U.S. government as a cohort at high risk for sexually transmitted diseases like HIV/AIDS. …HIV is already a threat to military readiness — although HIV-positive recruits are excluded from the military, those who become HIV-positive while serving cannot be discharged, but they also cannot be deployed overseas. However, this is far from the only health risk to homosexuals.
One of the nation’s leading AIDS researchers, Ronald Stall, has declared, “It may be a fallacy to say that HIV is the dominant, most dangerous, and most damaging epidemic among gay men in the United States today. There are at least four other epidemics occurring among gay men that are intertwining and making each other worse. This is called a syndemic.” The “four other epidemics” are “substance abuse, partner violence, depression and childhood sexual abuse.”
The video also features Dr. Robert Labutta, a retired U.S. Army Colonel who is now affiliated with the American Family Association, suggesting that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would violate his oath as a medical professional.
Hannah can be reached at hclaywareham@baywindows.com.
This entry was posted on Friday, July 30th, 2010 at 8:41 am and is filed under Top Stories, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
