dk

The "quilt of deniability" deprives a person of their conscience for a false sense of wellbeing. Sympathy projects a person into the shoes (misery) of another to feel their pain. A person’s conscience gives the pain sympathy evokes meaning. Deprived of conscience a person's pain has no meaning, so sympathy becomes meaningless. A person without a consciences has contempt for what other people suffer, and often find a false sense of superiority at the pain others suffer. I’m saying that the “quilt of deniability” blames homophobes for what gays suffer because of hiv/aids, so gays suffer without meaning deprived of conscience.

Salmon of Doubt

What does any of that MEAN?! Can anyone translate that?

dk

Treacle Worshipper: dk, with my rapist/infanticide comparison, I was trying to address the compulsion aspect of your suggestion. This seems to be something you do not wish to discuss.
dk: I think its wrong to force anyone to rape another or commit infanticide. A civilization or nation that solves problem with voluntary or compulsive acts of rape and infanticide poses an eminent threat to its constituents. Such a nation or civilization so inclined ventures down a path to ruin, literally. History is full of such ruins and dead civilizations. Its absurd to justify anal sex with SSM in the US or anywhere else, and in the US there’s about a million dead or dying gay men from an incidence of anal sex, and countless more deaths if we count the opportunistic infections spread by unrecorded incidence of gay bowel disease and grid. It may seem contrary to expect gay people not to kill one another with anal sex, but good will requires an attempt. We know HAART treatments have lead may gays to lapse into behaviors that put their loved ones and protégés AT RISK. The goal of compulsory testing is to 2) motivate people with hiv/aids to be diligent in their sexual practices, 2) to inform people they need treatment, and 3) identify people that pose an eminent public health risk. Compulsory testing isn’t the authoritarian monster you make it out to be, and undoubtedly will save many lives. The Gay Rights Movement publicly lobbies for SSM, SS unions, and adoption precisely because they realize a homophobes poses no real threat. What directly threatens gays, families, and our progeny is hiv/aids.
dk: HIV presents a teleological paradox. Science reduces (teleological) the HIV pandemic to mechanical rules that allow us to conceptualize, understand and cope sanely with the threat HIV poses. The prevalent type of AIDs in the US is less aggressive than the more virulent strand found in Sub-Saharan Africa. But let us be clear about the threat,
“But this seeming comfort is a dangerous delusion. As it turns out, we in the West have so far been spared infection with the same HIVs that are spreading elsewhere. The 1.5 million people infected with HIV in this country and Europe are only a small percentage of the 35 million to 40 million infected worldwide, and most of those cases--perhaps 25 million today--represent people recently infected in sub-Saharan Africa. Nearly all of them are afflicted by new subtypes of HIV-1, and nearly all such infections are associated with heterosexual transmission. Although the use of dirty needles or unprotected homosexual contact can also result in infection in those regions, these modes of transmission are of comparatively negligible importance.” ---- The New AIDs Epidemic
The marked complacency Western Nations endure in the name of tolerance under the guise of civil liberties bode poorly for the future. In my opinion compulsory testing has nothing to do with gays, it is a response proportional to the threat. .

dk: The incubation period is 5 years.
Treacle Worshipper: Incubation period of what?
dk: AIDs.
dk: There isn’t a one size fits all answer to every problem. In a technological society like the US or Britain people can be held accountable by health officials, but the infrastructure we enjoy in any practical sense doesn’t exist in a third world nation like the Congo. hiv/AIDs have destabilized the third world. In a third world nation ravaged by hiv/aids civil liberties have about as much meaning as sun tan oil.

dk: It’s a small world. In the US metropolitan areas of NYC, SFS and LA house about 25% of the gays in the US, so they would be analogous to London.
Treacle Worshipper: I thought we were talking about school kids and the need for metal detectors and drug-sniffing dogs?
dk: I don’t know why you’d assume one size fits all.
dk: Persons diagnosed with hiv/aids 1) need treatment, 2) health officials need to identify, track down and isolate the source, and 3) immunologists need to document and study how the disease spreads and mutates.
dk: Any rational response to a public health must be measured proportional to the threat. In 1960 it was assumed a shot of penicillin alleviated the threat of stds. Turns out the “science” lead health officials, and us, down the wrong path. MDR microbes pose a much greater health risk than we care to admit, because it makes us feel bad. I think it is only prudent to error on the side of caution, especially when so many lives hang in the balance.

In 1950 a modicum of caution might have deterred the damage done by irrational abuses of miracle drugs, recreational drugs and sexual liberties to make the world safe from microbes into the next century. Oh well, and the delay might have given science an even chance to avert the hiv/aids pandemic altogether. Whatever other deadly MDR microbes linger just over the horizon hiv/aids have surely shattered conventional wisdom.

The US certainly benefited from Fleming’s discovery. Penicillin appeared to secure our fragile human domain against the deadly world of microbes, but appearances lied. Science makes people more powerful, not omnipotent.

dk: The UK can take whatever lessons seem applicable, the first step to stop hiv/aids stops the spread to new generations.
Treacle Worshipper: But, again, this is not a problem in UK schools. If you look here you will see that the age groups most at risk from HIV/AIDS in the UK are 20yrs+. It seems that whatever is being done in the UK education system to increase people's knowledge of STDs & HIV/AIDS is working.
dk: Ok, but it’s a small world getting smaller all the time. In Britain I’ve read 2 in 5 babies are now born out of wedlock, and the average marriage lasts <10 years. As nations go, Britain appears strangely compelled to follow the US onto the bleeding edge of social science, and social engineering. The UK’s close relationship with many Sub-Saharan nations makes the British Isles particularly vulnerable to more virulent heterosexual strains of hiv/aids. As for the health of the British family… and public schools…
The Guttmacher Institute is a wing of Planned Parenthood, in fact Guttmacher succeeded the founder Margaret Sanger as President. Planned Parenthood has done wonders for teen pregnancy in the US, and explains why Britain entrusts their progeny to foreigners. A small world getting smaller all the time.

RevDahlia

<intellectually bankrupt anecdotal point>

I was raised in a very liberal household; my elementary-school education was also very liberal, with comprehensive sex ed. My high school was so tolerant that my class elected a boy prom queen. (He richly deserved the title...) Throughout my life I have had many close homosexual friends. I've been taught by both hetero and homosexual educators, and I grew up believing that homosexuality is no big deal. By dk's rationale, I should be HIV-infected and living in a gutter by now. But I'm not. Nor are any of my peers. Wonder why?

</intellectually bankrupt anecdotal point>

[Edited to add: By "peers" I mean acquaintances who grew up in the same lefty milieu that I did; obviously many folks my age are less fortunate.]

dk

I grew up swimming at Green Lake (a Cook County Forest Preserve) in Calumet City, Ill. On a nice summer day 40 gay men spent the morning sunning themselves in the B parking lot. By the time I was 14 I'd been hit on more times than I can count and offered everything from Cub tickets to hard cash. Some kids took the money, some didn't. I grew up in a lower middle class mill town where gays were no big deal. You grew up with pretext, I didn't.

yguy

I believe dk is saying that by encouraging homosexuals to blame "homophobes" for whatever consequences they may suffer as the result of irresponsible sexual activity, homosexual "enablers" are taking away the pain of conscience that could otherwise allow such people to see their own responsibility for such consequences.

Kimpatsu

Aha... DK's homophobia is due to bad experiences he had as a child.
How very Freudian.

dk

I agree, but find responsibility a much abused word, to often we take responsiblity for the credit due others.

Kimpatsu

RevDahlia

This does not refute my point; in fact, you've reinforced it. It seems that homosexuals had "access" to both of us; pretext or no pretext, we appear to have suffered minimal ill-effects. I am assuming you are not dying of AIDS, or enslaved to a leather daddy, as you claim is likely if children are exposed to homosexuality.

Your anecdote doesn't shock me, either; by the time I was 14 I'd also been hit on more times than I could count. This is typical for most females. Gays are by no means the only people who make advances towards the inappropriately young. I understand a bit more of your paranoia now, though.