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Salon's David Horowitz |
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By BuckcuB
But occasionally, as in this case, one must write from the same level, when refuting the Salon columnist's blatant stupidity and obvious prejudice. So without further ado, Buckcub informs you that David Horowitz is an idiot. An ill-informed, bigoted, self-aggrandizing, pompous and entirely-mistaken idiot. His column is a collection of prejudices, outright lies, insupportable false conclusions, and obvious hatred for sexual freedom and safe sexual practices. Horowitz is just one of a new brand of Puritans, desperate to lay the blame for a nondiscriminatory disease at the door of gay men. In response, BuckcuB can only repeat the brilliant lyric gay composer Cole Porter wrote in the verse to "Anything Goes," regarding the Puritans: "Instead of landing on Plymouth Rock, Plymouth Rock should have landed on them!"
Drug companies have expended hundred of billions of dollars on research for drugs affective against HIV, and many have been wildly successful. Sustiva. Epivir. Combivir. Norvir. Crixivan. These so-called "drug cocktails" have enabled many with HIV and AIDS to lead normal, productive lives. Yes. some of them are expensive. But what cost is life itself? And Medicaid pays for many of these drug regimens. Horowitz argues, pointlessly, that closing bath-houses and keeping name registries of those infected might have alleviated the epidemic. Another obvious case of a man who knows little about public health! Closing bath-houses results in nothing but the instant establishment of other venues for casual sex. Name registries result in a perfectly-normal reluctance on the part of the infected to have their names added to a non-secure database somewhere. Who knows how that information might be used -- or misused? Horowitz points out the lack of an effective vaccine against AIDS, and charges that interference from the :"gay left" is the cause of this lack. Politically, that's dynamite. Medically, it's bullshit. We still have no universally effective vaccine against influenza, which kills tens of thousands ever year. We go on permitting the sale of cigars and cigarettes, with the full knowledge that smoking is a killer., Who, Mr. Horowitz, is responsible for those threats to public health far greater than AIDS? There has been no provable, concerted effort to "obstruction of testing, reporting, contacttracing and infection-site closing by gay leaders and their allies in the Democratic Parties that controlled these cities," despite Horowitz's inflammatory rhetoric. There HAS been an insistence on personal privacy, on resistance to "contact tracing" which can lead to vicious and even murderous confrontations, and to allowing bath-houses and other "infection site" areas to remain open. This is America. A lawful business has the right to conduct lawful business. And because of the very issues Horowitz raises, bathouses routinely provide a free and unlimited supply of condoms to avert sexually-transmitted diseases. As a person with AIDS--a seven-year survivor--Buckcub thinks he can speak with experience on this topic -- personal, real experience. Horowitz writes: "In fact, the AIDS epidemic is more accurately described as a product of the gay rights movement of the 1970s, inevitably concentrated in the very centers of gay life in America--San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles--and impossible to conceive without the presence and agitations of the radical gay movements that directly preceded it. It was the gay radical left that defined promiscuous anal sex with strangers in public urban environments -- the primary cause of the AIDS epidemic -- as gay liberation." Well, Mr. Horowitz, here's a surprise for you. Promiscuous anal sex may well be the primary vector for AIDS, but it wasn't happening mostly in "public urban environments." It was happening between guys who met each other in bars or clubs, were attracted, and on to one guy's home for a little fuck up the ass. No one knew that it was anything but harmless. O sure--you got the clap once in a while, and you went down to the public clinic, and you got a big shot of penicillin in each cheek of your ass, which wasn't much fun. But it was no big deal. To say, as Horowitz does, that "...the gay AIDS epidemic is more accurately described as a product of the gay rights movement of the 1970's,." is like blaming slavery on the economy of the pre-Civil-War South. Howowitz ascribes the problem to the results, NOT to the indiscriminatory virus. It's a classic "straw-man" argument. You only present the facts which support your preconceived conclusion, and ignore all the other facts. That's not just bad science, it's bad journalism. The oldest trick in a writer' book is to inflame the reader's emotions. That way, the reader ignores logic, and is instead caught up in the emotionality of the situation. And that is exactly the stunt Mr. Horowitz has perpetrated, Stripped down to its essence, Horowitz argues that gay men---not an indiscriminate virus--are responsible for the continued spread of AIDS. And instead of offering hopeful solutions, Horowitz concentrates instead on assigning blame. That's bad politics, bad public health, and --above all-- bad journalism. We do not need to stop having sex--even casual or anonymous sex--to control the spread of AIDS. We just need to be careful, to practice safer sex. Horowitz, conversely, would have all gay men become celibate priests of public health. He's wrong. Woefully, foolishly, indefensibly wrong, Sex is a beautiful and glorious expression of desire between two like-minded people. Practiced safely, it is FAR less dangerous than driving on the freeway, Buckcub urges you to reject the prejudicial views of those neo-Puritans like David Horowitz. There isn't a shred of truth in his arguments. He's just another self-loathing twit, terrified of contracting AIDS. Well, Mr. Horowitz. there are plenty of hale and hearty gay men out here with AIDS. We take our pills and we feel just dandy, and when we want to screw around, we do it. So kindly stop trying to make a name for yourself inflaming an already-uneasy community. We don't need it, and we don't need you." |
Blame it on the Gays: Columnist David Horowitz says political correctness and the gay agenda has helped cause AIDS to spread like wildfire 
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