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Why Did Matt Foreman call HIV a gay Disease?

Homosexual Leader Calls HIV `a gay Disease`
By Pete Winn
CNSNews. com Senior Staff Writer
February 15, 2008

(CNSNews; com) - In startling admission, the head of major homosexual activist group said HIV/AIDS is a `gay disease. `

The comments were made last Friday at the National gay & Lesbian Task Force`s (NGLTF) national conference in Detroit by Executive Director Matt Foreman.

`Folks, with 70 percent of the people in this country living with AIDS being gay or bisexual (sexual), we cannot deny that AIDS is gay disease,` Foreman told his audience. `We have to own that & face up to that. `

Conservative organizations that work on HIV/AIDS issue say they are shocked.

`Foreman`s comments are a dramatic departure from the long-standing strategic & rhetorical orthodoxy of the homosexual `rights` movement, which in past has heatedly objected to any such characterization by critics of It`s political agenda,` said Gary Glenn, president of American Family Association of Michigan.

Matt Barber, policy director for cultural issues at Concerned Women for America, called admission `refreshing. `

For decades, he said, homosexual activists have excoriated anyone who even implied that HIV/AIDS was disease largely affecting homosexuals. Even the late homosexual journalist Randy Shilts was attacked in the early `80s - when HIV was first recognized - for referring to the condition as GRID, or `gay-related immune deficiency; `

`Because of their war on semantics & being in such denial & not focusing on the reality of the dangers of their behaviors, many people have contracted the disease,` Barber told Cybercast News Service.

`Who knows how many lives could have been saved had homosexual activists been honest about the dangers of lifestyle they choose to engage in,` he added.

Indeed, National gay & Lesbian Task Force lambasted the Bush administration in 2003 for nominating Jerry Thacker to the President`s Council on HIV/AIDS. Thacker was forced to withdraw from the nomination, because he supposedly called HIV `the gay plague. `

Thacker, who said he never referred to HIV as `a gay plague,` told Cybercast News Service that he was the target of politically motivated smear campaign by homosexual activists.

`We`ve said for a long time now that AIDS in this country is a behavioral disease, that you don`t have to get it, that if you do engage in risky activities you run the risk of getting it, & that it really has little to do with your sexual preferences,` Thacker said.

In fact, AIDS is an equal-opportunity disease, he added.

`If by saying that disease is primarily `a gay disease,` this is an admission that their sexual practices are more likely to get the disease from 1 person to another; Then homo-sexuals are owning up to something that we`ve known for a long time,` Thacker said.

Ironically, hetero-sexual Thacker acquired HIV/AIDS from his wife, who had a blood transfusion in 1984, before blood supply was safeguarded. Thacker, his wife, & his daughter have HIV/AIDS.

The NGLTF`s admission, meanwhile, has rocked the homosexual activist community. 1 homosexual activist, Todd Heywood, told the Lansing State Journal the story was likely to gain traction in coming days & weeks;

`When leaders of the right-wing claim HIV/AIDS (is) gay disease, we all balk at that claim,` Heywood said; `But what happens when national gay leader says it?`

Foreman has since clarified that he wasn`t saying that HIV is a gay disease worldwide, but(!) it is in United States;

According to federal Centers for Disease Control, 70 percent of all cases of AIDS occur among men who have sex with other men (MSMs), people who are bisexual, or those who inject illegal drugs with infected needles.

Conservatives like Barber, meanwhile, are calling on other homosexual groups to publicly acknowledge truth & for groups like the National Education Association to stop promoting the homosexual lifestyle in public schools; Whether I agree with this or diagree is not relevant issue. polticization of a Disease is. HIV is a very cruel disease. & people are suffering. question is how much resources can we devote to it? & what is the best way to stop the pandemic from spreading? If certain Sexual practices spread it exclusively among Straight would we argue the Politics or tell the public the truth?

I have no desire to see Gays, BiSexual folk, Minorities or anyone else suffer; a civilized nation is defined by how it treats It`s least citizens. Those who lack power & prestige.

747 day ago

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