The High Cost of Sodomy -PART 2-
January 10, 2005
Editor's Note: The last issue of Family Research Report examined some of the personal medical and social costs associated with homosexual activity, especially costs incurred by those with AIDS. This issue continues our look at the financial burdens imposed by our society's toleration of sodomy. More than ever, a sober examination of the costs of sodomy is needed. For as ‘gay marriage' comes on line, FRI expects the situation to only worsen.
A fatal disease such as AIDS costs society more than medical care. Indirect costs also enter in. There is the cost of having raised and prepared the AIDS patient for productive work. Think of the food, medical care, education, etc. that it takes to get a child ready for employment in our modern society. Think of the lost productivity due to that individual not being alive or physically able to be employed in his 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s.
There are also costs for his employer while he is still alive. These include higher insurance premiums and having to periodically fill his position when he is getting medical treatment or feels too poorly to work, etc. And then, of course, there are the costs of finding and training his replacement. Los Angeles Times reporter Jennifer Oldham 1 estimated these employer costs at $32,000 per AIDS-employee over a five-year period — that is, over $6,000/year.
Oldham also estimated that the indirect cost of AIDS was about seven times the direct medical cost. Of course, today people with AIDS are living longer — and more of them are able to work for a while. In 1995, it was estimated that medical costs for an AIDS patient were running about $35,000/year. These costs in drugs and medical treatment often continue until the patient dies. So if a homosexual practitioner lives 5 years with AIDS, direct medical costs will total about $175,000 and the indirect costs about $1.2 million. If he lives 8 years the direct costs will total about $280,000 and the indirect costs about $2 million.
Lives Lost To Sodomy
As of December 2002, of the 501,669 deaths from AIDS in the U.S., 286,018 or 57% were among males-that-have-sex-with-males [MSM]. 2 So AIDS has disproportionately killed those responsible for its spread. But many more have been killed by AIDS than just homosexuals.
Hemophiliacs and those who needed a transfusion have died from HIV contaminated blood. To date, these deaths have totaled 3 about 13,000. MSM bear most of the responsibility for these deaths. Since a little over half of those who have gotten HIV are homosexual, at least half the total of the blood bank infections — about 6,500 deaths — are fairly allotted to MSM.
But there is more to it than that. Not only did homosexuals donate infected blood, they were the only group that threatened to do so purposely. And they have offered the only clear, recorded evidence of deliberate infection.
As former Congressional Representative Bob Dornan told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference [CPAC] in the early 1980s, his sister — then working at UCLA medical center — had caught homosexuals with AIDS urinating on their hands and then wiping it on door knobs and other surfaces in an attempt to infect the nursing staff. Since it is unlikely that there is enough HIV in urine to cause an infection, it is also unlikely that this ploy succeeded in infecting anyone. However, a gay activist in Texas made news when he called for homosexuals to deliberately contaminate the blood supply to ‘get funding' for their treatment. It is unknown whether or how many gays followed his marching orders, or how successful his followers were in causing infections. But the threat was made and widely advertised.
A number of physicians and nurses have told FRI staff of deliberate attempts by homosexuals to infect them while they were ministering to them. For instance, one homosexual receiving an intravenous treatment jerked his arm in such a way that the nurse ended up sticking herself with the needle as she adjusted it. In this instance, she was not infected — nevertheless, around 200 medical personnel have died of AIDS by treating the infected. Since homosexuals make up over half of those with HIV, at least 100 of these deaths were arguably due to treating MSM.
And then there are the sodomized boys who got infected by adult MSM and subsequently died. At least 2 boys who died after being sodomized by a homosexual have made the news in the past 24 years, but media reports have also spotlighted at least 235 boys who were sexually molested by an HIV-infected gay. How many of these boys were infected and how many died is unknown.
Overall, while MSM have mainly infected each other, there has also been an infection toll on those who do not engage in homosexual sex. As a conservative estimate, at least 7,000 individuals in the U.S. who were innocent of sodomy themselves paid the ultimate price for the sexual pleasures of homosexuals. This tranlates to roughly one individual for every 41 MSM who have died of AIDS.
Quarantine Would Have Worked
Most of the costs associated with AIDS could have been avoided. But avoidance would have necessitated quarantine, if not to individual abodes, then at least the shutting down of the homosexual infrastructure — gay bathhouses, gay bars, gay sex clubs, etc. Of course, those who engage in sodomy do not like being the subject of derision, much less the object of quarantine. Homosexual practitioners are no less obsessed than those who want a sex-change operation — they want to be considered ‘normal' in every respect. They also want society to accept their desires as ‘reasonable' and beyond that pay the costs for their choices. In the case of ‘sex changes,' these costs include genital mutilation; in the case of sodomy, the tab involves medical and other costs.
Is it a person's ‘right' to be allowed to have sex as they see fit and to possibly infect others? You won't find it anywhere in the Constitution, but that is indeed what the American public health establishment has decided. Quite recently, quarantines have worked to limit the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome [SARS]. No one seriously questioned the legitimacy or need for such measures. But when it came to sodomy, the idea that persons might not be able to have sex with whom they wanted was considered repellant by U.S. officials. Unfortunately, this newly-established ‘right' has had tremendous and costly consequences.
In a recent article, researchers Hansen and Groce 4 spotlighted one country, Cuba, which “did not recognize individual rights as an impediment to its public health measures,” and imposed quarantine on those with HIV. By 2002, the public health success of the Cuban policy was acknowledged — Cuba had a rate of HIV infection “nearly 11 times lower than that in the United States.”
From a cost or risk-benefit perspective, an obvious question is raised. Because homosexuals make up a relatively small minority, why should everyone else (including, but not limited to, the taxpaying public) have to chip in, pay for, and/or incur extra risk of disease or death, all for the sake of sexual pleasure?
Foundation for Sodom Being Laid
In the 11 th century, one of sodomy's harshest critics, Peter Damian, opined that those who practice sodomy “strive to rebuild [the walls] of devastated Sodom.” The West seems intent on doing just that.
Sodomy is worse than worthless to society. It not only contributes nothing to future generations, but costs society in treasure and lives. Marriage is key to society — within it, a secure future is born and raised. Viable societies have always lauded and honored those who were married with children — the married are ‘the core' of any successful society. In recognition of this, society discriminates for man-woman marriage and discriminates against any other sexual arrangement.
Yet many movers and shakers in our society are calling for the equivalency of ‘homosexuality' and ‘heterosexuality.' In addition, they would make no distinction between ‘shacking-up' and being married.
Implementing this form of ‘equality' will be quite costly. Bruce Steele, editor of The Advocate , the leading homosexual rights magazine, reveals the extent to which society will have to be changed to accommodate members of the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transsexual coalition. In a recent editorial, 5 Steele says:
“Forget about moral decay and Leviticus and AIDS and ‘natural order' and the ick factor, those are just excuses. The right's real argument against same-sex civil marriage comes down to this: If gays get marriage, being straight will no longer get you special rights. Homosexuality will at last be as normal as heterosexuality.”
Steele is quite correct. Sodomites live out an inferior lifestyle, incurring greater personal risk and presenting greater danger to society through their preferred activities. Because their relationships are inferior to traditional marriage, society is right to single out sodomy as being destructive and self-serving. In fact, proponents of sexual equality have to actively deny the real consequences and costs to society of homosexual behavior. Otherwise, they would be forced to admit that it ought to be suppressed for the common good.
Presumably sodomy is fun — or people wouldn't do it. Those, including mental health experts, who claim that sodomites have to have homosexual sex are clearly throwing up a smokescreen. Look, for instance, at all the monks and nuns through the ages who have managed to avoid sex (and generally live longer lives than the average). Yet sodomy does nothing of value other than entertain. Society certainly doesn't need it like it needs men and women to procreate and nurture the next generation. So why should society give equal status to worse-than-worthless same-sex relationships? Why should we shoulder all of that cost?
References:
1. The economic cost of AIDS, 10/13/95.
2. CDC, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report .
3. CDC, HIV/AIDS Surveillance Report , v. 14, Table 7.
4. Hansen H, Groce N. Human immunodefiencey virus and quarantine in Cuba. JAMA , 2003:290;2875.
5. The Advocate, 1/20/04, p. 19.
By Family Research Institute
Posted: January 10, 2005 07:05 PM
