AFA-Michigan, AFTAH Welcome Gay Task Force Admission: ‘HIV Is a Gay Disease’

 Matt Foreman, outgoing National Gay and Lesbian Task Force executive director admits, “HIV is a gay disease.”

URGENT ALERT TO HOMOSEXUAL ACTIVIST “FACT CHECKERS”  AND “ANTI-HOMOPHOBIA” BLOGGERS EVERYWHERE: somebody straighten out homosexual activist Matt Foreman, outgoing executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, who had the temerity to admit the obvious: “HIV is a gay disease.”  Next thing you know, Foreman — who is actually one of America’s most strident anti-Christian bigots … er, “gay” leaders — will be acknowledging that men and women practicing homosexuality can leave the lifestyle and lead contented lives outside the “gay” fold. 

Government’s fault? 

The Gay Thought Police need not be too alarmed: pro-family stalwart Gary Glenn of AFA-Michigan subsequently informed us that Foreman, talking to a Detroit homosexual newspaper, added this caveat to his statement about HIV and homosexuality: “I dont blame our community for the fact that MSM [men who have sex with men] still account for nearly three quarters of men living with HIV. I hold our government accountable.”

Whew, I’m glad Foreman straightened that out!  For a moment there, I thought were were going to witness a major homosexual leader actually encouraging “gay” men to take responsibility for their own sexual (mis)behavior. 

In a future post, we’ll address some of Foreman’s other remarks at Creating Change — which might cause conservatives consternation but which should have a sobering effect on the pro-family movement.  (Here’s a clue: they’re gaining; we’re losing.) — Peter LaBarbera

P.S.  Click HERE  and HERE if you missed our stories about the homosexual Task Force and Creating Change honoring a sadomasochistic advocate of “consensual slavery” at their Detroit conference — during Black History Month, no less.

P.P.S.  Public school sex-ed instructors and educators everywhere, take note:  

American Family Association of Michigan 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Wed., Feb. 13, 2008
CONTACT:  Gary Glenn  989-835-7978

National Gay & Lesbian Task Force Admits: “HIV is a Gay Disease”

Michigan family values group welcomes admission,
urges lawmakers to block homosexual “rights” legislation

DETROIT, Mich. — A Michigan family values organization Wednesday welcomed the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force’s startling admission that homosexual activity is predominantly responsible for the spread of the HIV virus in the U.S. and called on Michigan legislative leaders to block pending legislation that would give special “protected class” status to individuals who engage in such behavior.

Matt Foreman, executive director of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force — in an address Friday to the National Conference on Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender Equality [“Creating Change”; see AFTAH article HERE] in Detroit — shocked attendees by calling HIV “a gay disease.”  Despite medical data identifying homosexual activity among males as by far the largest single source of HIV infection in the U.S., homosexual activists have routinely have condemned conservative and public health organizations for characterizing the disease as being predominantly associated with and spread by homosexual behavior.

Foreman further shocked attendees by himself referring to such data, saying that “with 70 percent of the people in this country living with HIV being gay or bi[-sexual], we cannot deny that HIV is a gay disease. We have to own that and face up to that.”

See Foreman’s formal remarks, last paragraph, page 3: http://www.thetaskforce.org/downloads/exec_director/cc08_state_of_movement.pdf

Gary Glenn, president of the American Family Association of Michigan and co-author of the Marriage Protection Amendment approved by Michigan voters in 2004, responded to Foreman’s comments by saying the nationally prominent homosexual activist “shouldn’t stop there.”

“Before whatever dose of truth serum somebody slipped him wears off,” Glenn said, “Foreman should also publicly accept responsibility for professionally promoting a lifestyle that’s medically associated with a dramatically higher risk of domestic violence, mental illness, substance abuse, eating disorders, life-threatening diseases such as AIDS, cancer, and hepatitis, and premature death by up to twenty years.”

Glenn said his and other traditional values organizations will continue to “truthfully warn the public and particularly young people about the severe threat homosexual behavior poses to both personal and public health.”

“The only difference is, we will now quote Matt Foreman and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in truthfully characterizing HIV infection in the U.S. as a predominantly homosexual-related disease, and challenge Michigan’s Triangle Foundation or any other homosexual activist group to dispute that characterization.”

Foreman’s comments are a dramatic departure from the long-standing strategic and rhetorical orthodoxy of the homosexual “rights” movement, which in the past has heatedly objected to any such characterization by critics of its political agenda.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force itself, in an August 2004 news release quoting Foreman, attacked the Bush Administration for “nominat(ing) individuals with extreme anti-gay views to the federal bench and other federal positions, including nominating Christian evangelical Jerry Thacker, who has called AIDS the ‘gay plague.'”
http://www.thetaskforce.org/press/releases/pr729_082704

The San Francisco Chronicle reported in 2003 regarding Thacker: “Blasted by controversy over his characterizations of AIDS as a ‘gay plague,’ Christian activist Jerry Thacker — who is infected with the AIDS virus along with his wife and daughter — withdrew his nomination to a presidential AIDS advisory council Thursday.”  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/01/24/MN240928.DTL
 
Homosexual activists reacted similarly last month to news reports of medical researchers’ finding that a new strain of drug-resistant bacterial infection is also being transmitted largely by homosexual activity at a rate “13 times greater for gay men than for the rest of the (San Francisco) population.” http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/15/MNI5UE0L8.DTL&hw=MRSA+gay&sn=001&sc=1000
Homosexual activists immediately decried the news reports for suggesting — based on medical fact — that homosexual behavior is associated with a dramatically higher risk of the MRSA infection.  According to Concerned Women for America, a pro-family group which followed the story, homosexual activist groups immediately accused critics of having “claimed the outbreak was ‘the new AIDS,’ a ‘new gay disease’ and ‘the gay plague.’”  http://www.cwfa.org/articles/14584/CFI/family/index.htm

Glenn said that in light of homosexual activists’ typical response to such medical findings, Foreman’s “startling new party line of admitting rather than denying medical fact about the health hazards of homosexual behavior — at least regarding HIV — has apparently left some homosexual activists in a quandary, and in shock.”

He pointed to comments by Todd Heywood, a Lansing homosexual activist who writes for Between the Lines, a homosexual advocacy newsmagazine published in metro Detroit, who told the Lansing State Journal:

“This story is likely to gain political traction in the coming days, weeks and months. When leaders of the right wing claim HIV AIDS as a gay disease, we all balk at that claim. But what happens when a national gay leader says it?”  http://noise.typepad.com/election_countdown/2008/02/a-gay-disease.html

Foreman’s comment “rocked the American gay community,” Heywood wrote in an article for the Michigan Messenger, an alternative online news site. http://www.michiganmessenger.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=838

Derek Smiertka, former executive director of the Oakland County Republican Party under past chairman L. Brooks Patterson, and now executive director of Michigan Equality, a Lansing-based homosexual activist group, said:

“Although I disagree scientifically that it is a gay disease, our behavior reflects poorly when we look at hard numbers. We really have to take a hard look in the mirror before we start looking at other parts of the community. A good long hard look in the mirror.”

However, Glenn noted that Foreman and the Task Force are not the first homosexual activists to abandon homosexual activists’ politically correct orthodoxy by acknowledging the medical facts regarding HIV.

Lifesite News reported in 2006: “The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center has abandoned a long-held homosexual activist contention by declaring on billboards posted throughout Southern California that HIV/AIDS is a ‘gay disease.’  According to a report by the Los Angeles Times, the Center is trying to address rapidly increasing HIV infection rates among the homosexual population by rallying the gay community to increasing vigilance against exposure to the disease. Activists for the homosexual lifestyle have, until this current development, strongly, and sometimes vehemently refused to admit that the disease is predominantly generated among homosexual men.  The ad campaign…is in part a response to the findings of public health officials, who have noted that three out of four cases of HIV infections are found in men who engage in homosexual activity, the United Press International reported.” http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/oct/06100404.html

As a follow up to Foreman’s remarks, Glenn Wednesday e-mailed a statement to Michigan state Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop and Speaker of the House Andy Dillon to advise them of Foreman’s admission and urge them to oppose a collection of bills he said “would further the threat to personal and public health by legitimizing, promoting, and protecting the unhealthy sexual practices which the nation’s leading homosexual lobby now admits is responsible for the spread of HIV.”

“Homosexual activists’ belated admission comes too late for HIV victims whose lives might have been saved had homosexual activists told the truth sooner, instead of condemning those who told the truth,” Glenn wrote, “but it’s not too late for you to ensure that legislation that would give special rights and protection to such behavior, and thus put more lives at risk, is not allowed to become law.”

Glenn specifically cited legislation in the Democrat-controlled House that would statutorily allow homosexual couples for the first time in Michigan to adopt children, “thus putting children at much greater risk of second-hand exposure to all the mental, emotional, and physical health-related traumas medically associated with homosexual behavior.”

He also cited pending legislation in the Michigan House that would amend the state’s “hate crime” and “civil rights” laws to grant special “protected class” and legally-recognized minority status to individuals expressly on the basis of their “sexual orientation” toward engaging in homosexual or bisexual behavior, the very behavior Foreman admitted is responsible for the spread of HIV.

He also cited legislation, already approved by the House, which would — rather than simply protect all public school students from all bullying regardless of its motivation — require public school districts instead to segregate students into special “protected class” categories, including “sexual orientation,” then dole out protection based expressly on students’ membership in such categories.
 
Glenn noted that Democratic control of the Michigan House is largely attributable to homosexual activist billionaire Jon Stryker of Kalamazoo, who contributed $5 million of his own funds during the 2006 election to an independent expenditure campaign to unseat the then Republican majority.

Foreman during his remarks Friday credited Stryker in part for homosexual activists’ political successes in 2006: “It was leaders like Jon Stryker … who helped fund campaigns to take out bigots and elect pro-(Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender) candidates.”

In response, Glenn said AFA-Michigan “will continue to oppose efforts by homosexual activists and their allies in Michigan’s Democrat-controlled House to push homosexual activist Jon Stryker’s agenda into law, including bills that would legitimize, enable, and protect the very behavior the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force now admits is predominantly responsible for transmission of the HIV virus,” Glenn wrote.
 
Last year, Foreman in a nationwide news release accused Glenn and Catholic Cardinal Adam Maida of Detroit — by virtue of their public support of Michigan’s Marriage Protection Amendment — of being responsible for inciting the alleged beating death of a 72 year old Detroit man who identified himself as being involved in the homosexual lifestyle. http://www.thetaskforce.org/press/releases/prMF_022307
 
Detroit police later announced they found no evidence of any beating, and the Wayne County Medical Examiner’s office ruled the death the result of a fall caused by arthritic paralysis of the man’s neck.  http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/baptistwatch/vpost?id=1797389
 
However, Foreman has never retracted or apologized for the false accusation.