SILENCE=DEATH

A couple of weeks ago, a person in our community received the news at the age of 26 they were HIV positive. This young mans life has taken a turn that sadly was preventable.

As I write tonight I am worried…I am scared…I am deeply disturbed. For you see for the last 30 years or so I have seen this before and this is reality come home again, for there are no fairy tale endings.

Yes, there are miracles, yes there are new discoveries and yes there is hope…for with the unconditional love of God there is always hope, always miracles, and always-new discoveries.

So here we are half way through 2010 and I find myself once again climbing up on a soapbox. I want to sound a warning, ring an alarm, rise up and shout from the mountaintop to my brothers and sisters in the gay, bi and straight community…ENOUGH ALREADY…STOP IT…HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MINDS?

This is 2010 not 1994 nor 1982. We know for a fact how HIV keeps it’s bloody record of death going. We really know this is not a manageable disease, but rather a killer that does unbelievable harm to untold millions of people. We know that the medications used to fight off this virus have horrible side effects and in the long run lose their effectiveness. We know that whole generations of humanity will never see their 21st birthday.

Yet, many gay men, bi men and straight men still behave as if HIV is an after thought, as if the magic pill will arrive just in time for Christmas. While I dare say it is not a majority, it is significant enough to cause untold misery and destruction for millions of people.

This is 2010 and we know we have the weapons that can stop this disease in its tracks. The weapons are so simple. One is an object and the other a program.

The object is called a condom and the program is called “needle exchange” or harm reduction (needle exchange and harm reduction is another blog).

Yet when you talk to folks in the community you would think I was “Henny-Penny and crying the sky is falling…think I am kidding? Take a look at this: (not for the squeamish) Some samples from Craig’s list:

“I'm into a lot of different things such as public sex, fisting, bareback, bondage, w/s, group fun, Master/slave type "relationships"... and yes, that is meant to mean "strings". I expect that anyone who wants to get to know me should at least be open minded and adventurous, even if they haven't done it all. I live a polyamorous lifestyle. I hope this stuff here sums me up well.”

“I need to suck a **** and eat a large load of ***. I also get into rimming, body contact, J/O and whatever else you can think of. If you are negative I am bb friendly.”

“Yeah, bb btm loves to get plowed hard by raw ****
Into it? like seeding a hot, horny, furry hole?”

There are places in the fair city of Atlanta where one can go and have any number of sex partners in an evening and there are no condoms in sight or asked for. Before the straight folks reading this say ah hah it is you gays…let me be clear there are plenty of these clubs for straight folks as well and the men who are picking up women while out of town are not using condoms either. In fact go to any straight party club and well you get the idea.

I had a person in pastoral counseling who is now a recovering sexual addict tell me how he would go to a local hotel here in town…place an ad on Craig’s list giving his location and room number. He would invite anyone who wanted sex to his room to find the door unlocked and him blindfolded with his butt in the air waiting to receive all the bareback sex he could.

Or how about these websites that have thousands of subscribers for both gay and straight people:

Bare-back-central

Gay Bareback Sex and Hairy Masculine Men

Bareback Resources


The porn industry is a multi billion-dollar empire whose hottest films involve sex without condoms. If people are spending that kind of money you cannot convince me they are not doing what they see in film.

This is not a blog to sound a moral cry about how sexually loose society is, nor is it to start an ethics debate on adultery and or fornication.

Rather it is about admitting and recognizing people regardless of morals, ethics, or the churches teachings are going to have sex. They have been doing the “deed” since the beginning of time.

I will save the sexual ethics discussion for another time. Right now I am concerned about stopping the bleeding. For you see when a person is wounded, 9 times out of 10 before you do anything else you have got to stop the bleeding.

Stopping the bleeding in this case means if you are going to have sex be safe about it. Use a condom!

Believe me, I know they are easy to use, easy to dispose of and can save one from any number of life threatening or life ending diseases. My partner and I have been together 28 plus years and have never had sex without condom use.

My friends don’t we have a moral obligation to not put others at risk for our sexual enjoyment?

For those who call themselves Christian can you really in good conscience put your partner or yourself at risk of a shorten or messed up life for a night of taking care of a “sexual itch”?

Do not those who consider themselves tops have an obligation to say no to bare backing?

Do not those who consider themselves bottoms have an obligation to say no to letting someone inside them without a condom.

How about straight folks…unless you are making a child and you both have tested negative, don’t you have an obligation to keep each other safe? I know all about the marriage vows of fidelity, however it is what it is…I mean really…do you want to find out your partner cheated on you when you come up with a positive test?

If you are going to cheat on your partner or even if you have an open relationship do you really want to introduce HIV or God knows what other disease to the one you say you love?

Isn’t the whole relationship thing difficult enough without adding a premature death sentence to it?

The moral police will tell me the answer is abstinence and then only sex in wedlock.

Well that has really worked well hasn't it? Read the court dockets and the reasons for divorce. Look at the record levels of teen pregnancy. HIV rates of infection are up not down. STD’s are on the rise rather then declining.

People committing adultery in the State of Georgia can go to jail…but that is of little good to the one they infect and I might add too little too late. People who do not disclose their status if positive can face jail time...of course this is a little late isn't it. Kinda like closing the barn door after the horse is long gone.

Gay folk are denied marriage, so their only answer is no sex? Right-so now convince me that a healthy 20 something man is not going to have sex regardless of the marriage laws.

I was talking to a Pastor who works with folks who are HIV positive and he told me about an informal survey that was done for men in prison. People going into prison are given an HIV test. Of those who tested negative when they went into prison, 54% of them tested positive when they came out. Of course you don’t give prisoners condoms because that would be approving sex and the wrong kind of sex at that. What kind of screwed up thinking is that?

I want with all my heart to have conversations around long-term monogamous relationships.

I want to teach values, respect and commitment as a part of our sexual relations.

My faith walk encourages and even demands me to support and model that kind of sexual responsibility.

However, we are left with the reality people are going “sow their oats”, they are going to experiment, they are going to be wild, they are going to be stupid and do sexual things out of a lack of judgment.

Like it or not that is the condition of the human race, it is the way we live and learn.

Yet if I can convince folks who are going to have sex regardless of some moral authority, to use a condom they might live long enough to learn a sense of responsibility.

If I can convince folks that if you have sex without a condom you are either suicidal or are a totally self-absorbed selfish person they might live long enough to learn there is other peoples lives at stake.

So to those men in the gay, bi and straight community…I am begging you, pleading with you, save a life and use a condom.

For those who would blast me for writing this blog, thinking this is the wrong subject for a minister to write about or it was just too graphic please remember:

Silence=Death and my friends we have been silent far too long in the matters of safe sex and the use of the condom.

For those who think this blog reads familiar…well yea, I wrote it in 2008 and not much has changed, so I am sounding the alarm again.

“The Hypocrisy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

Well everyone is all in a twitter because it looks like the day of the homosexual not being able to serve in the military is coming to an end.

Those who are on the political and religious right have gotten especially hysterical over this fact. Here is a pretty good representation of their thought process:

"Thirteen months before 9/11, on the day New York City passed homosexual domestic partnership regulations, I joined a group of Rabbis at a City Hall prayer service, pleading with G-d not to visit disaster on the city of N.Y. We have seen the underground earthquake, tsunami, Katrina, and now Haiti. All this is in sync with a two thousand year old teaching in the Talmud that the practice of homosexuality is a spiritual cause of earthquakes. Once a disaster is unleashed, innocents are also victims just like in Chernobyl.

"We plead with saner heads in Congress and the Pentagon to stop sodomization of our military and our society. Enough is enough."

Rabbi Yehuda Levin, Spokesman, Rabbinical Alliance of America

“So Hitler himself was an active homosexual. And some people wonder, didn’t the Germans, didn’t the Nazis, persecute homosexuals? And it is true they did; they persecuted effeminate homosexuals. But Hitler recruited around him homosexuals to make up his Storm troopers, they were his enforcers, they were his thugs. And Hitler discovered that he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough to carry out his orders, but that homosexual solders basically had no limits and the savagery and brutality they were willing to inflict on whomever Hitler sent them after. So he surrounded himself, virtually all of the Storm troopers, the Browshirts, were male homosexuals.”

American Family Association's Bryan Fischer

“Repealing the ban on open homosexuals serving in the U.S. military would be a mistake of historic proportions.

First, there would certainly be a mass exodus of normal men from a homosexualized military, leading to the reinstatement of compulsory service. The entire premise of a military system based on voluntary service is that young men will want to serve. But will normal men want to volunteer when they know they will share close quarters with other men for whom they will be objects of sexual interest? It is a recipe for deep and widespread moral and morale problems.

Then there’s the likelihood of physical conflict among the troops. Will proud young men being honed to become weapons of aggression against America’s enemies tolerate being ogled in the showers or touched inappropriately or bunking near sexually active “gays“? Undoubtedly blood will spill over such (inevitable) indignities.

But what will be the political consequence? Once homosexuals are invited to serve, the authorities will be committed to integrate them into the ranks, which means “sensitivity” training, anti-discrimination policies, and all of the other “politically correct” nonsense that has been such a disaster in the other spheres of our society. These policies have smacked of pro-“gay” fascism in the civilian world; how much worse would it be in the rigidly-controlled environment of the military?”

Dr. Scott Lively President, Defend the Family International

The talking points of the religious and political right only get more hysterical and patently ridiculous from what I have just quoted. Even going so far as to express the wild fantasy that sleeping soldiers would be in danger of experiencing force fellatio.

A closer read of the mentioned quotes will reveal what this is really all about: fear of sexuality. Ever since Augustine we have lived in a world where the act of sex has been thought to be some how the dark side of humanity not to be enjoyed and celebrated but done only out of duty to procreate. The end result of this thought process has turned sex into a “power and control” game, with homophobia being the ultimate weapon of sexism at it’s worst.

The “biblical” arguments against homosexuality for the most part have in fact been disproven or at minimum so open to question of what was actual being said they have become a mute point. In fact biblically speaking much stronger and pervasive arguments can be made for feeding the hungry, being merciful rather than justice seeking, loving one’s neighbor unconditionally and not bombing the world into a million pieces should be our priority rather than ones sexual orientation.

A little research will show most Western military forces have now removed policies excluding sexual minority members; of the 26 countries that participate militarily in NATO, 22 permit open lesbians, gays, or bisexuals to serve; of the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, three (United Kingdom, France, and Russia) do so. I might point out here most of these countries would consider themselves spiritual nations of one sort or another. If the reader wants to see the complete list of countries where this is a non-issue go to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_orientation_and_military_service

Steve Chapman points out this interesting little thought: “Israel, being small, surrounded by hostile powers, and obsessed with security, can't afford to jeopardize its military strength for the sake of prissy ventures in political correctness. But its military not only accepts gays, it provides benefits to their same-sex partners, as it does with spouses. Has that policy sapped Israel's military might? Its enemies don't seem eager to test the proposition.

You could argue that none of these experiences is relevant, since, being Americans, we are utterly unique. But our soldiers don't seem to have any trouble fighting alongside gay soldiers from allied nations.”

Rabbi Steven Wernick, the Executive Vice President and CEO, United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism has this to say:

“The United States was founded on the principles that all people were created equal. We know that sexual orientation is innate, and it cannot be God's will to give gay men and lesbians less dignity than God has given the rest of us. We believe strongly, therefore, that every American citizen, regardless of ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexual orientation, should have the right to serve our country. And no American citizen should have to lie about the person he or she most loves. The "don't ask" part of the "don't ask, don't tell" equation is on target - it is no one's business, ever. But the "don't tell" part is a violation of every person's right to seek love, and the right that Thomas Jefferson affirmed for us, the right to the pursuit of happiness.”

As for the hysterical fear stating if DADT goes away sexual assaults will suddenly become a problem…please! According to Marie Tesser a writer for womensnews,

“Sexual assault remains a pervasive problem for women in the military, including those currently deployed overseas. Experts say the military's hierarchy is ill-equipped and unprepared to deal fairly with rape complaints.”

According to CBS news,

“Katie Couric asked Michael Dominguez, principal under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, how big a problem sexual assault is in the military.

“Sexual assault injures troops,” he said. “Injures readiness. So regardless of the numbers we have, it is by definition too much.

But how often does it happen?

The Pentagon only started a comprehensive program to track incidents in 2006, and only after Congress mandated it do so.

That year there were 2,974 cases of rape and sexual assault across the services. And of those, only 292 cases resulted in a military trial.

And in 2007 there were even fewer prosecutions.

“Of more than 2,200 servicemen investigated for sexual assault, only 181 were prosecuted?” Couric asked Dominguez.

“Yes, we absolutely have to get better,” he said. “[Defense] Secretary [Robert] Gates himself is driving this initiative this year to improve our ability to investigate, to prosecute and convict. This is not where we want to be.”

And in a majority of cases, the punishment doesn't seem to match the crime. Often most offenders only get a reduction in rank or reduced pay."

Seems pretty clear to me gay folks are not the sexual problem of the military.

The hysterical right will never admit the TLGBQ folks have been serving in the military all along, standing in harms way as much for them as you and I, spilling their blood for the country they love and have taken an oath to defend…generally suffering in silence, being denied partner benefits and pensions, being forced to lie, hide and sneak around.

Yes, we have been in the military for a long long time. Denny Meyer writes:

“In 2003, at a summer Pride rally in a small park in the heart of New York City, I met an elderly couple who had strolled into the park to see what the festivities were all about. He wore a WWII VET baseball cap and had his arm around his wife's shoulders. Seeing that I was wearing a veteran's garrison cap, he asked me what was going on. I told him that it was a Gay Pride rally and that I was handing out leaflets advocating the right of gay people to serve in our armed forces. He nodded and told me that he'd been in the Normandy Invasion and that on that dreadful D-Day, as they stormed the beach under an incessant hail of machinegun fire and artillery, there were five men in his unit that everyone knew were homosexuals. He said, gravely, "The German bullets didn't discriminate; we all took care of each other and covered each other."

Our military leaders know our community has served and done it with distinction and true heroism, which is why DADT is so hypocritical especially in a country where we hold dear and the military exists to defend: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The religious and political right in the days ahead will grow even more resolute and hysterical in their fight to stop this “house of cards” from falling. Yet our community will continue to stand firm, continue to defend to the death the right of all people to have life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We will no longer hide in shameful silence.

We will always point out the hypocrisy of DADT until it is no longer the policy of deceit, hypocrisy and shame with these simple words placed on the gravesite of Technical Sergeant Leonard Matlovich (1943–1988) who served his country with honor and distinction:

A Gay Vietnam Veteran
When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one