Anglican Mainstream

by Stefano Gennarini, JD, Turtle Bay & Beyond

Sex researcher Dr. Rachel Jones at the Guttmacher Institute recently published a study in the journal Contraception that found that the “withdrawal method of birth control is nearly as effective as condoms in preventing pregnancy.” By the study’s measures, “pulling out” had a failure rate of four percent, while condoms had a failure rate of two percent.

 

The conversation about sexually transmitted infections also benefits from the amplification of empirical evidence. HIV is a serious problem, and it demands medical vigilance in the search for a cure and the campaign for better treatments, drugs, and care. To pretend that simply telling people to wear condoms will work, however, is dangerously naïve.

 

According to the Center for Disease Control, in 2010, men who have sex with men accounted for 63 percent of HIV infections.

 

Despite widespread HIV awareness campaigns and knowledge about condoms,50 percent of gay men do not use them, and the HIV rate among gay men is on the rise because of it. Mark S. King, an award winning author and leading advocate for AIDS awareness in the gay community, who is also gay and HIV positive, recently gave a perfect summary of the motivation behind unprotected sex: “We keep talking about barebacking as if it’s some kind of psychosis, when really all it is is men behaving naturally.”

By Leonardo Blair, Christian Post

A new study spanning 15 countries, including the United States, has highlighted that transgender women are nearly 50 times more likely than the general population to be at risk of an HIV infection while another has cited a dearth of HIV-surveillance data on women with surgically created vaginas.

The first study, conducted by Dr. Stefan Baral, director of the key populations programs in the Center for Public Health and Human Rights at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and colleagues, and reported in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, examined data from 15 countries with male-predominant HIV epidemics. The countries included the U.S., six from the Asia-Pacific area, five in Latin America, and three in Europe. The findings come after nearly four decades of grappling with the AIDS epidemic.

"Our findings suggest that transgender women are a very high burden population for HIV and are in urgent need of prevention, treatment, and care services," said Dr. Baral and his team in the discussion of their findings.

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by Brian Clowes Ph.D, HLI World Watch

by Dan Even, Haaretz

The number of new HIV infections among homosexual men is increasing, according to Health Ministry figures.

There has been a 55% increase in HIV infections among homosexual men since 2005, though the pace of infection has moderated somewhat in the past few years. In 2011, there were 150 new HIV cases reported among homosexual men.

This is true throughout the West, not just in Israel.

According to statistics compiled by the Health Ministry’s sexual diseases clinic in south Tel Aviv ‏(the Levinsky Clinic‏), the rate of HIV infection among homosexuals ‏(2,603 per 100,000‏) is 4.5 times the rate of infection among heterosexuals ‏(573 per 100,000‏).

The spike in HIV infections among homosexuals has led the Health Ministry to conduct periodic surveys of the sexual habits among homosexual men. In a survey of 2,000 homosexuals in 2010, 20% reported that they had had anal intercourse without using a condom in the past six months. This is a risk factor for contracting HIV.

Similarly, 25% of those surveyed reported using recreational drugs, which also increases the risk.

These results were similar to the previous survey that the ministry had conducted in 2005 among 2,569 homosexuals, in which a third of those with HIV ‏(33.8 percent‏) reported having casual sex, which increases the risk of infection. Of these, 40.6 percent reported having anal sex with random partners.

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By Dale O'Leary

The media expressed shock when Pope Benedict XVI on his trip to Africa said that the promotion of condoms as the solution for the AIDS epidemic may only increase the problem. How, the shocked journalists asked, could Pope ignore science?

The fact is that science is on the side of the Pope, as Edward Green, author of Rethinking AIDS Prevention admitted. Green had gone to Africa accepting the conventional wisdom that condoms were the solution for the AIDS epidemic, but discovered that massive condom education and distribution programs were not working. On the other hand, a program promoting abstinence before marriage and fidelity in marriage in Uganda was successful.

His conclusions have been confirmed by numerous other studies. In 2003, Norman Hearst and Sammy Chen conducted a condom effectiveness study for the U.N.’s AIDS program. They concluded that “In many sub-Saharan African countries, high condom use has yet to produce demonstrable benefit… sad experience shows that high HIV transmission can coexist with high condom use.”

An article in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet concluded: “Massive increases in condom use worldwide have not translated into demonstrably improved HIV control in the great majority of countries where they have occurred.”

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Letter to the Editor, Daily Mail, from Mr Paul Laxton, Huddersfield

As a retired prison governor, I can see the flaw in Justice Secretary Chris Grayling’s proposals to make prison life tougher by rectifying the situation whereby gays serving prison sentences can be sexually active while heterosexual prisoners can’t. He says gay prisoners should be split up and, if necessary, transferred.

I’m not convinced that Mr Grayling has been fully briefed by his civil servants about this. He may not be aware that a prisoner can no longer be charged with indulging in gay sex unless the governor has enacted a specific rule against such relationships.

No governor is likely to risk his job by promulgating such a rule and bringing down the wrath of a politically correct HQ on his head.

Mr Grayling may also not know that the governor no longer has the power to prevent the issue of condoms, which may prevent the spread of HIV but effectively give the green light to sexual activity.

Meanwhile, there is an unintended consequence of the ban on smoking in public buildings, which came into force in England in 2007. The head of the Prison Service at the time successfully argued that, as a cell was effectively a prisoner’s home, it should be exempt from the legislation.

This brings into play the much abused Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to a private and family life, and leaves open the possibility of legal action being brought to establish that, as a consequence of this decision, a prison cell is a private place under the meaning of the 1967 Act that legalised homosexuality between consenting adults – thus overturning the current position that a prison cell is excluded from the definition.

I hope Mr Grayling can raise these issues with civil servants and Treasury solicitors.

By James Gallagher, BBC News

The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) attacks the immune system

Huge improvements in treating and testing for HIV have failed to curb infections in gay and bisexual men in England and Wales, a study suggests.

New infections were static at about 2,300 a year between 2001 and 2010, despite rises in early diagnosis and far more people taking medication.

Scientists, writing in the Lancet Infectious Diseases, said there had been a return of risky sexual practice.

Campaigners said there were “real challenges” in HIV prevention.

There is concern about the spread of HIV in men who have sex with other men. The Health Protection Agency’s latest report said HIV had reached an “all-time high” in this group, with more and more new cases reported each year.

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What's missing on World Aids Day?  Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council notes that the mainstream US media have failed to mention the elephant in the room in their top stories on the topic.  Read here

By Peter Sprigg, FRC

By Thaddeus Baklinski, LifeSite News

A report on HIV infection from the UK’s Health Protection Agency states that new diagnoses among men who have sex with men (MSM) reached an all-time high in 2011, with 3,010 new cases.

The report, which was published on Thursday, says a “worrying” trend has developed since 2007, with rates of new HIV infections rising rapidly among homosexual men.

Nearly one in 12 male homosexuals in London now has HIV. In the rest of the nation, one in 20 homosexual men is HIV-positive.

The highest rates of HIV were (47 per 1,000) reported among homosexual men, and the next highest rates (37 per 1,000) in the black African community.

Almost two-thirds of homosexual men newly diagnosed as HIV-infected at an STI clinic had not attended a clinic for testing in the previous three years.

The report says this “strongly suggests there is room for improvement in the frequency of testing by those at highest risk.”

The data state that approximately one quarter (22,600) of people infected with HIV were undiagnosed and unaware of their infection.

The report provides the usual advice of “safer sex,” that is, use of condoms, to reduce the risk of contracting or transmitting HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, but adds that higher risk groups (homosexual men) should “avoid overlapping sexual relationships and reduce the number of sexual partners.”

“Partner reduction” and reducing promiscuity have proven to be significant in reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS, whereas promotion of condoms use has not.

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By Dale O'Leary

…additive psychosocial health problems—otherwise known collectively as a syndemic—exist among urban MSM and that the interconnection of these problems functions to magnify the effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in this population. A variation of this question has been empirically tested since the very earliest days of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, in that substantial literature now exists on the relationship between substance use and HIV/AIDS,[3] depression and HIV/AIDS[4], childhood sexual abuse and HIV/AIDS[5], and violence and HIV/AIDS[6]. Our analysis extends this literature to show that the connection among these epidemic health problems and HIV/AIDS is far more complex than a 1-to-1 relationship; rather it is the additive interplay of these health problems that magnifies the vulnerability of a population to serious health conditions such as HIV/AIDS.[7]

By James Gallagher, BBC News

By Cheryl Wetzstein, Washington Times

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by Thomas Coy, MercatorNet

How much worse do the risks of gay sex have to be before it rates the same public health warnings as smoking?

From The Argus

NEWLY-diagnosed HIV infections are on the rise in Brighton and Hove.

The number of people attending NHS services for HIV in the city is increasing by ten to 15 per cent a year.

Last year, 920 people from Brighton and Hove were receiving treatment compared to 810 in 2003, a rise of 14 per cent.

Meanwhile, Brighton's Elton John Centre, which treats people with HIV and Aids, has recorded a four-fold increase in patient numbers since 1995, from about 350 to 1,300.

These are not all new infections – many people have moved to the area because treatment is good or for other reasons.

But health professionals have warned that those at risk should be aware of the dangers and should make sure they heed the safe-sex message.

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Watch the full video here

Cultural imperialism: The Sexual Rights Agenda is a hard-hitting documentary exposing how Western donor nations are now using financial aid as a weapon to force smaller nations to comply with a radical sexual rights agenda.

The film, Cultural Imperialism, was created in response to numerous complaints from UN representatives of developing countries. They asked us to expose to the American people what the Obama administration, along with several UN agencies, is doing to their countries. The hope of these representatives is that, upon being made aware of the problem, Americans, as well as other people around the world, will rise up and stop Obama's cultural imperialism. They also want to show Cultural Imperialism in their own countries to help raise awareness of these abuses.

In the film, African and Caribbean representatives at the UN speak out about how they are being bullied by the West into accepting legalized prostitution and special homosexual rights in their countries, despite overwhelming opposition from their people. The film shows how this imposition of sexual rights is eroding the religious and cultural values of these countries and destroying their families.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Julio Severo, LifeSite News

The Expanded Thematic Group on HIV/AIDS in Brazil (GT/UNAIDS), in joint partnership with national and international groups, sent a letter on October 16 to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and other Brazilian authorities, requesting priority be given to efforts to criminalize “homophobia.”

By Jeanie Groh, Huffington Post

With their "True Love Waits" jewelry, conferences and T-shirts, Christians may be the face of the abstinence movement, but Muslims and Hindus are more likely to abstain from premarital sex.

That's the conclusion of a new study in the American Sociological Review, which also found that Muslims and Hindus — at least in the developing world — are more likely than Christians and Jews to refrain from extramarital sex.

"All major world religions discourage sex outside of marriage, but they are not all equally effective in shaping behavior," said Amy Adamczyk of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, who co-authored the study with John Jay doctoral student Brittany E. Hayes.

Drawing on the Demographic and Health Surveys funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, the study included data from 31 developing nations collected between 2000 and 2008. The authors focused on individuals' responses to questions on religious affiliation, marital status, and sexual behavior outside of marriage.

Adamczyk said the study evolved from another study she was doing that found countries with large Muslim populations have very low rates of HIV and AIDS. "I was trying to figure out why that would be," she said. One reason she considered was lower rates of sex outside of marriage.

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By Jack Fonseca, LifeSite News

Over the past year, Ontarians have been inundated with media allegations about an “epidemic” of gay teens being bullied in school and this is the reason why every high school, including Catholic ones, must have Gay-Straight Alliances.

However, hard data did not support this claim, and in fact, legitimate studies show that the #1 cause of bullying in schools is body size/shape. For example, in a 2006 study done by a consultancy firm for the Toronto District School Board, sexual orientation was not even mentioned in the top 6 reasons it found for why kids are bullied in school.

The media also claimed, without any hard data whatsoever to back it, that there is an epidemic of same-sex attracted youth taking their lives as a result of the “homophobic bullying” supposedly rampant in schools. If one reads between the lines, those ultimately responsible for this gay suicide ‘epidemic’ are – wait for it – Christians, of course. Here’s the twisted logic: the belief that God designed sex as proper to a man and woman within the marriage covenant for the purpose of babies and bonding, somehow creates a “climate of hatred and violence” towards people who experience same-sex attraction.

[...]  Who Is To Blame For Gay Teen Deaths?

This is a bit of a trick question. They likely won’t die as teens (although they could contract the virus at this time), but rather as adults. HIV takes 7 to 10 years to develop, and with the advent of anti-retroviral drugs, full-blown AIDS can be forestalled for many years. But there is no cure for AIDS and we don’t know if there ever will be. Eventually, the disease will prematurely end their lives. For some, it will be in the prime of life. Even for those on anti-retroviral drugs, it is not a pleasant existence. They have to take $10,000 to $15,000 worth of drugs each year. It is not without multiple infections and multiple hospitalizations.

Who is to blame? First, the government is to blame for casting overboard its obligation to defend the common good, just so it curries favour with the powerful gay lobby and its allies in the mainstream media. Secondly, school boards for going along with this social engineering experiment. Third, the militant gay-activist organizations who don’t really care whether people with same-sex attraction live or die, so long as their sexual revolution is successful. These radical activists are using people with same-sex attraction as pawns in their war against the Judeo-Christian world view. They actively deny that AIDS is a gay disease when almost 70% of new AIDS cases come from less than 2% of the population – that is, gay males. The mounting body count does not seem to matter at all to these sex-activists. Only the goal of sexual revolution.

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By David van Gend, MercatorNet

Why is it so hard to admit that gay health and life expectancy are far below average?