Homosexual Activists Risk Your Life — Tolerate It!

Joe Solmonese of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s leading homosexual pressure group, says the federal ban on accepting blood donations from “men who have sex with men” is “discriminatory.”

By J. Matt Barber

Modern science sometimes serves to validate timeless Biblical truths (not that objective truth needs validating). Romans 6:23 contains two such truths. It provides flip sides to a priceless coin, offering us both a blunt warning and an enduring promise: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Far too often we toss this coin, gambling heads-or-tails with our own best interests. We all sin, but because Christ willingly paid the penalty — suffering death on the cross in our stead — we are redeemed. We need only believe in Him and the gift of eternal life is ours. We can confess our sins, repent (which includes making every effort not to repeat those sins) and move on.

Still, there are those who prefer the tarnished side of the coin to the polished, those who, with haughty hearts and sardonic “pride,” willfully choose sin over Christ; death over life.

It’s a self-evident reality which is bolstered by medical science, but Scripture additionally reminds us in both the Old and New Testaments that those who choose to engage in homosexual conduct do so at their own peril.

Consider Romans 1:26-27 (NIV), which a presidential candidate recently referred to as an “obscure passage in Romans”: “Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.”

It’s sad when people yield to disordered sexual temptations that can literally kill them spiritually, emotionally and physically. Nobody with any compassion enjoys watching others “[receive] in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.” But a corollary to free will is living (or dying) with the choices we’ve made.

That said, it’s an entirely different proposition when bad behaviors place others at risk. This should not — and must not — be “tolerated.”

Current U.S. health regulations prohibit men who have sex with men (MSM) from donating blood. Studies conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) categorically confirm that if MSM were permitted to give blood, the general population would be placed at risk.

According to the FDA, MSM “have an HIV prevalence 60 times higher than the general population, 800 times higher than first time blood donors and 8,000 times higher than repeat blood donors (American Red Cross).

“[MSM] also have an increased risk of having other infections that can be transmitted to others by blood transfusion. For example, infection with the Hepatitis B virus is about 5-6 times more common, and Hepatitis C virus infections are about 2 times more common in [MSM] than in the general population,” according to the FDA.

A recent CDC study rocked the homosexual community in finding that although MSM comprise only one-to-two percent of the population, they account for an epidemic 64 percent of all syphilis cases.

And Matt Foreman, outgoing Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, further shocked his fellow “gay” activists by admitting, “HIV is a Gay Disease.”

Although the risks extend far beyond potential HIV infection, the FDA notes, “All donated blood is tested for HIV, but the virus can go undetected until the immune system has produced a testable amount of antibodies.” This would pose a “small but definite increased risk to people who receive blood transfusions if the policy were changed.”

But risking lives is apparently of little concern to radical homosexual activists such as Joe Solmonese, president of the so-called “Human Rights Campaign” (HRC), the nation’s largest and most radical homosexual pressure group.

Solmonese recently placed politics over science, falsely declaring this commonsense public health precaution to be “discriminatory.” He has called for the ban to be lifted, with the wildly irresponsible claim that, “[T]here is no medical or scientific rationale for this discriminatory policy.”

In light of the irrefutable medical data, Solmonese’s demand is not only reckless, it’s incredibly dangerous. Unfortunately, it’s a common demand among his fellow extremists.

In South Africa, militant homosexual activists have been “protesting” by deliberately and surreptitiously violating that nation’s blood ban, aiming to flood blood banks with 70,000 units. Who knows how much blood has been contaminated or how many innocent people have been infected. This isn’t a protest; it’s an act of violence.

In recent days, Oklahoma State Rep. Sally Kern has been viciously attacked and ruthlessly maligned, even receiving death threats, for saying publicly that “the homosexual agenda is destroying the nation.” She even went so far as to say that, in her estimation, homosexual behaviors and “gay” activism pose a greater threat than terrorism.

Reasonable people can debate that opinion, but the actions of “gay” activists in South Africa provide one example among many which would seem to illustrate her point. To intentionally and surreptitiously defy valid health and safety regulations — very likely contaminating the blood supply and infecting untold numbers of innocent people — sounds an awful lot like terrorism to me.

Sally Kern can rest her case, but Joe Solmonese still has a big hole from which to dig himself. With his blunder, he has severely damaged his own credibility and has caused a tremendous setback to the radical movement he leads (a good thing, really).

It’s unconscionable that he would place a deceptive and dangerous political agenda above the health and well-being of American men, women and children. Homosexual activists who disingenuously cry out for “equal rights” should put the “rights” of others to be safe and healthy above their own selfish political ambitions.

Critical U.S. health regulations must not be ignored — or done away with — simply to further some twisted notion of “tolerance” and “diversity” or so that a small minority of people can feel better about the aberrant lifestyle choices they’ve made.

Intravenous drug users are also prohibited from giving blood, but no one in his right mind would demand that addicts be permitted to donate. It’s not because of who they are, it’s because of what they do. The aforementioned studies, and many others like them, prove that, like intravenous drug use, male-male anal sodomy is extremely high-risk behavior.

As I’ve often said, unnatural behaviors beget natural consequences. Regrettably, harmful and often deadly infectious disease can be just one of them.

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Matt Barber is one of the “like-minded men” with Concerned Women for America. He is an attorney concentrating in constitutional law and serves as CWA’s policy director for cultural issues. Barber, who was an undefeated professional heavyweight boxer (see photo at right), was fired by Allstate Insurance Company in 2005 after writing an online article critical of homosexual activism, on his own time. He is also a Board Member of Americans For Truth about Homosexuality.