AFTAH has launched a “Keep the Gay Blood Ban” campaign to oppose the renewed Homosexual Lobby push to end the FDA ban on “men who have had sex with men” giving blood. Cliff Kincaid discusses the extraordinary health risks associated with gay male sex.

The following is excerpted from a presentation by Cliff Kincaid [click HERE to listen; see listening instructions below] at the debut Americans For Truth Academy in August 2010. Kincaid discusses the risks of opening up the blood supply to men practicing homosexuality. The talk by Kincaid — Director of Accuracy in Media’s Center for Investigative Journalism and founder of America’s Survival – is titled, “The Battle over Blood: Gay Health Risks and Public Policy.” He focuses on the homosexual-related health threats to our military and spoke before the law was changed to allow homosexuals to serve openly in the military. AFTAH Radio Hour replayed this excerpted speech August 6, 2011.

Order Truth Academy Sets: DVDs of Chicago 2010 or CDs of Columbus 2011 – A DVD-video set of the entire three-day Truth Academy is available for $89 (including postage). Other speakers include: Rena Lindevaldsen, Robert Knight, Matt Barber, Greg Quinlan, Ryan Sorba, Laurie Higgins, Robert Gagnon, Arthur Goldberg and AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera.  Columbus 2011: A CD-audio set of this year’s two-day Truth Academy in Columbus, OH — co-sponsored by Mission America – is also available, for $49 postpaid; speakers include: Lindevaldsen, Quinlan, Barber, Linda Harvey, Gary Glenn, Gagnon, LaBarbera and David Kupelian. Order BOTH Truth Academy sets (the Chicago DVD and the Columbus CD) for a discount price of $129. Send your check and specify your order to AFTAH, PO Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567-5522; or give online at www.americansfortruth.com/donate/ (please use PayPal if possible).

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8-6-11, Cliff Kincaid

Teenage boy in McDonald's-France TV ad pines after another boy in his all-boys school. McDonald's COO Don Thompson says the ad will not run in the USA. But as a Christian he should be concerned that the corporation is promoting sinful, unhealthy sexual lifestyles to young men in any country.

TAKE ACTION: You can write McDonald’s HERE or call 1-800-244-6227; or write: McDonald’s Corporation, Attn: Jim Skinner and Don Thompson, 2111 McDonald’s Dr., Oak Brook, IL 60523.

By Peter LaBarbera

Folks, perhaps you’ve seen the YouTube of this wicked McDonald’s TV commercial in France, featuring a homosexual teenage boy in love with another member of his all-boys school. (His out-of-touch, hopelessly ‘heterosexist’ father still thinks of his son as a potential lady’s man.) Since I saw the ad a while ago, I have stopped eating at McDonalds — which has had the added bonus of helping to keep my already protruding gut from officially being designated as “super-sized.”  

To a significant degree, McDonald’s with its high-calorie fare has always been in the business of promoting unhealthy lifestyles; now it has added unhealthy sexual lifestyles to the mix. To be sure, McDonald’s does not include promoting wholesomeness and time-tested Judeo-Christian morality among its “core values.” In a contorted defense of the fast food giant’s marketing practices, McDonald’s Chief Operation Officer Don Thompson told the Chicago Tribune in March that the French ad will not  be running in the USA. But the “Come as You Are” commercial has received wide publicity and gotten over two million hits on YouTube, so that’s a small comfort to Americans who have no interest in promoting youth homosexuality when they buy a Big Mac, or a Happy Meal for their young children.

Here’s FOX’s Bill O’Reilly segment on the French commercial — note how O’Reilly repeats the old homosexual-activist myth that “gays are ten percent of the population” — followed by more commentary and a McDonald’s-France letter defending it:  

As you can read in the Tribune interview, excerpted below, Thompson is a very public Christian, which is a good thing. But I find it deeply disturbing and hypocritical that he apparently is not troubled by McDonald’s' promotion of sinful and deviant behavior to young people — as long as it occurs in France where homosexuality is much less controversial than in the United States.

Of course, Thompson is a company man, so he has to toe the line in his public statements. But Christianity is not divided by national borders and he must know that promoting wrong and unhealthy sexual lifestyles to French teenage boys is every bit as evil and reckless as promoting sinful lifestyles to American boys. (Are you getting a feel for how post-modern, pro-homosexual Corporate America is corrupting the souls of its devoted employees?) 

[TAKE ACTION: You can write McDonald's HERE or call 1-800-244-6227; or write: McDonald's Corporation, Attn: Jim Skinner and Don Thompson, 2111 McDonald's Dr., Oak Brook, IL 60523.]

McDonald's COO Don Thompson

Changeable, male homosexuality is not “who you are” but is more rightly understood as a high-risk perversion – as evidenced by its disproportionately high linkage to various sexually transmitted diseases including HIV. (The “rate of new HIV diagnoses among men who have sex with men (MSM) is more than 44 times that of other men,” the CDC reported in March. “The rate of primary and secondary syphilis among MSM is more than 46 times that of other men,” it reported.) Getting by on the technicality that this youth-corrupting ad is only running in another (more decadent, less religious) country is the coward’s way out of a shameful PR disaster for the fast-food behemoth. And that defense has only alienated both sides of the debate: pro-”gay” advocates are upset that the McDonald’s-France commercial is not running in the U.S.   

McDonald’s and its CEO, Jim Skinner (and COO Don Thompson) owe an apology to French moms and dads — and French young people — for promoting the unnatural, disease-producing homosexual lifestyle to French boys as some kind of innocuous, natural — and “cool” — identity. Until that apology comes, I am avoiding the famed Golden Arches. If you join me, it will be one of the healthiest corporate boycotts you ever engage in — but please make sure that you pay a visit to your local McDonald’s manager and franchise owner — to personally inform them of the reason that you are not eating there anymore. (Show them the YouTube ad.) Then they can relay your message of concern up the corporate ladder.

Thanks for standing up for moral sanity and truth against Corporate America’s increasingly brazen promotion of sexual immorality, in the name of that modern, Orwellian euphemism, ”diversity.” – Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org   

P.S. Memo to pro-homosexuality activists: if you want to negate our boycott: have at it! The Big Macs, fries and Quarter-Pounders, dripping with grease and loaded with fat-producing calories, are there to be eaten. Here’s a caloric rundown of some popular McDonald’s menu items, courtesy of Shapefit.com:

Big Mac: 570 calories
Quarter Pounder: 430 (w/cheese: 530 c.)
Large French Fries: 540 c.
Crispy Chicken Deluxe Sandwich: 500 c.
File-O-Fish Sandwich: 470 c.
Big Xtra! Hamburger: 710 c. (w/ cheese 810 c.)
Oreo McFlurry: 570 c.
Sausage McMuffin w/ Egg Sandwich: 440 c.
Chicken McNuggets 9-piece: 430 c.

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Here is a clearer YouTube version of the McDonald’s ad (after it starts playing, you may need to close the “Google Ads” box so you can better view the English subtitles):

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Tribune Interview with McDonald’s COO Don Thompson:

Excerpt from Chicago Tribune reporter Michael Oneal’s June 13, 2010 interview with McDonald’s COO Don Thompson. Note that Thompson’s response begs the question: just what are McDonald’s “core values” if they include promoting the acceptance of youth homosexuality to the wider culture? (Emphasis added below:)

Tribune: A French TV ad featuring a gay teen and his father has stirred some controversy — not there, but here. Can you talk about that?

Thompson: It is an example that markets, cultures are very different around the world. (For instance), I’ve never shied away from the fact that I’m a Christian. I have my own personal beliefs and I don’t impose those on anybody else. I’ve been in countries where the majority of the people in the country don’t believe in a deity or they may be atheist. Or the majority of the country is Muslim. Or it may be the majority is much younger skewed. So when you look at all these differences, it’s not that I’m to be the judge or the jury relative to right or wrong. Having said that, at McDonald’s, there are core values we stand for and the world is getting much closer. So we have a lot of conversations. We’re going to make some mistakes at times. (We talk) about things that may have an implication in one part of the world and may be the cultural norm in another part of the world. And those are things that, yes, we’re going to learn from. But, you’re right, that commercial won’t show in the United States.

Tribune: How has it done in France?

Thompson: Interestingly enough, there have been no negatives coming out of France. The brand is a local brand and different things will occur in different parts of the world. We just have to make sure that we understand the impact one action may make on another part of the world.

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[TAKE ACTION: You can write McDonald's HERE or call 1-800-244-6227; or write: McDonald's Corporation, Attn: Jim Skinner and Don Thompson, 2111 McDonald's Dr., Oak Brook, IL 60523.]

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McDonald’s-France Reply to American Customer Concerned over Pro-Homosexual Ad

The following letter was sent by McDonald’s France in response to an  American customer who wrote to express his concern over the corporation’s homosexuality-affirming TV ad:

July 5, 2010

Mr. ________________,

I have received your letter regarding our advertising film “Come as You Are.”

The ad you’re referencing is one of a series of ads called “Come as You Are” which recognizes the diversity of McDonald’s customers in France.

The campaign was designed to communicate the true McDonald’s experience in France: a place where you can be yourself, whatever your state of mine, your background; a place where you can feel free of constraints, a place where you can ‘Come as You Are.’ Since its launch, the campaign has acheived high awareness and it has been received positively by the majority of the French public.

The goal with this new phase of the campaign is to continue to build on the emotional connection created between the brand and the French [public. By] going beyond a simple description of our customers we actually tell their stories, capturing their personality and their emotions.

Through these films McDonald’s pays tribute to the diversity of its customers and the richness of their stories.

I hope you’ll better understand the aim of your [sic] “Come as You Are” communications campaign.

Your [sic] sincerely,

Nathalie Febvre
Customer Services Department
McDonald’s France Services

[NOTE: Corrected contact info for American Red Cross below]

“Detection of HIV infection is particularly challenging when very low levels of virus are present in the blood for example during the so-called ‘window period.’ The ‘window period’ is the time between being infected with HIV and the ability of an HIV test to detect HIV in an infected person….FDA’s MSM policy reduces the likelihood that a person would unknowingly donate blood during the ‘window period’ of infection. This is important because the rate of new infections in MSM is higher than in the general population and current blood donors.” – Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

In the book And the Band Played On: Politics, People and the AIDS Epidemic, homosexual journalist Randy Shilts documents how homosexual activists originally fought the effort to ban "gay" male blood donations, saying it was discriminatory. This caused a delay in starting the ban, which led to the needless deaths of many innocent people. Shilts himself died of AIDS.

Folks, thankfully, sanity has prevailed and the political attempt to weaken the FDA ban on blood donations from “men who have had sex with men” (MSM) failed in a 6-9 vote Friday by the FDA committee mentioned in Cliff Kincaid’s article below. (Note the American Red Cross’ condemnation of the vote, along with “gay” activist organizations; contact the Red Cross HERE.) I only wish the homosexual activists and their liberal allies (most importantly the CDC) would redirect their energies toward shutting down homosexual bathhouses and sex clubs — i.e., the venues that encourage the anonymous hyper-promiscuity that facilitates the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases. (See our story: “CDC: Gay Men’s HIV Rate 44 Times that of Other Men; Syphilis Rate 46 Times Higher.”) But this would run contrary to the history of homosexual activism, which elevates deviant sex and “rights” based on same above the public health and other interests of the public. TAKE ACTION: Contact the Food and Drug Administration HERE; Contact the Red Cross HERE; and you can reach Congress at 202-224-3121. – Peter LaBarbera, www.aftah.org,

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The Battle Over Blood

By Cliff Kincaid, Reprinted with permission of Accuracy in Media, www.aim.org |  June 9, 2010

With the public focused on the calamity of the Gulf oil spill, another disaster that could affect millions of lives is in the making. The federal Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability (ACBSA) is holding meetings on June 10 and June 11 to consider lifting the ban on gay blood.

In this battle, if the gays win, you lose.

Gay activists, who are expected to dominate the proceedings and intimidate federal policy makers, insist that the ban is discriminatory and homophobic and are demanding the “right” to donate blood. The lifting of the ban on gay blood is seen as a necessary prerequisite to lifting the ban on open gays in the military. After all, how can gays be on the battlefield, where they could be called upon to provide a blood transfusion to a fellow soldier, if they cannot legally donate blood?

What this means, if politics is played with the blood supply, is that that the five million Americans a year who receive blood transfusions, in addition to soldiers on the battlefield, could be exposed to the AIDS virus or other infections in the diseased blood of sexually active homosexuals.

Tragically, despite the life and death nature of this issue, news organizations are spreading deliberate lies.

For example, The Desert Sun of Palm Springs, California, reports that “Gay advocates in the Coachella Valley say now is the time to change the ban they consider discriminatory.” It then quoted David Brinkman, executive director of Desert AIDS Project in Palm Springs, as saying, “There is no scientific or medical evidence that supports the need for the ban anymore. All blood is tested twice and there’s 100 percent accuracy to insure no HIV gets into the blood supply.”

I informed Nicole Brambila, the author of the story, that the claim she featured in her story was absolutely false. But she refuses to correct the record.

In fact, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with jurisdiction over the blood supply, says, “Blood donor testing using current advanced technologies has greatly reduced the risk of HIV transmission but cannot yet detect all infected donors or prevent all transmission by transfusions. While today’s highly sensitive tests fail to detect less than one in a million HIV infected donors, it is important to remember that in the US there are over 20 million transfusions of blood, red cell concentrates, plasma or platelets every year. Therefore, even a failure rate of 1 in a million can be significant if there is an increased risk of undetected HIV in the blood donor population.”

This is one reason why gay males, or men who have sex with men (MSM), are prohibited from donating blood.

The FDA also says, “Detection of HIV infection is particularly challenging when very low levels of virus are present in the blood for example during the so-called ‘window period.’ The ‘window period’ is the time between being infected with HIV and the ability of an HIV test to detect HIV in an infected person….FDA’s MSM policy reduces the likelihood that a person would unknowingly donate blood during the ‘window period’ of infection. This is important because the rate of new infections in MSM is higher than in the general population and current blood donors.”

These critical facts are being carefully omitted from media coverage of the pending change. And because the major media are influenced or intimidated by such groups as the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association and the gay-run Media Matters organization, reporters can find themselves targeted as “haters” and “homophobes” if they tell the truth about the gay lifestyle. As a result, many writers and commentators decide to avoid the topic.

The truth is so sensitive that when the Obama Administration tapped a Washington University professor by the name of Jonathan I. Katz to serve on a scientific panel to review the handling of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, he was immediately attacked because of his article, “In Defense of Homophobia,” on the dangers of homosexual behavior.

As a result of the outcry from the homosexual lobby, Katz was dropped from the panel, even though the article had nothing to do with the Gulf matter. This is how they operate—protest and intimidation. As we recently saw with George Will’s capitulation to the gay lobby, very few conservatives have the intestinal fortitude to go up against them.

Despite the controversial title, the Katz article is well-researched and touches on the gay blood problem, noting that the homosexual activists have been campaigning for a lifting of the ban for several years and that their position is that “In order to satisfy their demand for full acceptance by society, the homosexual movement demands to kill some transfusion recipients by infecting them with AIDS…”

Do you or your loved ones want to die in order to advance the gay rights agenda?

In advance of the Thursday and Friday meetings on blood safety, a federal notice has reiterated that male homosexuals “have an increased incidence and prevalence of several currently recognized transfusion-transmitted diseases”—Hepatitis B virus, HIV, syphilis, and cytomegalovirus.

It also says, “There is a theoretical concern that MSM populations may also be at increased risk for other unrecognized transfusion-transmitted agents.” That means another infectious agent could be lurking in the blood that they want to have the “right” to donate to the nation’s blood supply.

The move to lift the ban is being spearheaded by the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights lobby which contributes to the campaigns of liberal Congressional candidates. It reports “progress” in this effort, based on the fact that Senators John Kerry and Al Franken have done the organization’s bidding and pressured the federal government to hold the June 10 and 11 meetings to consider lifting the ban on gay blood. The FDA commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, is a political appointee of the Obama Administration.

The pressure campaign has already forced the American Red Cross and two other blood groups to previously argue for lifting the ban. But the FDA, after reviewing the policy in 2006, reiterated the prohibition, which has been in effect since 1983 and applies to MSM since 1977, the beginning of the AIDS epidemic.

Randy Shilts’ book, And the Band Played On, and the movie by the same name that was based on it, documents how gays at that time of the discovery of AIDS and the virus causing it, HIV, were even then arguing that a ban on gay blood was discriminatory. The blood industry was then resisting the testing of the blood, mainly because of the cost.

The result was an unconscionable delay in banning gay blood and the unnecessary deaths of many people.

The gays even objected to the original name for AIDS as GRID, standing for gay-related immune deficiency. Another name for Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome,  the “gay cancer,” was also jettisoned because of its obvious association with the gay lifestyle.

Upset at the delay in responding to the dangers to the blood supply, one official of the Centers for Disease Control, reported Shilts, attended a meeting on blood safety and pounded his table with his fist, shouting, “How many people have to die? How many deaths do you need?”

A representative of hemophiliacs, dependent on blood transfusions for their day-to-day survival, objected to all of the talk at the time about the rights of gays not to be discriminated against, asking, “What about our right to live?”

Once again, as we have seen in the gays in the military debate, the gays are constantly screaming about their rights, oblivious to the point of madness about the rights of others. In this case, it’s our right to be free of infected blood when our loved ones get a blood transfusion.

But unless the public quickly offers its comments and raises an outcry with the federal authorities coming under the influence and intimidation of the gay rights lobby, the “right” to donate blood could soon be extended to a politically-connected special interest group that has a demonstrated propensity to acquire life-threatening and deadly diseases.

* CONTACT: Jerry A. Holmberg, Ph.D., Executive Secretary, Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability, Office of Public Health and Science, Department of Health and Human Services, 1101 Wootton Parkway, Suite 250, Rockville, MD 20852, (240) 453-8803, FAX (240) 453-8456, e-mail ACBSA@hhs.gov; Contact the Red Cross HERE and the the FDA HERE. Call Congress at 202-224-3121 or 202-225-3121 or go to www.congress.org.

Additional Red Cross information:

American Red Cross National Headquarters
2025 E Street, NW
Washington, DC 20006

Phone: (202) 303-5000

General Red Cross Contact Page: http://www.redcross.org/contactus

Cliff Kincaid is the Editor of the AIM Report and can be reached at cliff.kincaid@aim.org

There is no precedent in history for such myth-driven “democratization” of a disease, nor for the abominable unfairness in allocating funds away from so many curable illnesses. — Michael Fumento

The full New York Post column by Michael Fumento appears HERE. Emphasis added below:

A Myth that Kills

By Michael Fumento

New York Post, July 3, 2008 –THE Senate is near to passing a massive $50 billion Emergency Plan for HIV/ AIDS Relief — a bill whose priorities are based on myth, just like virtually all anti-AIDS efforts worldwide.

The world’s top AIDS bureaucrat recently admitted the truth: “It is very unlikely that there will be a heterosexual epidemic” outside Africa, Kevin de Cock, director of the World Health Organization, told London’s Independent newspaper. His bosses at the United Nations issued an official denial — but couldn’t truly challenge his science.

The effort to “democratize” AIDS dates back to the mid-1980s, when the media and health officials began a desperate and concerted effort to divert attention and make it seem everyone was at risk. The 1985 Life magazine cover, blaring “NOW NO ONE IS SAFE FROM AIDS” in huge red letters, represents this effort. Surgeon General Everett Koop coined the term “heterosexual AIDS explosion” in 1987, while in 1993 HHS Secretary Donna Shalala told Congress that AIDS may leave “nobody left.”

Even today, the Centers for Disease Control’s HIV/AIDS Web site refuses to acknowledge any difference in the risks of AIDS between anal, vaginal or oral sex.

Peter Piot, now executive director of UNAIDS, warned as late as 1997 that “HIV will cut through Asian populations like a hot knife through cold butter.” UNAIDS’s 2001 estimate had 30 million infected adults in sub-Saharan Africa.

Last year, the UN had to cut that Africa figure by almost half — and drop its Asia number by 38 percent from just the year before. Dr. James Chin, a former top AIDS epidemiologist at the World Health Organization, has long declared the UN figures to be to too high and insists they still are.

In fact, there was never any indication AIDS had or would “break out” from the well-defined risk-behavior groups, as I was writing as far back as 1987 and in my 1990 book “The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS.”

I’m no Nostradamus. I merely analyzed public data and studies showing how terribly difficult the disease is to transmit vaginally or orally. But the myths are still the basis for AIDS policy.

The group Fair Allocations in Research compiles statistics on federal spending to fight various diseases, compared to how many Americans each disease kills. Measured that way, we spend 21 times as much on AIDS as cancer — and 78 times what we spend on coronary artery disease, 97 times anti-stroke spending.

Plus, the Ryan White Act mandates taxpayer handouts to HIV/AIDS victims of about $1.2 billion a year. We have no remotely similar program for victims of any other disease.

The same official grotesque distortion holds internationally. Chin charges that the United Nations puts HIV/AIDS victims on a pedestal while other disease victims stay submerged in deadly muck.

Robert England (who heads the charity Health Systems Workshop) recently made the same point in the British Medical Journal: “Although HIV causes 3.7 percent of [worldwide] mortality, it receives 25 percent of international health-care aid.” …

Consider: A 2008 WHO/UNAIDS/UNICEF report demands AIDS drugs for every victim worldwide, requiring spending hikes from $8.1 billion now to $35 billion by 2010. Yet AIDS remains incurable. Conversely, an African with non-resistant tuberculosis is curable with merely $25 of drugs.

“Easily preventable diseases are still killing millions of children each year, while billions of dollars are being squandered annually by AIDS programs . . . who are not at risk,” says Chin. (Yes, the Senate bill funds anti-TB and -malaria programs – but not anything like its anti-AIDS spending.)….

There is no precedent in history for such myth-driven “democratization” of a disease, nor for the abominable unfairness in allocating funds away from so many curable illnesses. Says England: “We have created a monster with too many vested interests and reputations at stake.”

CLICK HERE to read Fumento’s entire New York Post column.

Michael Fumento is director of Education and Research for the American Security Council Foundation in Washington, DC.