[slight hijack]
Incidentally, what happened in the US version of “Queer as Folk” to that guy who renounced his homosexual orientation after joining some religious anti-gay “support” group? (I ask this here because the group sounds like something the guy mentioned in the OP would really go for). I caught a couple of episodes of QaF while in holiday in Australia several months back, and never found out what happened.
[/slight hijack]
Emmit soon left that group and went back to his normal life, istara.
Maybe we should make sure that Federal advisory committees such as this have a liberal sprinkling of Raelians, tinfoilhats, Area 51 fanatics, and so forth.
My point being, there are views I don’t endorse, and the government will always surely be well represented with people holding such views.
Then there are views that are totally off the fucking wall, like AIDS being a “gay plague” and thinking that one can somehow passively receive the ‘sin’ of homosexuality by getting infected with AIDS through a blood transfusion.
I expect Bush to appoint people who basically agree with him, which means I will disagree with them. That’s life. But this is a case where he appointed a total fruitcake to a governmental position, just to keep the nutso right happy. That’s quite different, IMHO.
And think of the heat Clinton took over people like Jocelyn Elders, who’s far saner and way more mainstream than this guy will ever be. Sheesh.
The case up for argument this spring is one where Texas prosecuted for sodomy – the kicker being that Texas repealed its heterosexual sodomy law some years ago but left in place a sodomy law applying only to two persons of the same sex. The challenge is on the “equal protection” standard of the Fourteenth Amendment – clearly, gay (and bi) people (presuming that term to effectively describe those who would have sex with someone else of the same sex) are not afforded the same ‘protection of the laws’ as are those who indulge in sex with someone of the opposite sex. Besides Texas, the states of Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma have sodomy laws applying only to homosexual acts.
Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia have sodomy laws applying equally to homo- and heterosexual acts, as does Puerto Rico. This site lists the status of the laws in each of the 50 states (see state-by-state listing links under the map). Idaho, for example, has a penalty of imprisonment for five years to life.
Whether those nine states will be covered under the ambit of the upcoming case is questionable; there are some who think that the Court is willing to use this case to overturn Bowers v. Hardwick and rule consensual sex in private to be covered by the right to privacy. Souter, Stevens, and Ginsberg, and probably Breyer, are expected to see matters this way; the stances of Kennedy and O’Connor are questionable. Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas are likely to favor upholding the law as a valid exercise of state police power in enforcing “this country’s traditional standard of morality.” (Don’t look at me like that; I’m just quoting! :))
Oy.
Esprix
—Rehnquist, Scalia, and Thomas are likely to favor upholding the law as a valid exercise of state police power in enforcing “this country’s traditional standard of morality.”—
Which begs the question: does this mean we should go back to the sky high rates of out-of-wedlock conceptions in traditional New England? The practice of bundling (the parents arranging for potential boyfriends and girlfriends sleep in the same bed together, which often led to experimentation and pregnancy)? Parents haveing sex in the same rooms/beds their children are sleeping? Do Scalia and Thomas and Rehnquist actually KNOW anything about what was traditional in this country (if all they mean is “when we were kids” then why shouldn’t modern day traditions dominate)?
Of course, I think those three stand on more solid Constitutional grounds in a technical sense. Scalia’s view that, if you want to change the law, you should do it via legislation, is quite respectable IMHO, though I think he too often begs the question of what the law really is to his own prejeduces.
I could not agree more, Apos. However – and it’s a big however, if “judicial review” means anything whatsoever, it means that a Constitutional prohibition overrides a law passed or enforced in a manner contrary to it – and by virtue of our entire judicial system, requires “judge-made law” (not “laws”) to hold the Constitution supreme over the law made under it.
Most people (probably not you, Apos, judging from your posts, but speaking on a more general basis) think of “law” as synonymous with “statute” – “those things that Congress or the state legislature pass.” In our court system, though, “law” means (a) the Constitution, (b) the State constitutions where applicable, © statute law, (d) regulations made by administrative agencies in conformity to and authorized by statute law, and, and most importantly, (e) the precedents set by court decisions in cases brought under any of a-d. It’s all well and good to have a law stating that you shall not be cruel to animals – but what does “cruel” mean in this specific case?; what “animals” are included in its ambit – is removing a tapeworm from your intestine “cruelty to animals”? And so on. Is the fact that the dog was attacking his four-year-old daughter reasonable grounds for the man to have beaten it? And so on down the line.
When people object to “judge made law” they tend to forget that we are not France or Ancient Rome, and virtually all our law is “judge-made law.”
And the question here is quite simple – does the Fourteenth Amendment (and/or the nebulous “right to privacy” for which there are conflicting precedents) conflict with the Texas sodomy statute, or not? If it does, the Fourteenth Amendment (passed by Congress and ratified by the overwhelming majority of state legislatures) overrides the statute. If not, the Texas statute is valid. Either way, the decision whether it does is “judge made law.”
luckily you’ve got a drunken prom night to look forward to
Read Sterra’s link two messages above yours. Excluding him because he’s stupider than shit is a great idea.
A hijack, but possibly relevant:
Above, Shodan asks if others would be willing to call Mr. Dugas an “ignorant piece of shit” for his cavalier attitude towards spreading his infection; MrVisible and grendel72 immediately respond that they would.
I’m curious to see if they, or others, would also apply that criticism to San Francisco’s gay activist community; who were in large measure opposed to shutting down the bathhouses, even after it became clear that AIDS was spread by sexual contact, and that the bathhouse culture was a huge factor in its spread in the city.
- Rick
You know, Bricker, gay people opposed the bathhouses too. In fact, it was gay activists who helped to shut down the bath houses in San Francisco and elsewhere, out of concern about health risks. But hey, you knew that… you said the gay community “were in large measure opposed to shutting down the bathhouses” without mentioning the gay people on the other side of the debate.
What the hell is the point of questions like this?
This I think is a complex question. The argument as I understood them in favor of keeping bath houses open was that they catered to men who otherwise would likely have no other place where they would see information on AIDS or safer sex. It certainly was not just locals who would frequent bath houses. Out of towners, including many men who were married to women and who would nbot identify themselves as gay or bisexual, would go when they were in town. I don’t say this to excuse anyone from practicing unsafe sex after it was definitively established that the disease was transmissible by sexual contact. But it’s really not a yes/no question.
BTW, some of the same issues that the bath house question brought to the fore are resurfacing in efforts to reach underserved populations, in particular African-American men who have sex with men “on the down low” but do not identify as gay or bi and so don’t respond to campaigns targeting those communities.
Finally, there’s nothing wrong with being “ignorant” provided that the ignorance is not willful. Ignorance can be combatted as we all know.
Scylla, do you really feel that a person who holds the view that AIDS is a “gay plague” has any qualifications whatsoever to be on a Health and Human Services Presidential Advisory Commission on HIV and AIDS? And since the gay community still has the largest numbers of PWA’s, do you really feel when he says things like, “Homosexuality is not inborn biologically, just as incest and bestiality are not inborn. Studies have show that thousands of homosexuals have been set free from this sin” is going to in any way help those people affected?
Conservatives on the panel? By all means. Right-wing loonies? No.
Esprix
My point was that it’s easy, with the benefit of hindsight, to point at people and declare them ignorant pieces of shit. The question is how a person might act WITHOUT hindsight, in the heat of the moment.
As Otto correctly points out, the bathhouse issue was a complex one. Those opposed to the closings of the bathhouses were acting in good faith, even if, ultimately, history was to prove their approach misguided. The opposition believed, among other things, that closing the bathhouses was an affront to gay rights. There was some support for that view.
Similarly, it’s easy to dispense with Mr. Dugas – he seemed quite cavalier at the prospect that he was infecting others. But I think there’s at least some room to say that he wasn’t a doctor, but an airline steward; that AIDS hadn’t even been named at that point; and that it wasn’t resoundingly clear that “it” was killing people. He was being told to give up his sex life, by people that hadn’t so much as published a paper on the condition at that point.
Perhaps he acted foolishly. Perhaps a more prudent person would have agreed to curtail his activities until more evidence developed. But from his perspective, the very idea that he was killing people could have seemed like a science-fiction plot, possibly encouraged by anti-gay sentiment. I’m not so sure that “ignorant piece of shit” is a fair description.
- Rick
Esprix (and everyone else who’s asking the same question,)
Y’know, I hate these things when I end up being an apologist.
The man is a fundmentalist and he has religious objections to homosexual sex, in the narrow links that have been shown he does not advocate any ill-will towards gays. It seems he wants to save you from being gay the same way he’d like to save me from being Catholic.
His obnoxiousness is Jehovah’s Witness quality to my ear. Your opinion may vary.
This isn’t about conservatism or anythin like that. He’s a vocal fundamentalist who’s saying a lot of the right things about HIV.
There are a lot of deeply religious people in this country. Representation aside, I think it’s important that they be reached. Who will reach them better than one of their own with the disease?
That’s the reason, and the only reason why I think he’s a godd choice. The right things he says can do a lot of good. As for the bad things he’s said, I certainly can’t apologize for them, but I’ll tell with all honesty, I was guilty of the same thing and so was a lot of this country until recently.
It’s only relatively recently that HIV has been considered more than a disease gay people get. Even early films on the subject that we’re attempting to be tolerant and correct characterized it this way. There was that big HBO movie about the early days of HIV quite a few years back “And The Band played on, (I think)” and “Philadelphia” as well. Even that play “Angels in America” that I saw in DC characterized HIV as a gay disease.
Back in College in the late 80s HIV was still called AIDS, and it was understood to come from anal sex, or blood exchange. Gays, Drug users, and prostitutes were at risk.
So when this guy used “gay plague,” when did he say it? Was he trying to be insulting or was this what he, and most of the general public had been led to believe?
A lot of people still think this way, and it’s not because they’re prejuduce, it’s because they’re simply ignorant.
A fundamentalist with Aids sends a message, and I think it’s one the insular brethren in their churches need to get.
I’m personally more disturbed that this guy appears to have lied about his role at the University, than the fact that he held, or holds some attitudes I consider ignorant.
This question appears self-contradictory. It translates to,
Someone who considers AIDS to be a gay disease should not serve on an AIDS panel. Why not? Because AIDS is a gay disease.
I really don’t have any idea how you got this impression. I think it translates more into:
Someone who considers AIDS to be a gay disease should not serve on an AIDS panel. Why not? Because many (though, of course, not all) people with AIDS are gay, and such a view reflects poorly on that person’s ability to help gay, and perhaps by extension, straight AIDS victims.
Scylla, I think I understand what you’re saying, but as I said in my previous reply to you, I think that any unspoken message that you think the appointment would bring, and indeed, anything he actually says on the subject today, is suspect, due to his comments of the recent past. Perhaps this is unfair, but as we saw with Trent Lott and many others, having a history certainly throws doubts on the present.
Let me put it this way. Do you think that fundamentalists like himself will look at what he says now (assuming they’re at all different from the comments that caused him to withdraw) and suddenly become more enlightened, or do you think they’ll see his “gay plague” opinions, agree with them, and assume that he was appointed to put the fear of Gawd into them perverts? I think the latter is more likely, especially since I’ve not yet seen any evidence that he’s repudiated one word of what he’s said in the past. (If anyone knows of any instance of him doing so, please correct me.)
Plus, I think the audience you think he’ll reach is relatively small, and that it’d be better to focus on his overall suitability for the job, which, again, I don’t think is that good.
If I can clarify anything, I’ll do my best to do so.
Well fundamentalists really aren’t that likely to get AIDS. I know that Bob Jones kicks out anyone who has sex before marrage, and that their families would probably disown their kids if they did something like that.
The guy also still claims that the disease is a “gay plague” so I really think that the only thing that might occur is fundamentalists refusing blood transfusions.
The majority of AIDS patients are still gay men. He has a fundamental problem with homosexuality, and is rather vocal about it. His rhetoric isn’t all love and kindness. How can he effectively administrate policy in this arena? I don’t see how it’s possible.
Like it’s a “gay disease?” That helps no one, gay or straight.
I won’t argue that having a conservative on the panel wouldn’t help, but putting a homophobe won’t - and an ignorant one at that.
It’s the wrong things that disqualify him, IMHO.
So why regress and put someone who still has those attitudes on a presidental commission? You’re not making much sense here.
Evidently fairly recently. And even if it wasn’t, why did it take his appointment to a presidential commission before they were removed from the public view? It seems fairly obvious he still holds those views, whenever he might have originally expressed them.
Esprix