Bryan Fischer
CPAC did right thing: homosexuality is not a conservative value
By Bryan Fischer
Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"
CPAC, the largest annual gathering of conservatives, did the right thing this year by disinviting GOProud from sponsorship and official participation.
CPAC did the right thing for one simple reason: homosexuality is not a conservative value.
This is the Conservative Political Action Conference, after all, not the Libertarian Political Action Conference.
GOProud manifested its own bigotry last year when its leader referred to a CPAC board member as a "nasty bigot" for having the temerity to believe in natural marriage. Not a smart move to vividly display your own intolerance while claiming to be a paragon of virtue and equality.
This decision by the board is likely to bring a number of pro-family organizations back on board with CPAC, including the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, the Heritage Foundation and Liberty Counsel, among others. The conference will be immeasurably strengthened by the renewed participation of these groups who have held high the torch of faith, family and freedom for decades.
Perhaps our most compelling argument in flatly stating that homosexuality is not a conservative value is the well-known danger that homosexual conduct poses to human health. It is so risky that the FDA will not allow a male to donate blood if he's had sex with another male even one single solitary time since 1977. The FDA can't afford to play Russian Roulette with the nation's blood supply. This policy has nothing to do with bigotry or hatred and everything to do with science, biology and human health.
I know this policy is still in force because I recently gave blood, and was asked no less than three times either in writing or directly if I'd had sex with another male since 1977. The only other groups that are automatically disqualified from giving blood are intravenous drug abusers and prostitutes. All three categories of conduct are dangerous not only to the practitioners themselves but to their partners.
This, by the gives the lie to the assertion that these are victimless crimes. They most certainly are not. Everybody who has AIDS got it from somebody.
Additional confirmation comes from a Reuters story this morning, which states in its opening sentence that from 2006 to 2009 "infections rose nearly 50 percent among young black gay and bisexual men."
"We're very concerned about these increases among young gay men," said Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of the CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS. "We can't allow the health to a new generation to be lost to what is essentially a completely preventable disease."
Well of course it's preventable. Here's how: men, stop having sex with other men.
If you care about minorities, then it is especially urgent that we stop legitimizing this lifestyle. Blacks represent just 14% of the U.S. population but accounted for 44% of all new infections in 2009. Simple compassion dictates that we ring the alarm in the African-American community and warn them about the hazards of this kind of behavior.
Buried in the Reuters piece is this sobering statistic: While men who have sex with men represent just 2 percent of the U.S. population, they accounted for a staggering 61 percent of all new HIV infections in 2009.
The special tragedy here is that young men between the ages of 13 and 29 are being hardest hit by this epidemic, their health and their futures in many cases damaged beyond repair. That alone is reason enough to ban GLSEN and Gay-Straight Alliance clubs from public school campuses for the same reason we keep drug pushers off school grounds: they are pushing a lethal product.
Overall, according to the CDC, since the epidemic began over 60% of men who have HIV/AIDS contracted it through having sex with other men, another 22% through IV drug use, and another 9% through one or the other.
In striking contrast to the template being pushed by secular fundamentalists, that HIV is now an equal opportunity heterosexual disease, the CDC's director said, according to Reuters, that "the CDC will focus on areas where HIV infection is most heavily concentrated — among gay and bisexual men of all races, blacks and Hispanics."
Bottom line, this is not a lifestyle that any sane society should promote, sanction, fund, protect, endorse, or recognize by calling such unions domestic partnerships, civil unions, or marriages.
It's time for our public policy to be guided by science, biology, and human health concerns as well as time-honored standards of sexual morality.
CPAC has done the right and good thing here. Homosexuality, I repeat, is not a conservative value.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
© Bryan Fischer
August 5, 2011
Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"
CPAC, the largest annual gathering of conservatives, did the right thing this year by disinviting GOProud from sponsorship and official participation.
CPAC did the right thing for one simple reason: homosexuality is not a conservative value.
This is the Conservative Political Action Conference, after all, not the Libertarian Political Action Conference.
GOProud manifested its own bigotry last year when its leader referred to a CPAC board member as a "nasty bigot" for having the temerity to believe in natural marriage. Not a smart move to vividly display your own intolerance while claiming to be a paragon of virtue and equality.
This decision by the board is likely to bring a number of pro-family organizations back on board with CPAC, including the Family Research Council, the American Family Association, the Heritage Foundation and Liberty Counsel, among others. The conference will be immeasurably strengthened by the renewed participation of these groups who have held high the torch of faith, family and freedom for decades.
Perhaps our most compelling argument in flatly stating that homosexuality is not a conservative value is the well-known danger that homosexual conduct poses to human health. It is so risky that the FDA will not allow a male to donate blood if he's had sex with another male even one single solitary time since 1977. The FDA can't afford to play Russian Roulette with the nation's blood supply. This policy has nothing to do with bigotry or hatred and everything to do with science, biology and human health.
I know this policy is still in force because I recently gave blood, and was asked no less than three times either in writing or directly if I'd had sex with another male since 1977. The only other groups that are automatically disqualified from giving blood are intravenous drug abusers and prostitutes. All three categories of conduct are dangerous not only to the practitioners themselves but to their partners.
This, by the gives the lie to the assertion that these are victimless crimes. They most certainly are not. Everybody who has AIDS got it from somebody.
Additional confirmation comes from a Reuters story this morning, which states in its opening sentence that from 2006 to 2009 "infections rose nearly 50 percent among young black gay and bisexual men."
"We're very concerned about these increases among young gay men," said Dr. Kevin Fenton, director of the CDC's National Center for HIV/AIDS. "We can't allow the health to a new generation to be lost to what is essentially a completely preventable disease."
Well of course it's preventable. Here's how: men, stop having sex with other men.
If you care about minorities, then it is especially urgent that we stop legitimizing this lifestyle. Blacks represent just 14% of the U.S. population but accounted for 44% of all new infections in 2009. Simple compassion dictates that we ring the alarm in the African-American community and warn them about the hazards of this kind of behavior.
Buried in the Reuters piece is this sobering statistic: While men who have sex with men represent just 2 percent of the U.S. population, they accounted for a staggering 61 percent of all new HIV infections in 2009.
The special tragedy here is that young men between the ages of 13 and 29 are being hardest hit by this epidemic, their health and their futures in many cases damaged beyond repair. That alone is reason enough to ban GLSEN and Gay-Straight Alliance clubs from public school campuses for the same reason we keep drug pushers off school grounds: they are pushing a lethal product.
Overall, according to the CDC, since the epidemic began over 60% of men who have HIV/AIDS contracted it through having sex with other men, another 22% through IV drug use, and another 9% through one or the other.
In striking contrast to the template being pushed by secular fundamentalists, that HIV is now an equal opportunity heterosexual disease, the CDC's director said, according to Reuters, that "the CDC will focus on areas where HIV infection is most heavily concentrated — among gay and bisexual men of all races, blacks and Hispanics."
Bottom line, this is not a lifestyle that any sane society should promote, sanction, fund, protect, endorse, or recognize by calling such unions domestic partnerships, civil unions, or marriages.
It's time for our public policy to be guided by science, biology, and human health concerns as well as time-honored standards of sexual morality.
CPAC has done the right and good thing here. Homosexuality, I repeat, is not a conservative value.
(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)
© Bryan Fischer
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
