The killing of homosexuals persists to the present time in many parts of the world. Paramilitary death squads in Colombia and Ecuador have reportedly murdered more than 300 homosexuals during the years 1986-1990. According to the San Francisco Latino Network, more than 1,200 gays and lesbians have been killed in Brazil in the past decade. Peruvian death squads have also been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of homosexuals. On July 12, 1992, five gay AIDS activists were brutally murdered in Mexico City. One of those found tortured, stabbed, and strangled, was Dr. Francisco Estrada Valle, president and founder of Ave de Mexico, the country's leading AIDS assistance and education organization.

A recent survey indicates that one out of every three Russians believe gays and lesbians should be "liquidated." In 1988 the Israeli government finally repealed a law that made sodomy punishable by ten years in prison. In Los Angeles County homosexual men are the most frequent victims of violent hate crimes. Citing biblical scripture, some fundamentalist Christian leaders continue to advocate the death penalty for sodomites. White racist groups also call for the murder of gays, as part of their "white pride" and "white power" program.

The sexual preference of 75% of the world's current AIDS cases is heterosexual. This fact does not deter Pat Buchanan, a Republican nominee for President of the United States in 1992, from preaching that AIDS is God's retribution against gays. New York Mayor David Dinkins, who proudly marched with homosexuals during the city's annual St. Patrick's Day parade, was blasted by Buchanan for "prancing with sodomites and insulting Catholics." Ranting about "the sewers of sodomy and lesbianism," the presidential candidate labeled gay men and women as Satanists.

Right-wing attacks are at their peak now that homosexuality is gaining considerable mainstream acceptance. For some politicians, gay bashing is a popular vote-getting technique. Former U.S. Senator Bill Armstrong, a current spokesman for "Colorado for Family Values," believes AIDS was "self-created by pleasure-addicted gays." California Congressman William Dannemeyer says that rich and powerful gays form a conspiracy which promotes their perverted sexual agenda. He complains this "homosexual network" adversely influences the AIDS policies of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Welfare.

TV evangelist John Hagee tells his followers that "America is dying" because of AIDS and rampant aggressive homosexuality. He claims God loves homosexuals, but the church of Jesus Christ will never accept homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle.

Regarding the origin of AIDS, Hagee recites "a major theory" that "AIDS began in African prisons, where thousands of men, deprived of normal sex, turned to perverted sex. From the infection created by this perverted sex came the infection that birthed AIDS." Hagee has a cure for AIDS: chastity.

Christian homophobes believe that gays are "anti-family" and pervert "traditional family values." However, blaming gays for the current demise of the American family is irrational.

Major social and psychosexual problems now seriously affect our society. According to the National Victim Center, 683,000 women were raped in the U.S. in 1990. Fewer than 16% of rape victims report the crime. One in every eight women has been forcibly attacked sexually in this country.

Two and a half million children are abused annually; twelve hundred children die as a consequence of this abuse. In Los Angeles one child is killed weekly; in New York City, two weekly. A recent California study revealed that as many as l in 5 girls, and 1 in 7 boys, have been molested by a relative.

One million teenagers attempt suicide each year. One quarter of that number require medical treatment. Approximately 30% of gay teens try to kill themselves.

Two out of three Black children, and 1 out of 3 Latino children, are born to unwed parents. Forty percent of Blacks, and thirty-five percent of Latinos are born poor. In California half the children live in single-parent households.

Over one-half million kids are born annually to teenage parents. More than 25% of California children (over 2 million) have no health insurance.

Regarding mandatory child support payments, one quarter of all fathers pay nothing; half the fathers pay less than is required by the courts. Are gays and lesbians primarily responsible for these dreadful statistics that reflect American "family values in the 1990s?"

In 1991, twenty-four thousand Americans were murdered. Eighteen hundred murder victims were recorded in Los Angeles where I reside. The U.S. leads the world in the number of homicides. There are over 5.6 million convicted criminals; and the U.S. imprisons more people per capita than any other country in the world. The 1991 State and Federal prison population housed 823,414 inmates, a 150% increase since 1980.

By age 19, half of America's teenagers have engaged in sex. In 1991 a proposed government study to further determine the full extent of teenage and adult sexual behavior was canceled, largely due to congressional opposition by Representative William Dannemeyer, Senator Jesse Helms and other powerful politicians who tout "traditional family values."

Since the advent of AIDS, sodomy is now a respectable topic for scientific analysis and discussion. Although the public perceives all gay men as sodomites, the practice of anal and oral sex by heterosexuals has received little attention. Dr. June Reinisch, Director of the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, estimates that 39% of American adult women have participated in anal intercourse, about the same for men. Based on several studies, she also claims that 29% of American wives have at least one extramarital affair. Eight out of ten gay men also have had sex with a woman at least once.

According to the July 1989 issue of "Center to Center" (a publication provided to physicians by Burroughs Wellcome Company), unpublished data indicate that 25% of married women have experienced anal intercourse. In a study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior in 1991, Bruce Voeller claims that 10% of American women and their male sexual partners engage in anal sex with some regularity. He concludes that "anal sex among heterosexual Americans is a fairly well kept secret, possibly involving 16 million people, or more." These preliminary statistics indicate that the number of heterosexual sodomists far outweighs the total U.S. gay male population.

The public views gays as promiscuous people. The dictionary defines promiscuity as "not restricted to one sexual partner." Strictly speaking, anyone with more than one sexual partner is promiscuous. Back in the 1960s, my dermatology professor once slyly remarked that a promiscuous person is someone who has more sex partners than you do. Although the precise definition of promiscuity can be argued, it is a fact of life that few people nowadays are monogamous. The average American heterosexual is certainly not monogamous. According to USA Today (June 28, 1991), the average American has had seven sex partners since age 18.

The full extent of bisexual behavior, particularly by bisexual men, in influencing the spread of AIDS is not known. Researcher Jean Schaar Gochros, author of When Husbands Come Out of the Closet, estimates that there are 6 million American bisexual men who are married or involved in a primary relationship with a woman, but who secretly have sex with men.

The point of all this is not to bash gays, straights, or bisexuals, but to point out that nowadays most people are not monogamous. As a result, most sexually-active people are at risk for AIDS.

Why do so many people hate gays? According to Kinsey Institute researchers in Sex and Morality in the U.S. (1989), the public's disapproval and fear of gays "is associated with three commonly held beliefs: that they are sick, effeminate, and dangerous."

The "sick" belief is based on long-standing psychoanalytic theories of homosexuality. The idea that male homosexuals are effeminate is clearly based on sex-role stereotyping that abounds in our culture. The "dangerous" label is often applied to minority groups, particularly when little is known about them. The researchers conclude that hostility towards gays "seems clearly to spring from the teachings of childhood, which tend to persist unless one's lifestyle becomes more sexually liberated than that of one's parents; or formal education leads one to seriously question the beliefs and values learned while growing up."

The roots of AIDS in America clearly trace back to gay experiments conducted by the government. At the time Szmuness was carefully selecting the healthiest gay men in Manhattan for his vaccine trials, the country was going through the most homophobic period in its history.

In October 1978, one month before Szmuness' experiment began, California voters were deciding whether to outlaw gay people from teaching in the state's schools. "Proposition 6" was a hotly debated issue in the media.

The Los Angeles Times (October 15, 1978) carried the headline: "Are gay teachers a threat?" James F. Baxter, a teacher for 22 years and a father of four, condemned homosexuality as a perversion of human nature. Baxter labeled gays as "disabled" and not qualified to teach children. "Gays are dominated by their carnal, not cerebral, concerns and in any situation in which the two are placed in competition, the carnal will rule. Deviant, perverse, weird, and aberrant are not epithets but appropriate descriptions of homosexual behavior. Calling a homosexual 'gay' is, in fact, an inhumane act, for it substitutes a platitude for the first requirement to healing such psychological cripples: objective recognition of their disease."

Fortunately, the majority of California voters did not agree with the harsh views expressed by Mr. Baxter; and Proposition 6 was soundly defeated at the polls.

When AIDS appeared in 1981, health officials reassured the general public that there was nothing to fear. "AIDS is a gay disease" was the phrase repeated over and over again in the media. As late as 1987, Robert Gallo told Playboy reporter David Black, "I personally don't know of a single case (in America) of a man getting the (AIDS) virus from a woman through heterosexual intercourse."

In Africa, where AIDS affects men and women in equal numbers, Gallo's explanation to David Black was: "It happens, but that may be due to differences in sexual practices, more promiscuity or a greater incidence of venereal disease."

AIDS propaganda and racist remarks frequently go unchallenged in the media. For example, Black Africans (but never white Africans) are perceived as promiscuous. Similarly, white heterosexual Americans are never perceived as promiscuous people. Gallo gave Playboy his expert appraisal of the future of heterosexual AIDS in the United States: "AIDS will never become an overwhelming danger to the general public."

Why was AIDS considered an exclusively gay disease in the U.S.? Strecker's explanation is the only one that makes sense. The reason AIDS began as a "gay disease" was because the AIDS virus was deliberately introduced into the gay community during the hepatitis B vaccine experiments.

As the epidemic spreads to the "general" population, the government officials try hard to make people believe that AIDS is primarily a disease of "high-risk" gay people, and that AIDS is not a heterosexual disease. Gay sex is "high risk," but straight sex is never labeled as "high risk." Official CDC statistics are manipulated to reinforce this view.

Bisexual men with AIDS are all recorded with gay men in a "homosexual/bisexual" category. Bisexual men are not placed in a separate "bisexual" category or in a "heterosexual/bisexual" category. Heterosexual intravenous drug addicts are put in a special "IV drug" category. Epidemiologists generally assume that straight male IV drug users acquire HIV from dirty needles --never from sex with infected women.

A few short years after AIDS erupted in New York City, the disease became the leading killer of young men and young (heterosexual) women in that city. It is still extremely rare to find AIDS in a lesbian, unless the case is drug-related. Some monogamous women have been infected by promiscuous husbands and lovers.

A decade after the hepatitis experiment, AIDS is now the number one health problem for young men in the U.S. AIDS is the leading cause of death for men age 33 to 45. More men have already died of AIDS than were killed in Vietnam. The total number of male AIDS deaths in San Francisco is now greater than the total number of S.F. men who died in all three wars: World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

In 1991 Earvin (Magic) Johnson, the universally-loved basketball star, admitted publicly that he was infected with HIV. He insisted he was straight and never had a homosexual experience. For the first time, many heterosexuals began to take AIDS seriously. Young people thought: "If it could happen to Magic, it could happen to me."

Around the same time, basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain went public with the spectacular revelation that he had slept with 20,000 different women. A few straight men responded to Chamberlain's allegation by taking out their calculators. In gay circles, no one knew anyone who could top Chamberlain's record. Apparently Chamberlain escaped HIV infection, but the following year he was briefly hospitalized for cardiac irregularities.

Nowhere has homophobia been more blatant or more vicious than in the military. Although homosexuality has been deemed incompatible with military life, it is nonetheless true that countless numbers of gays and lesbians have served their country effectively and proudly in times of peace and in times of war. Despite all this, thousands of gay men and women have been terminated from the military because of their sexual preference. In the process of drumming these people out of the corps, many lives have been damaged or destroyed.

My own experience with the Army began in 1951, at the age of 17, when I enrolled in a college ROTC program. At age 20, I was sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for a summer training program. On a three-day pass, a group of us took a military-sponsored bus trip to Monterey, Mexico. Our exploration of the city included the obligatory stop at a brothel in the notorious red light district.

My introduction to heterosexual group sex occurred in 1961 while serving as an Army physician with the United Nations forces in the demilitarized zone separating North and South Korea. Rare weekend passes to Seoul with fellow officers always included too many rounds of drinks, followed by a hunt for suitable prostitutes, one for each of us. No one except me seemed concerned about privacy. On the contrary, everyone appeared delighted with the sights and sounds of three couples fucking in a small hotel room.

It was impossible to avoid such encounters in post-war Korea. Not to indulge in sexual pastimes when the opportunity arose was considered unmanly and unthinkable. The fact that my fellow officers were all married made no difference. No one expected any normal military man to be chaste or faithful. Gay or straight, it was expected that you would fuck and enjoy it. That was the way it was in Korea in the early 1960s. I suppose it is still the same way today.

As might be expected, the venereal disease rate among the soldiers in Korea was astronomical. Officers constantly lectured their men about the intolerable VD rate, but the men rarely took the officers seriously. They knew full well the officers were doing the same thing. The only difference was that the officers could afford better-looking and healthier Korean prostitutes. The top brass often had the luxury of sleeping with white women in their quarters.

The VD rate among officers was non-existent. The reason for this was soon made clear to me. My staff sergeant simply advised me not to record officer infections. Gonorrhea or syphilis was an unacceptable diagnosis in an officer's medical record--a documented record of VD could ruin an officer's chance of promotion.

My experience as a medical officer in Korea taught me all I wanted to know about the accuracy of official government "statistics," as well as the hypocrisy of military heterosexual morality.

Four decades later. in 1992, some of the sexual secrets of the military were exposed to public view. Army Specialist Jacqueline Ortiz, while serving as a mechanic in the Persian Gulf War was forcibly sodomized by her sergeant. When she tearfully reported the incident to her commanding officers, they ignored her accusations.

Ortiz was taken more seriously at a Senate hearing on sexual abuse in the military. During the hearing it was revealed that as many as 60,000 women veterans may have been raped or assaulted while in military service. It was concluded that a woman serving in the military in the Persian Gulf was much more likely to be attacked by her own troops than by the enemy.

In the halls outside their rooms at the "Talhook 91" convention at the Las Vegas Hilton, drunken naval officers assaulted at least two dozen women, including fourteen female naval officers. The women were horrified as the men groped and pawed them, and forcibly tried to remove their panties. Not surprisingly, the complaints of the women officers fell on deaf ears. Ultimately, the navy scandal came to light and rocked Washington, resulting in the resignation of the Navy Secretary in June 1992.

Reviewing the story, Time (July 13, 1992) cited a Pentagon study showing that two-thirds of U.S. servicewomen had been sexually harassed by male military personnel. Time also recalled a 1987 incident aboard a Navy salvage ship in which the captain performed oral sex on a prostitute in front of his crew; and another 1990 incident in which a female midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy was forcibly handcuffed to a urinal by her fellow male midshipmen.

All this pales in comparison to the admission of the Japanese government in July 1992 that as many as 200,000 women from Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and Indonesia, were recruited to serve as "comfort women" in military brothels in World War II. The Japanese government finally expressed regret for the pain and suffering it caused these women.

The issue of homosexuals in the military became front page news on July 8, 1992, when TV interviewer Barbara Walters asked Presidential candidate Ross Perot if he would allow gays in the service. The homosexual community was outraged when Perot answered, "I don't think that's realistic." Weeks later, Perot pledged that he would not tolerate anti-gay discrimination, but refused to clarify his position on the military ban.

General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reiterated the military's reason for the expulsion of gays and lesbians: The Pentagon's main concern is to protect the privacy of soldiers who might feel uncomfortable serving with "avowed homosexuals." The Pentagon argues that the presence of gays in the service is detrimental to troop "morale and discipline."

The arguments to keep gays and lesbians out of the Armed Forces are similar to ones that previously kept Black men from integrating fully with white men in the military. One wonders how gay people could be excluded from the military on moral grounds. How can military personnel, who are highly trained in the art of killing, be upset by gays and lesbians asking for the right to serve their country and for the right to be sexual like everyone else.

By November 1992, over 242,000 Americans were recorded with AIDS. Almost half the cases were Black or Hispanic. Among teenagers dying of AIDS, 37% are black; 19% Latino. The first 100,000 cases took eight years to develop; the second 100,000 took a little more than two years. Seven percent of the most recent AIDS cases were acquired heterosexually.

In Los Angeles County where I live, sixteen thousand AIDS cases are recorded, with eleven thousand deaths. Ninety percent of the cases are classified as "homosexual/bisexual." Never before in the history of medicine has an epidemic been so peculiarly confined to people of color, or to gay people.

Someday people will realize that homophobia and racism and sexism lie at the root of AIDS. It is not the green monkey that brought us HIV. It is ourselves, and our infantile understanding of the many faces of human sexuality.

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Excerpted from QUEER BLOOD: The Secret AIDS Genocide Plot by Alan Cantwell Jr., M.D., published by ARIES Rising Press, P.O. Box 29532, Los Angeles, California, 90029 $12.95 (Telephone: 213-462-6458)

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