Depraved Indifference
The important thing isn’t whether it’s a boy or a girl you have in your arms, but whether or not you care that they’re better for having been loved by you, and not worse.
Mike Arthart at Ex-Gay Watch has a pointed post up about two groups who you have to figure would rather see people die then encourage them to enjoy sex responsibly:
Exodus board member Phil Burress wants drugstore condoms locked away to discourage their purchase.
Focus on the Family disapproves of condoms as a fallback when abstinence fails.
Exgay activist Stephen Bennett opposes both condoms and potential prophylactic drugs to prevent HIV infection.
Antigay activist Peter LaBarbera and the antigay Constitution Party of Illinois dictate that clinics that make condoms available should be forcibly closed — and their workers jailed.
The American Family Association’s AgapePress and the AFA’s Michigan affiliate oppose fund-raising for medical treatments and potential cures for HIV/AIDS.
All these folks have something in common with a New York sex party that, according to The Washington Blade, is scheduled for this weekend:
They oppose making sex safer and they oppose disease prevention.
The invitation arrived in Tokes Osubu’s e-mail inbox on Monday, and the contents astounded him: Black and Latino men were being invited to attend a gay sex party this weekend where condoms would be banned. Show up with a condom, the invitation said, and you’ll be asked to leave.
"I was shocked and disgusted," said Osubu, executive director of Gay Men of African Descent, a Harlem-based nonprofit group battling the HIV/AIDS epidemic among black gay men.
Osubu sent the party’s promoter a letter urging him to reconsider the policy, and the group plans to protest Saturday outside the East Harlem building where the party is scheduled to be held.
The party comes just weeks before the 25th anniversary of the AIDS epidemic and at a time when black men are facing startlingly high HIV infection rates. Nearly half of black men who have sex with men are HIV-positive, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.
"I’m sick of 18-year-olds coming in here HIV-positive," Osubu, 46, said in his East Harlem office. "It’s got to stop."
As I get older I find myself growing more and more accepting of things then I was when I was young and a tad full of myself. I can accept now that for some people, sex is more like a hobby then a passionate joining of two people, body and soul. I’m not interested in having sex with any of them, but they’d probably find me a tad uninteresting anyway. And I really don’t care if some people get into these sex club scenes or how many people they have sex with or how often, as long as there is a measure of compassion and kindness given. Whatever it is you do, you can’t take advantage of or abuse anyone, and you can’t spread disease. You have to leave them better for their encounter with you, even if it’s merely a few moments of casual pleasure, not worse. It doesn’t have to be love…but if you don’t love, you still need to care. And if you don’t care, you’ve no business taking anyone into your arms.
Or…inviting them into your church.
I want to say one more thing to any younger folks who are reading my blog: If the person you are with doesn’t care enough about you to keep you safe from disease, (let alone pregnancy if you’re heterosexual) they do not care about you enough for you to be giving yourself to them. In any sense. Take a walk. Go find the heart that loves you. It’s out there waiting for you. Don’t let anyone, be it a bible thumping nutcase who thinks you don’t deserve honest, factual information about STD prevention, or a really really cute someone who swears they think the world of you, they just think taking precautions is silly, take the possibility of that perfect body and soul love away from you. Nobody who really loves you would ever want to do that to you. That isn’t love…it’s greed. Your body, and your love, are precious things. Give them to the ones who deserve you, the ones who want more then anything for you to be happy, and safe, as the person you are.
