Religion and LGBT people

[Zen Badger]

I'm intrigued..... Why should gays refrain from sex? You are trying to deny them their natural inclinations. As long as the people engaged in the relationship are informed, consenting adults they can do what they damn well please

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Hi Zen badger,

That is an entirely reasonable question. To give one obvious example:

When you consider the facts that:

- 1 in 5 gay men in america has HIV (rising to 1 in 2 in Frisco)
- 1 in 20 gay men in the UK has HIV (rising to 1 in 10 in London)

(I am happy to provide references for this data - but I assure you, I would never lie to you).

It is very clear that people involved in homosexual sex often find it has very negative results for their health. In the west, HIV proliferation is almost exclusively associated with homosexuality. Across the western world, gay communities live with HIV infection rates similar to, or worse than, badly affected African nations (strange the media never mentions that, eh?).

HIV is an incurable disease and HIV+ people require to take daily medication, just to stay alive. The antiviral medication is very aggressive and can actually result in death itself, via causing pancreaitis.

Worse, the medication is very expensive - it costs (UK figures) £20 - 30,000 to treat a single patient for just one year, and they requie treatment every year, until their natural death.

And, unlike heterosexual sex, (which produces the next generation), there is no benefit to society from homosexual acts occuring.

Currently the presence of homosexual sex in western society:

- blights the lives of many people, but especially of homosexual people
- damages overall public health
- needlessly proliferates incurable disease
- runs up massive medial bills to deal with the large (and rising*) amounts of incurable disease

and all for no positive benefit to society.

Therefore, making an argument that gay people should be chaste is actually an entirely reasonable argument. If they were, HIV would stop spreading in the west almost overnight.

(* where I live, the best and most recent data we have shows that 1.0% of society is homosexual - meaning about 0.5% are gay men.

Also where I live (these are NHS-Scotland figures)

In 2011, gay men (0.5% of society) caused 67% of all new cases of HIV.
In 2012, gay men (0.5% of society) caused 71% of all new cases of HIV.

You can easily see that gay men are massively and disproportionately affected by HIV - and that the problem is getting worse, not better.

The reason it is getting worse is because no-one wants to talk about it, and anyone who does gets called a bigot.

Thus, young gay men are not properly informed about the very specific and exaggerated risks they face from the sexual activity they become invovled in.

They are being deliberately mislead to believe that homosexual sex is no different from heterosexual sex and does not carry any specific risks.

To be honest, I think gay people deserve better than this).

It is clear that one major downside for society is the very large medical bills it has to pay as a result of all this - thus, it is not accurate to portray the matter of homosexual sex as being purely between 2 consenting adults in private. Others have to pick up the pieces, using money that could be better spend on treating disease which we cannot easily avoid.

Cheers
GS

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