Andrew Sullivan writes:
And that’s why black men in DC are more affected by HIV now than black men in Rwanda.
Sentences to ponder
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It’s good to see an ad for Fallows’ latest hyperventilation over China …
But I suppose I’m a little confused. Why did the Christian right, with it’s awe-inspiring control of the Bush administration, focus its theological ire only on Washington D.C. while letting the rest of the country generally improve in terms of incidence and transmission rates?
I would guess it has less to do with Christianity and the stigma of homosexuality and more to do with the relative incarceration rates.
Sullivan seems to be saying that the Bush administration is almost responsible for the AIDS problem in DC.
Why do we need all these new-fangled “outreach” and “advocacy” programs when our forefathers had the ability and the temerity to eradicate this epidemic all by themselves? I mean, I realize much of the politically powerful gay lobby would like to pepper over the fact that the spread of the HIV is almost completely caused by willful, repeated, penetrative and traumatic anal contact, not traditional heterosexual sex, but that doesn’t mean society should be forced to substantially subsidize their alternative lifestyles, just as they managed to achieve in the late ’80s through the histrionics of their wild-eyed scientific supporters in academe and the media. Virtually anyone who’s at risk of being HIV positive should be quite aware of that risk.
But that would be too much to ask. It would upset the leftist intellectual status quo which infantilizes the free will of men and doesn’t really believe in old-fashioned tropes like self-control and individual responsibility. Oh, but to look at these poor passive actors caught up in the grist of Reaganomics and cultural conservatism!
Now before the Defenders of the Modern Faith attack, looking for blood and self-satisfaction in my moral bankruptcy, I’ll just burnish my libertarian bona fides by saying, yes in fact, I actually do support the idea of legalizing gay marriage with all the civil rights and privileges that any other heterosexual couple might enjoy. No one’s sexual lifestyle is any business of mine, and especially, the State’s. And similarly, my federal tax dollars shouldn’t burden me with solving the problems of a minority constituency, especially one that is quite unyielding in attacking traditional society’s mores at its every opportunity.
Supporting a more abstract civil equality doesn’t mean one has to fall completely from the concrete basis of reality. No, homosexual couples aren’t just like “everyone else”. Supporting gay marriage doesn’t mean that one has to accept stupid or unsupported claims that, for example the efficacy of child-rearing in the traditional nuclear family versus this “alternative” unit are the same (I don’t hold a strong opinion on this), that homosexual men approach long-term relationships in the same manner as heterosexual men, and that in general groups don’t have advantages and disadvantages in life they will eventually have come to tolerate. Isn’t that the “diversity” we’re supposed to cherish? Being cosmopolitan and clear-eyed isn’t so impossible; the blogger Mark at Congenial Times, who is himself homosexual, often speculates and writes on controversial issues with a refreshing candor, and yet at the same time manages to remain a full five-fifths of a person.
Quoting Andrew Sullivan? Definitely not a high point for this blog.
I have to admit that I know very little about this subject, so I’m honestly asking:
Is Sullivan saying that the Bush administration is (at least partially responsible) for the relatively low incidence of AIDs in Rwanda, and, by omission of whatever it did to help Rwanda, at least partially responsible for the relatively high incidence of AIDs in D.C.?
That seems to be a pretty bold claim to make, yet I don’t see any evidence to back it up.
Did Rwanda previously have a higher incidence of AIDs than it does now? It seems to have a pretty low incidence for the continent as a whole (as has been noted by a previous commenter).
Does anyone reading this know much about this topic? For that matter, does Andrew Sullivan?
There are still cases of BDS floating around. I thought everyone was cured or infected with ODS.
Jimmy Nicks,
The fact that there is a religious, and Christian, left, is why one sees
the phrase “Christian Right” (or in the case of Sullivan, his rather
peculiar “Christianist Right”). Such phraseology does not at all imply
that all Christians are rightists. OTOH, I would certainly hope that
you are not out to deny that there is a very strong Christian Right
movement in this country right now, and it seems to have a pretty
strong position within the Republican Party, for better or worse (the
latter in my view).
As for why would Republicans worry about health policy in a “blue city”
like Washington? To show how rotten all those people in Washington are,
and to the rest of the country how they are going to clean them up and
making them act right. Just check out how the Republicans have gone way
out of their way to impose their views about gun control on D.C., those
rotten commmies who live there!!!
Billaire:
There is a difference between clear eyed analysis and vitriol, even in
Libertarianville.
I thought Andrew Sullivan was still blaming Sarah Palin’s baby for the epidemic? He must have changed his mind to make it Bush’s fault.
I don’t see how Sullivan can claim this is the Bush administration’s fault. He alludes to the downlow hypothesis in his post, but the downlow hypothesis is really weak in the first place. From what I’ve heard say by people at the CDC, that is a stretched explanation.
He is right that the increase in imprisonment is probably a causal factor. See the forthcoming Johnson and Raphael paper that links racial disparities in AIDS and diverging rates of incarceration among men. There’s a literature in epidemiology (cf. Adaora Adimora and Victor Schoenbach) that has been studying this link for years. But the rise in incarceration rates is hardly something that Bush started – this goes back to Nixon and the war on drugs.
Besides, Sullivan actually alludes to that which may be playing the biggest part when he says in his post that HIV is like diabetes. He means it’s a chronic, but non-fatal, condition thanks to the development of HAART and the protease inhibitors specifically. Just see the 2007 QJE by Lakdawalla, Sood and Goldman that find a causal effect between the availability of the new HAART medications and increased risky sex among infected gay men. The new drugs have effectively cheapened the price of risky sex, and not surprisingly, we’re seeing falling condom use, and increased promiscuity again among high risk populations. Again, not a Bush effect – this goes back to the 1990s, before Bush was president.
Sullivan seems biased to me. He favors the Downlow hypothesis, why? Because the downlow hypothesis is a way of saying that homophobia is killing Americans, since downlow behavior is presumably endogenous to social stigmas within the Black community that punish homosexual identity and behavior among black males, forcing them to lead double lives, and in turn, creating a vector of HIV transmission into the heterosexual network. But to my knowledge, there’s been no evidence brought forth for DL – just anecdotes and popculture statements.
“billare -
the study cites homosexual sex as the cause of 33% of hiv/aids transmissions, with heterosexual sex close behind at the cause of 28%. how does 1/3 translate in to ‘almost completely,’ except when filtered through irrational hatred of homosexuals?
Posted by: katie at Mar 16, 2009 5:41:”
How about, because the heterosexuals were infected by homosexuals. The fact that there are innocent victims doesn’t change the origin, or the cause.
Tens of thousands of innocent people are killed on the highways every year by drunk drivers. What does the fact that the victims were not drunk drivers have to do with it? We know what causes it.
Then there’s the fact that gay activists fought (successfully) to prevent contact tracing for HIV infections (a normal public health practice for much less dangerous infections diseases). In the ’80s they threatened to send known infected people to give blood unless the blood banks stopped excluding based on sexual practices. Likewise, they fought all rational measures to stop the epidemic when it was first starting, long before it had moved out of the culture of the most sexually promiscuous homosexuals.
Would the slaughter of young men in Rwanda have anything to do with lowering the AIDS rate? If you remove large numbers of young men from a society, a lot of things decrease in frequency. Crime, pregnancy, economic activity, alcohol and drug use, and STD rates come to mind. Sort of like a retirement community in Florida.
mm,
There are Christians who are not Rightists, and there are Rightists who are not Christians. But are you denying that there are “Christian Rightists”? It would appear that they are strongly and proudly self-identifying group, perhaps about 25% of the US population, who in fact think that they should be running the country, and that everybody else should do what they say.
Arggh. I came here to read some thoughtful, sensible blog posts, not to be confronted by Andrew Sullivan’s predictable screeching about “Christianists” (of which I am not one, I must add). Does AS not think before he posts? Is he paid by the word or something?
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