Bryan Fischer
A fine for smokeless tobacco? How about for gay sex?
By Bryan Fischer
Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"
Host of "Focal Point" on American Family Radio, 1-3pm CT, M-F www.afr.net
The latest trend in major league baseball is the banning of smokeless tobacco.
Liberal city councils in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston have all banned the use of smokeless tobacco within their city limits, and that ban extends to major league baseball stadiums.
California is getting ready to ban it statewide, which will affect stadiums in Oakland, Anaheim, and San Diego, and the state of New York is getting ready to follow suit.
The fine for a first offense must be at least $250, and the fine for every subsequent violation in the same year must be at least $2500.
This is for a habit, mind you, that is perfectly legal.
The justification for banning cigarette smoking in public places is that innocent bystanders will be forced to breathe in secondhand smoke. But that risk does not exist with smokeless tobacco.
So liberals are banning chewing tobacco not because it's bad for others but because it's bad for you. City councils all across the fruited plain are fining people for engaging in legal behavior because that behavior, legal or not, is a risk to their own health.
But using their own logic, the logic of moralistic liberals who fancy themselves the smartest people in the room, we should start fining people for engaging in homosexual sex.
Why? Because sodomy, just like chewing tobacco, is harmful to human health. According to the CDC (not a member of the vast rightwing conspiracy) 60-65% of all male victims of the disease in the history of the epidemic contracted it through having sex with other men.
In 2013, gay and bisexual men accounted for a staggering 81% of all HIV diagnoses among males over the age of 12, and accounted for 65% of HIV diagnoses among all persons. (Another 10-14% contracted it through injection drug abuse, making it the second-highest risk factor.)
According to the International Journal of Epidemiology, active participation in the homosexual lifestyle can knock 8-20 years off a man's life expectancy, and reduce it to what it was in 1871.
According to the Gay & Lesbian Medical Association, there are at least 10 specific elevated health risks associated with sodomy that practitioners are urged to talk over with their health care provider. The dangers include depression and anxiety, suicidal ideation, substance abuse, alcoholism, eating disorders, hepatitis, various cancers (including anal cancer and colon cancer), and an alarming list of incurable sexually transmitted diseases.
A pro-homosexual activist organization in California, The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, persuaded the people of Los Angeles County in 2011 to institute fines for every porn producer who allows performers to engage in unprotected gay sex. (The ban extends to all porn shoots, heteroseuxal as well as homosexual.) Why the ban on unprotected gay sex? Because of the obvious risk to human health, particularly of contracting HIV/AIDS.
So homosexual activists themselves have found a way to impose fines on certain forms of homosexual sex, even if the behavior is not against the law.
Thanks to the misguided Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court ruling of 2003, sodomy is now "legal" everywhere in the United States. Using smokeless tobacco is legal everywhere too. If liberals can find a way to sanction one form of legal behavior because they endanger human health, simple consistency and logic dictate that they should find a way to sanction other forms of legal behavior which do the same.
If liberals truly care about the health of all our citizens, it's the least they can do.
(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
March 17, 2016
Follow me on Twitter: @BryanJFischer, on Facebook at "Focal Point"
Host of "Focal Point" on American Family Radio, 1-3pm CT, M-F www.afr.net
The latest trend in major league baseball is the banning of smokeless tobacco.
Liberal city councils in Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Boston have all banned the use of smokeless tobacco within their city limits, and that ban extends to major league baseball stadiums.
California is getting ready to ban it statewide, which will affect stadiums in Oakland, Anaheim, and San Diego, and the state of New York is getting ready to follow suit.
The fine for a first offense must be at least $250, and the fine for every subsequent violation in the same year must be at least $2500.
This is for a habit, mind you, that is perfectly legal.
The justification for banning cigarette smoking in public places is that innocent bystanders will be forced to breathe in secondhand smoke. But that risk does not exist with smokeless tobacco.
So liberals are banning chewing tobacco not because it's bad for others but because it's bad for you. City councils all across the fruited plain are fining people for engaging in legal behavior because that behavior, legal or not, is a risk to their own health.
But using their own logic, the logic of moralistic liberals who fancy themselves the smartest people in the room, we should start fining people for engaging in homosexual sex.
Why? Because sodomy, just like chewing tobacco, is harmful to human health. According to the CDC (not a member of the vast rightwing conspiracy) 60-65% of all male victims of the disease in the history of the epidemic contracted it through having sex with other men.
In 2013, gay and bisexual men accounted for a staggering 81% of all HIV diagnoses among males over the age of 12, and accounted for 65% of HIV diagnoses among all persons. (Another 10-14% contracted it through injection drug abuse, making it the second-highest risk factor.)
According to the International Journal of Epidemiology, active participation in the homosexual lifestyle can knock 8-20 years off a man's life expectancy, and reduce it to what it was in 1871.
According to the Gay & Lesbian Medical Association, there are at least 10 specific elevated health risks associated with sodomy that practitioners are urged to talk over with their health care provider. The dangers include depression and anxiety, suicidal ideation, substance abuse, alcoholism, eating disorders, hepatitis, various cancers (including anal cancer and colon cancer), and an alarming list of incurable sexually transmitted diseases.
A pro-homosexual activist organization in California, The AIDS Healthcare Foundation, persuaded the people of Los Angeles County in 2011 to institute fines for every porn producer who allows performers to engage in unprotected gay sex. (The ban extends to all porn shoots, heteroseuxal as well as homosexual.) Why the ban on unprotected gay sex? Because of the obvious risk to human health, particularly of contracting HIV/AIDS.
So homosexual activists themselves have found a way to impose fines on certain forms of homosexual sex, even if the behavior is not against the law.
Thanks to the misguided Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court ruling of 2003, sodomy is now "legal" everywhere in the United States. Using smokeless tobacco is legal everywhere too. If liberals can find a way to sanction one form of legal behavior because they endanger human health, simple consistency and logic dictate that they should find a way to sanction other forms of legal behavior which do the same.
If liberals truly care about the health of all our citizens, it's the least they can do.
(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.)
