A plague is coming! Every epidemiologist worth his salt is worried.

And quarantine, discarded as 'unkind' and 'an affront to civil liberties' is making a comeback.

SARS, from the perspective of many epidemiologists, is the "first shot across our bow" from the conditions that almost guarantee a world-wide plague.

Writing in the Financial Times, Drs. Daniel Haydon, an epidemiologist, and Olivia Judson, a biologist, are worried that "sooner or later we will be confronted with a truly awesome bug." (5/9/03, A health warning to the world, p. 13).

Why, what has happened? A lot.

Epidemics and plagues have happened fairly frequently in our history. The Roman legions often brought back pestilences that wracked the homeland. And those who settled the Americas killed far more Indians with their diseases than they did with bullets or knives.

But these folk either walked, rode horses, or sailed. We have the airplane. And this device compounds the dangers of living with and around animals.

In 1920, only handfuls of people flew. Only a few of these crossed international borders, and they were thrill seekers, not businessmen or tourists. By 1951, all told, 51 million people traveled by air. In 2002 about half a billion people flew across international borders (Ellen Goodman 4/26/03). The world has more people (6 billion) but is increasingly smaller in time spent getting from one place to another. We are all linked by the airplane. So where a disease might have taken 'forever' to get from one continent to another two thousand years ago - and many just couldn't cross the oceans - now a disease might break out in England today and show up in New York tomorrow. That's what happened in Toronto, where SARS turned up just days after travelers returned by plane from China.

Drs. Haydon and Judson are aware that the airplane has changed everything. They argue that we now have to think in terms of hours if we are to avoid catastrophe.

They posit six things that have to be done - immediately.

1. New systems for reporting suspected-new diseases (like SARS) to some central authority - within hours of a suspected outbreak,
   
2. New systems for reporting these new diseases to front-line health workers from the central authority - within hours of a suspected outbreak,
   
3. New ways to implement large-scale quarantines - and the 'teeth' the enforce them (on May 15th, China decreed the death penalty for anyone with SARS deliberately breaking quarantine and infecting others. Taiwan, on the other hand, with a legal system similar to those across the rest of the Western world, has had great difficulty keeping the quarantined from 'breaking out' of their homes).
   
4. An international system of agreed-upon procedures for culling animals or quarantining people - within hours of a suspected outbreak.
   
5. Development of fast protocols for the development of mobile and rapid infection test kits, and
   
6. more research money for the study of new infectious bugs and their reservoirs (usually these reservoirs are animals).
   

Oddly enough, quarantine is something that FRI's chairman, Dr. Paul Cameron, called for in the early 1980s for HIV. Cameron's suggestion was rejected as a 'hateful' and 'an affront to freedom' by officials at the Centers for Disease Control. Its leaders said publicly then that when it came to HIV they had three tasks: to make sure civil rights were not infringed (i.e., to make sure gays could have sex when and where they wanted), to develop a vaccine, and to 'educate' in order the slow the spread of HIV.

Why now the different approach to SARS? Could it be because HIV is transmitted by sex, while SARS appears to be transmitted by a lot of sheer nearness to those infected? In today's milieu, sex is 'sacred,' while the liberty to move about the planet is apparently not.

Haydon and Judson ignored the serious threat of gay rights and sexually transmitted disease (STD). And they certainly did not call for dismantling the 'gay infrastructure.' Yet HIV infection has killed millions, and figures to kill tens of millions more. SARS, to date, has killed maybe 500 or so. Further, HIV - like most STDs - affects the young, not the old. SARS, to date, has generally killed the old, not the young. So in terms of 'harm to society,' SARS is targeting the very people - old, past their productive prime - that are of least concern to social functioning, while HIV is targeting the young and early middle aged - those with considerable potential to be socially productive.

But no one said that social policy has to be logical or consistent.

The Public Health Threat of Gay Rights

So just how can gay rights be a public health threat?

Those who participate in homosexuality regard the gay infrastructure as a 'fun machine.' Their defenders say something like "Finally, people who enjoy having sex with their own gender can advertise openly and have a place to play. Freedom is always a good thing."

But the gay infrastructure is also a 'germ machine.' Freedoms that cost the lives of others, and threaten the lives of still more, are not a good thing. Especially when a plague is coming.

Airplanes have not just changed the equations about disease control. Coupled with gay rights, the plane has allowed the construction of the largest germ-machine the world has ever known. This legally-protected machine, which distributes germs of all kinds hither and yon, endangers you and everyone in the civilized world.

So just because some people think something is fun - and like it a lot - does not mean it isn't dangerous.

Gay rights, enabling homosexuals to do what they want to do under the protection of law, has provided the cover for the construction of a deadly 'germ spreading machine.' In fact, five aspects of what homosexuals do make them unusually biologically dangerous.

1. Gays have lots of sexual partners. Most of these are male partners, but they also have sex with females. It's hard to say just how many partners gays average per year, but a large minority have scores, many have over 10, and very few have only one.
   
2. Many of their sexual interactions with partners feature penile-rectal sex (even with many female partners).
   
3. a large minority engage in explicit anal-oral sex.
   
4. a large majority engage in oral-penile sex. And,
   
5. a significant minority shoot drugs.
   

Each of these practices contributes to this almost-perfect 'germ machine.' Penile-rectal sex is a very efficient spreader of any blood borne pathogen (shooting drugs is more efficient still). Anal-oral sex ("rimming") is the most efficient spreader of any fecally-borne germ (e.g., typhus, cholera, hepatitis A). Because these activities are usually tied together in the pursuit of sexual pleasure (often along with consumption of urine and semen and drug use), any air-borne germ also 'goes along for the ride.' In a word, if there is a germ that can be spread human-to-human, male homosexuals practice the necessary acts with enough different bodies to spread it - rapidly.

Openly gay author Jack Hart put it well when he noted that:

These facts have always been true of those who have sex with their own gender. However, if male homosexuals stayed in one town or city, as was generally true in the past, the risk to the rest of society was small. After all, many of the biological risks that gays took in the past were also taken by others in society at large, though perhaps to a lesser degree. Rather than sex, many of those risks to the public were due to poor sanitation and the use of 'night soil' (e.g., human waste) to fertilize crops. But the effect was often the same - disease and early death.

Add in today's international gay subculture, and the situation looks grim. Gay bars, gay baths, gay cruises, gay international sex-tours and commandeered public restrooms and parks exist, not just in a given locale, but tied together with 'tourist maps' and 'guides' - all across the civilized world. A German gay can leave Berlin in the morning, come to New York, and thanks to the efficiency of communication (through the web or guide books), not miss a day of sex. U.S. gays can go to Australia and do the same. And survey after survey shows that gays do much more international traveling than straights.

What homosexuals do is terribly dangerous. That danger is compounded many times over by the constant mixing of germs that goes on in their collective pursuit of 'sexual highs.' Because of what they do sexually, homosexuals live shorter lives. From a sanitary standpoint, their sexual practices are similar to living in a third-world environment. Diseases of the past - the very ones that often affected most everyone in London or Paris in the 16th and 17th centuries - today find a ready home in the 'gay community.'

Gays also make us live shorter lives because of their activities. Don't forget HIV and AIDS. Or hepatitis.

Thousands of people in the U.S., Britain, and Canada, innocent of engaging in gay sex, have died because of HIV-contaminated blood donated by those who do. Most of these donations were inadvertent - that is, the homosexual did not know that he had HIV - but some were the victims of deliberate infection. Deliberate infection is more blameworthy, but the results are the same: innocents, often children, who needed a life-saving blood transfusion, instead got a death sentence.

To date, there have been about 500,000 deaths due to AIDS in the U.S. About 1%-2% of these deaths have been due to blood transfusions or tissue donation. While most of the contaminated blood has probably come from male homosexuals (most studies put it at about two-thirds), some also has come from IV drug shooters, and a bit from infected heterosexuals. Nevertheless it would be fairly safe to attribute at least 3,000 of the approximately 6,000 bad-blood deaths to homosexuals who gave blood. This is why any man who has sex with males is assumed to have 'bad blood' and is not supposed to donate to any blood bank.

Likewise, health care workers - about 300 of them so far - have become infected with HIV by treating gays. Hundreds more have been infected with hepatitis B or C. Some of these health care workers have died, some are still alive. Nevertheless, one thing is certain - it is dangerous to treat homosexuals. Not only do gays often have HIV, they also are apt to have various kinds of hepatitis - and who knows what else - in their bloodstream.

Across the world, numerous outbreaks of food poisoning from food handlers who engage in homosexuality have been recorded. Some of those who got contaminated food died, most did not. But this is yet another reason why one should be cautious around homosexuals.

Despite these risks, gay rights laws have made it illegal to either refuse to treat (or even treat with special precautions) homosexuals or hire them as food handlers. Fortunately, the ban upon blood donations by gay men has 'held firm' even in the face of these laws - so far. A few universities have stopped blood drives because gays were 'discriminated against,' but by and large, the blood ban is still in place.

In any case, when a particular kind of sex - especially dangerous sex - is protected by law, everyone - even those who don't practice it - have to assume greater risks to their lives.

Enter SARS

SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) is currently stalking the world. Exactly how the germ that causes SARS is transmitted is unclear. Almost certainly it can be transmitted by airborne droplets, perhaps by dry sputum, and - given the apartment complex in Hong Kong that spawned so many cases - possibly by exposure to feces. It also appears that strict quarantine might contain it.

Unfortunately, the gay germ machine will tend to make any but the most stringent quarantine null and void. How so? Gay rights almost assures that if SARS 'hits' the 'gay community', an effective quarantine will be nigh impossible. Indeed, SARS will start popping up 'all over the place' with no obvious way to trace how it got where it did. This is precisely the result of gay rights laws that - in the name of protecting freedom and privacy - limit the reach of traditional public health measures like quarantines and contact tracing. Some states are not even required by law to report all their AIDS cases by the same logic.

Furthermore, sex and the desire for sex are terribly powerful. If Taiwan is having trouble containing SARS among individuals who are itching to 'get out of their homes,' just imagine the difficulty if the virus were to be carried by people eager for sex. When people who 'have to' have sex carry a bug, the chances of containment are close to zero. Sexually-driven diseases, like syphilis and HIV, just 'never' go away. Sex is too much fun for very many people to control themselves, particularly so for 'sexaholics' like most homosexuals. That makes any germ like HIV or gonorrhea almost impossible to contain - much less eliminate.

In addition, because public restrooms and public rest areas are almost 'everywhere,' and these places are loci of gay sex, any sexually-transmitted bug is going to be almost 'everywhere.'

More People + More Animals = More Danger

Germs have always jumped the species barrier, crossing from animals to humans. Sometimes it occurs because individuals are near animals - like wild birds, ducks, or pigs. Other times people get exposed to their germs because they are raising them or preparing them to eat (with exposure to animal feces or blood typically being particularly risky). SARS appears to have jumped to food handlers in China, and HIV may have come from primates being prepared for cooking. Many of these 'jumps' are harmless, but every once in a while one of the bugs is a killer. And since there are a lot more people today, 6 billion or so, and many billions more animals - both wild and domesticated - there are many, many more opportunities across the world for species-crossing infections.

Will SARS be a major killer? We don't know yet, but we do know that flu and colds are more frequent during the fall and winter months. Often a variety of these illnesses will appear one season, seem to disappear, and then come on strong the next season. That's what happened with the Spanish flu of 1918, when it appears that about 1% of the world's population of about a billion people died of it.

So even the apparent disappearance of a disease means little unless it disappears for at least the following season or two. SARS is 'being contained' in many countries right now. Is this 'containment' real, or are we being fooled by the likely-seasonal nature of the SARS-germ? Indeed, since SARS is an RNA virus like HIV, it will also mutate aplenty. These mutations may account for what appear to be 'super spreaders,' people with SARS who have accounted for many, many infections in others.

While the typical SARS patient does not appear to infect even one other victim on-average, the 'super spreaders' have infected as many as forty. We are in a race with SARS right now. Can our scientists crack the secrets of SARS and devise a vaccine or a cure that works just about all the time? And can they do it quickly enough to protect us from the likely re-emergence of SARS this winter?

Only time will tell.

So Where Does the Plague Come In?

Because of gay rights, homosexuals have constructed a world-wide disease machine. It is set up and running, just waiting for the 'perfect bug' or as Drs. Haydon and Judson put it, a "truly awesome bug." Gays are dropping into bathhouses in San Francisco, having sex, and then leaving town. A few days later they may have sex in a gay bar in Chicago, and later perhaps a public rest area in Michigan. Any germ they have picked up on their way to New York will have been shared with some, maybe all, of their sexual partners along the way. Likewise, they will have been exposed to any germ their partners carried or picked up in their sexual travels.

The machine is chugging along. Every day, thousands of men get infected and re-infected with many kinds of bugs. Over time, they infect and re-infect thousands of other men. Since many of these men also have sex with women, some women also get infected. Further, IV drug shooting is much more common among gays than it is among straights, so germs from the 'drug community' are also added to the mix.

While engaging in homosexuality is obviously dangerous to both the participant and others in his lifespace, so is shooting drugs. But drug shooters don't go on 'drug cruises,' nor do they travel to shoot drugs with strangers in other lands. Homosexuals go on sex tours and travel so that they can have sex with unusual males.

SARS does not look like it is the 'perfect' or 'truly awesome' bug. But it may yet turn out to be. Even if not, "THE bug" is almost certainly coming. And the gay germ machine is awaiting its arrival. THE bug will probably kill many of them, but it will also kill many of us. Clearly, allowing the 'gay germ machine' to continue to chug along unchecked is incredibly short-sighted.

If ever there was a time for the civilized world to preach and enforce strictures against fornication, to outlaw homosexual activity, and to do everything possible to make monogamous marriage attractive, that time is now. Marital monogamy protects the whole 'herd,' even as promiscuity endangers the whole herd.

Right now, the West is traveling down the opposite road. Yet SARS and the re-emergence of serious consideration of quarantines may provide a glimmer of hope.

It sounds good. Spend money to prevent AIDS and save money down the road because of all the infections that will be prevented.

But the evidence being cited about 'what works' is not credible. HIV is still infecting about 40,000 people per year in the U.S. - a rate that has stayed nearly steady for the last few years. So what does 'AIDS education' do? It supports the gay infrastructure! After all, they are the 'experts' in HIV prevention, condom-distribution, etc. In fact, the government has explicitly allowed and encouraged homosexuals to take leading roles in these areas.

What a monumental waste of $15 billion dollars!!

Perhaps the only good news is that a 'new Federal bureaucracy' will supervise the distribution. Rep. Jim Kolbe (R, AZ, an open gay), criticized this new bureaucracy as 'duplicative'. Let's hope it really is, and that homosexuals do not get to monopolize this money like they do under the Ryan White act. (Wall Street Journal 5/19/03)

The psychologists are at it again! Seems the University of Michigan is relying upon a 'large, well-done study' to defend its 'affirmative action' program in admissions. In 1994, Dr. Patricia Gurin, who with her husband did the study, reached conclusions at variance with affirmative action, saying it 'stigmatized' blacks and 'polarized' the campus.

But now that the University is on trial, she has changed her interpretation of the findings as supporting affirmative action! When Chetly Zarko tried to get the database so he could crunch the numbers himself, the University denied him access, since the study was "proprietary."

Think of it. A 'hidden study' which, upon first release proved one thing, and then later proved its opposite. And the University will not release the data upon which these contradictory conclusions are based! The University of Michigan is a state school, paid for by tax dollars. No way it should be allowed to advance the beliefs of psychologists with 'hidden data.' When tax-monies are involved, every decision should be subject to 'sunlight.' (Wall Street Journal 5/16/03).

Just how far is 'transgenderedness' going to go?

It's hard to tell, but consider the complaint of one Melissa Sue Robinson. She's running for mayor of Lansing, Michigan. But 'she' was born Charles Edward Steaelens Jr, and there is a law requiring 'her' to use both names on the ballot. Why? Because, anyone who has had a name change in the past decade has to list both.

Since 'her' sex change was 5 years ago, 'she' has to reveal that 'she' was a 'he.' How unfair.

A law that attempted to keep 'name changers' from hiding their past when they ran for public office is now being used against the transgendered. (Washington Blade 5/23/03)

FRI suspects that knowing your mayoral candidate changed 'her' mind about being a male and got mutilated might well influence voters. Lansing is not a little town where such an event might be considered just a curiosity. The mayor actually makes important decisions. Yet if the mayor decided 'he' should be a 'she,' how sound is 'her/his' thinking apt to be?

Right next door in Philadelphia, "gender identity counseling" to adolescents is getting a black eye. Seems Joseph Lewis, Janis Moore, and Tyrone Smith operated a 'counseling' shop. Now they are charged with bilking the city of $130,000. The indictment alleges that most of the money went to pay for Lewis' office and apartment rent, leases on two BMWs, a Jersey Shore timeshare, and expenses for Lewis' horse. Moore, the indictment alleges, misrepresented her qualifications as a grants writer for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons from 1990 to 1994. Seems she was a federal inmate during that time. And Smith, "a veteran gay activist best known as founder of a support group for HIV-positive black gay men," was listed as the program's "sexual-identity counselor." (Washington Blade 5/23/03)

If this did not involve tax money and targeting of the underage, it would be a hoot! How idiotic of society to have such a program! How silly for Philadelphia to fund such madness. How evil that this madness is being directed at teenagers. And how appropriate that 'cons' conned the city.

Want to bet that these cons did as good (or as poor) a job as any other "gender identity program?" Quackery and then some underpins the whole sorry charade of "fixing" gender "identity confusion."

In Canada, an appeals court has ruled that the Federal government has until July 12, 2004 to make it legal for two men or two women to get married. The usual suspects are lining up on the issue. The Catholic Bishops oppose such a change, while liberal Jewish Rabbis applaud it. In the Canadian Jewish News, the Liberal Rabbis for Same-Sex Marriage denounced the decision of the Supreme Court of British Columbia, which stated that "Canada is justified in discriminating against gay couples because marriage is designed to create a bond for raising children." (Washington Blade 5/16/03)

Modern psychiatry and clinial psychology came out of the 'treatment' of those who were obviously 'nuts.' That is, people who heard strange noises, bothered their neighbors with no account disturbances, or who were unreasonably depressed (e.g., suffering from schizophrenia, bipolar, or dysthymic [long-term depression] disorders).

The professions of psychiatry and psychology claim great things (e.g., we understand what makes people tick) and demand great things (e.g., psychologists should be included in all health-care insurance and should be permitted to write prescriptions - after all, mental health is as important as physical health). Attempts have been made to include mental health practitioners in Federal insurance plans. And rather than being made up of witch-doctors - as some allege - the 'mental health care' profession claims to rely upon 'scientific findings' to devise and carry out its treatments.

A basic question, and one that I have mentioned before, is "does all this 'therapy-stuff' work?" That is, what happens if we apply the FDA standard of 'safe and effective' to the treatment of mental illness? Well, lo and behold, the political body of King County, Washington (where Seattle is located) has demanded just such an accounting - at least in part.

There a law has been passed that demands an annual accounting of just how well these 'scientific' treatments work. The goal of the politicians was fairly similar to what was sought in the 1850s under the reformer Dorthy Dix. Then, resumption of social functioning was the goal. Now it is "Recovery emphasizes the restoration of self-esteem and on attaining meaningful roles in society." The "restoration of self-esteem" is, of course, a new requirement.

Nonetheless, the accounting is in. For 2001, 7,831 patients were treated by the staff of the King County mental health system (at a cost of $90 million or roughly $11,500/patient). The results documented that 6,949 (88.7%) showed no improvement, 597 (8%) showed some improvement, 285 (4%) regressed, and four (.05%) recovered.

This is 'scientific success?'

During the 20th century, under the reforms of Dorthy Dix, mental hospitals that emphasized basket weaving, working in the fields, and listening to preachers had 'cure' rates north of 80%. But that was before 'scientific' practititioners came along.

Look at the numbers above. It seems unlikely that the 8.1% improved or recovered exceeds spontaneous remission! In fact, I have a suspicion that the 8.1% rate is below spontaneous remission. Yet the professionals who managed to 'achieve' this outcome, in one of the more progressive locales with one of the most generous budgets, dare to tell us how to live our lives, have our marriages, and - in particular - the correct philosophy of life.

We justly scoff at people who pay witch doctors to make dolls of their enemies and pierce those dolls with pins. 'How silly,' we say, 'dolls are not people, and no matter what you do to dolls, it won't make any difference in the real world.' Yet modern witch-doctors - those who extol the primacy of feelings (e.g., do you have good 'self-esteem,' 'do you feel good about yourself') and tout the importance of people 'following their hearts' - are magnifying their influence over common thought and social policy.

An example of such psychiatric influence is on the Family Research Council's [FRC] web-site (www.frc.org). There in a commentary about pop singer Christina Aguilera, Peter Sprigg announces that: "...[B]oth homosexuality and transgender behaviors are pathological. They represent gender-identity disorders that usually begin in childhood, often with the failure to adequately bond and identify with same-sex peers or adult role models. In the case of men, this can manifest itself later in life in efforts to absorb masculinity from another man through sexual relations (in the case of homosexuality), or in renunciation of masculinity altogether through identification with the opposite sex (in the case of transgender behaviors)."

This may not be the stupidest theory I've ever heard about why people engage in homosexuality, but for the while it will do.

Males do not have sex with each to "absorb each others' masculinity" any more than men have sex with women to "absorb their femininity." This is wacko thinking (like putting pins in dolls). People have sex because it is fun, interesting, entertaining, feels good, etc. Just because someone does something odd (e.g., has sex with his own sex, or combines sex with brutality), does not mean we have to invoke mysterious unconscious 'forces.' Nor by invoking these 'unconscious demons' do we thereby explain why people choose to engage in homosexuality. This nit-wittery is permeating evangelical Christianity - and obviously influencing FRC.

To see how silly this theory is, consider John Paulk, recently of Focus on the Family. Paulk, among other things, was once a drag-queen and a homosexual prostitute. Once he had sex with other males (absorbing their masculinity?), often for a price (absorbing their money?), and was a drag queen too (renouncing his masculinity?). What was Paulk doing by these behaviors? Was he renouncing the masculinity he gained from having sex with other males by wearing women's clothes, or was he discarding the 'extra masculinity' he got from having sex with males by being a drag queen? Huh? This silliness has all the paw-prints of that great drug-using witch-doctor Sigmund Freud. Paulk was having fun. But obviously, not enough fun to 'stick with with homosexuality' indefinitely. (continued on page 5)

As another example of mental healthism gone amok, consider the recent decision by the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal (Washington Blade 5/2/03). It seems one "Louis Waters, 44, a female-to-male transsexual" is now married to a woman. The Waters couple has been permitted to adopt two children. But as cruel as it was to two innocent children to have them adopted to a woman and a mutilated woman, that wasn't what the suit was about. It seems that the health insurance plan would not pay the costs of her mutilation. So Waters went to California, and had the operations. Her successful suit demanded that the cost of the mutilations and extra money "for injury to the dignity of the complainant" be awarded her from the taxpayers - to the tune of $86,000!

She went to the right tribunal. The court respects 'the professional opinion of the mental health community' about the necessity of sex-change operations. Now, thanks to this decision, getting this particular kind of disfigurement is a 'right.'

The first sex-change operation occurred in Nazi Germany - under the 'care' of a mental health professional. Today there are hundreds, perhaps thousands of them each year. Why? Obviously people want such operations, but it took witch-doctors to pronounce such operations 'necessary for well-being.'

To date, the longest follow-up I have located on what happens to those who get so mutilated spanned all of 5 years. Most of the studies span even shorter periods of time. Are those who choose mutilation "helped?" And what does "helped" mean?

My question is this: If 'mental health experts,' applying the very latest in techniques, can cure less than 1% of the really 'mentally ill' in a year, why is society deferring to their opinion about sex-changes, why males have sex with other males, or just about anything else? I'll bet if you gave $90 million to the Seattle basket weavers club to 'cure' these 8,000 patients, at least as many would have been cured. Indeed, if you were to promise $11,000 to every patient who was able to function well in the community, who would doubt that better than 1% would have been cured?