dk

There are a couple of reasons sex between consenting adults and young people is of concern to the public.
Costs
*The total public and private costs of STDs in the United States have been conservatively estimated as about $10 billion annually, and $17 billion when sexually transmitted HIV infections are included.

Need for Sustained HIV Prevention for Gays
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• In 2000 alone, 13,562 AIDS cases were reported among MSM, compared with 8,531 among IDUs and 6,530 among men and women who acquired HIV heterosexually.
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• In the 34 areas with confidential HIV reporting, data show that substantial numbers of MSM still are being infected, especially young men. In 2000, 59% of reported HIV infections among adolescent males aged 13-19 and 53% of cases among men aged 20-24 were attributed to male-to-male sexual contact.
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• Research among gay and bisexual men suggests that some individuals are now less concerned about becoming infected than in the past and may be inclined to take more risks. This is backed up by reported increases in gonorrhea among gay men in several large U.S. cities between 1993 and 1996. Despite medical advances, HIV infection remains a serious, usually fatal disease that requires complex, costly, and difficult treatment regimens that do not work for everyone. As better treatment options are developed, we must not lose sight of the fact that preventing HIV infection in the first place precludes the need for people to undergo these difficult and expensive therapies.

Prevention Services Must Reach Both Uninfected and Infected
Research has shown that high-risk behavior is continuing in some populations of MSM, including those who are infected with HIV. Because HIV-infected gay and bisexual men are living longer and healthier lives, greater efforts must be made to reach them with behavioral interventions that can help them protect their own health and prevent transmission to others.
Conclusions: Strong increases were seen in rectal GO and SY among MSM; the latter seems to have become (again) endemic in this group. HAART-induced immunologic and virologic improvements in HIV-1-positive MSM result in increased RB with casual partners. An explanation for the rise in rectal GO and SY among MSM could be a relapse into RB possibly associated with the introduction of HAART. Innovative prevention activities among MSM are necessary to turn this tide. - © 8th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections


CDC Issues Major New Report on STD Epidemics:
Gonorrhea Rates Increase From 1997 To 1999, Suggesting Possible Reversal of Two-Decade Decline
"It is too soon to say that successes in gonorrhea control of the past two decades will be reversed, but these new statistics are cause for serious concern," said Helene Gayle, M.D., M.P.H., director of CDC's National Center for HIV, STD, and TB Prevention (NCHSTP). "In the past two years, we have seen signs that gonorrhea is increasing among gay and bisexual men in a number of U.S. cities, and these trends may now be extending to the overall population." -- to URL


How can STD’s affect the fetus or newborn?
Harmful effects on the baby may include stillbirth, low birth weight, conjunctivitis (eye infection), pneumonia, neonatal sepsis (infection in the blood stream), neurologic damage (such as brain damage or motor disorder), congenital abnormalities (including blindness, deafness, or other organ damage), acute hepatitis, meningitis, chronic liver disease, and cirrhosis. Some of these consequences may be apparent at birth; others may not be detected until months or even years later.


Increases in Fluoroquinolone-Resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae --- Hawaii and California, 2001
Among 29 men infected with QRNG in 2001 whose sexual orientation was known, 20 (69%) were MSM. Among MSM with QRNG, 19 had a median of three recent (within 2--6 months) sex partners (range: one--40); 10 heterosexual men and women with QRNG had a median of 1.5 recent sex partners (range: one--eight), indicating the potential for more rapid spread among MSM.

Bill Snedden

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Interesting, but irrelevant. The question posed in the OP is whether or not homosexuality is ethical. As all sexual contact is intimate by definition and thus necessarily and without recourse exposes the parties involved to some degree of health risk, statistics on health risk are irrelevant to a determination of the ethical status of homsexuality per se. You could certainly argue that risky and unethical behavior exists in greater degree within the homosexual sub-culture, but that is pertinent only in the context of praxis, not construct.

Regards,

Bill Snedden

yguy

I'll repeat the question I asked Mr. Snedden: since animals are unable to give consent, and are therefore unable to withhold it, why is consent a factor in interspecies sex, when it is, by societal consensus, not a factor in killing and eating another species?

Only if we presume watermelons are non-sentient, a fact not in evidence.

There are people who will tell you with a straight face that their dog has a soul. Perhaps they can communicate with that soul in a wordless way, just as a woman can give consent with her eyes.

Again, the burden of proof falls upon legal authorities to prove non-consent - which is of course why the law doesn't recognize this premise as the basis for criminalization of bestiality.

It's a silly comparison, because we have no reason to believe that sodomizing an animal causes any physical or psychological harm. And even if it does, killing and eating the animal does it more harm, I should think.

You're a vegetarian, I take it?

My guess is it would be a lot worse.

Who says they are?

Such as Martin Seligman, past president of the American Psychological Association? Hey, sex with an adult made him what he is today. How dare you suggest he should have been robbed of such a growth experience?

Then I don't know why you brought it up.

Because militant homosexuals make an issue of it? Because they demand not just tolerance, but acceptance?

Stipulating for the sake of argument that there is none, harm is done when evangelistic homosexuals succeed in intimidating people to the point where they're afraid to look at a drag queen as if he is a freak.

Militant homosexuals have made it a big deal. Get over it.

Bill Snedden

How can one have "sex" with a watermelon? Wouldn't that simply be masturbation using a watermelon? Do you think masturbation is immoral, too?

If a 5-year old child can't give consent, neither can they withhold it. Why, then, is it presumed that consent is an issue?

Perhaps you can answer your own question. Between humans, consent is obviously an issue. (see below)

I've never said that it is...

However, I've also never said that bestiality is immoral. Merely pointed out the falsity of an analogy to homosexuality...

So? Immorality is clearly not the only thing that produces such a reaction and therefore the reaction itself cannot be an indication that the act to which one reacts is immoral.

I second yelyos: What quality is it that you believe renders homosexuality immoral?

Regards,

Bill Snedden

yguy

If one presumes the watermelon is not sentient, yes.

The child CAN both give and withhold consent, but it is not informed consent. To say that sodomizing an animal is wrong because of lack of informed consent implies they have rights comparable to humans, which flies in the face of our condonation of meat-eating.

Obviously. So what?

Then in your view, we have no more basis for considering bestiality immoral than we do for considering homosexuality immoral. Right?

Bill Snedden

If you have evidence of the sentience of watermelons, by all means present it and collect your Nobel. Until such time, we have no reason to believe they are.

I was using "consent" to mean "informed consent", in the legal sense. I should have been more precise.

To be honest, I'm not sure that "sex" with animals should be any more or less moral than sex between humans (although I think it stretches the definition of "sex" like your watermelon example). I was using the notion of consent to point out the inadequacy of your analogy to homosexuality, *not* to demonstrate that "sex" with animals is immoral.

So, between humans it is a material factor we use to determine the morality of an act. Non-consensual sexual relations are considered immoral, consensual ones generally are not. You, however, appear to be proposing a special case of consensual sexual acts that *are* immoral. Why?

I can think of some possible reasons involving the causing of needless pain or suffering to sentient creatures, but that's really a side issue. For the sake of argument, I'll stipulate that you're correct: bestiality is not per se immoral.

Now, perhaps you'd care to limn a positive argument for the negative moral status of homosexuality?

Regards,

Bill Snedden

Fr.Andrew

(Fr Andrew): Ahh...you've narrowed your bigotry a bit, it seems.
Do you think that if homosexuals were more accepted, there would be fewer "militant homosexuals" to cause you concern?

(Fr Andrew): And there are people who will tell you with an equally straight face that humans have souls.
Go figure.

Radcliffe Emerson

I think homosexuality, and lesbianism are simply the way some people are born.
It's only wrong (and this goes for heterosexuality too) when children are involved in sexual practices.
What grown people do behind locked doors is no business of mine, and if two people can find each other in this messed up world, who cares?

Fr.Andrew

(Fr Andrew): The roots of homophobia are misogynistic. Homosexuality came to be demonized by those who were outraged, not because men had sex with men (which was generally tolerated in many cultures, if not completely accepted), but because some men were effeminate. They acted like women.
As Judeo-Christian culture is misogynistic as well, it's hard not to think that the same reasoning wasn't involved and, as you say, given the authority of a divine command.

Radcliffe Emerson

There is also a theory that in the early cave-man days, small tribes of people stuck to themselves, and survival was the most important issue. When someone was born into the tribe who did not like the opposite sex, procreation and the survival of the tribe was threatened.
This evolved into 'gods' condemning them for not liking the opposite sex.