In a future post, we’ll revisit the flack that Greg Freeman got from the Thought Police over at GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) for writing this piece.

The following is excerpted from Bug Chasers, by Gregory A. Freeman, published Jan 23, 2003, by Rolling Stone:

Carlos nonchalantly asks whether his drink was made with whole or skim milk. He takes a moment to slurp on his grande Caffe Mocha in a crowded Starbucks, and then he gets back to explaining how much he wants HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. His eyes light up as he says that the actual moment of transmission, the instant he gets HIV, will be “the most erotic thing I can imagine.” He seems like a typical thirty-two-year-old man, but, in fact, he has a secret life. Carlos is chasing the bug…

Carlos spends the afternoon continually calling a man named Richard, someone he met on the Internet. They met on barebackcity.com about a year ago, while Carlos was still with his boyfriend. That boyfriend left because Carlos was having sex with other men and because he was interested in barebacking — the practice of having sex without a condom. Carlos and Richard are arranging a “date” for later that day.

Carlos is part of an intricate underground world that has sprouted, driven almost completely by the Internet, in which men who want to be infected with HIV get together with those who are willing to infect them. The men who want the virus are called “bug chasers,” and the men who freely give the virus to them are called “gift givers.” While the rest of the world fights the AIDS epidemic and most people fear HIV infection, this subculture celebrates the virus and eroticizes it. HIV-infected semen is treated like liquid gold. Carlos has been chasing the bug for more than a year in a topsy-turvy world in which every convention about HIV is turned upside down. The virus isn’t horrible and fearsome, it’s beautiful and sexy — and delivered in the way that is most likely to result in infection. In this world, the men with HIV are the most desired, and the bug chasers will do anything to get the virus — to “get knocked up,” to be “bred” or “initiated into the brotherhood.”

Excerpted from Sex, Meth and Internet Spark New AIDS Fears, by Matthew Verrinder, published Jan 17, 2007, by Reuters:

An hour after speaking at a Crystal Meth Anonymous meeting about the benefits of sobriety to dozens of other recovering addicts, Charlie was alone in his Chelsea apartment, logged onto the Web site Adam4Adam.com.

He cruised the site’s profiles of muscular gay men who want to meet for sex while high on methamphetamine…

In New York, thousands of gay men use the Web sites Adam4Adam.com, Manhunt.net and Craigslist.org as an easy way to meet for sex marathons at underground orgies while high on the addictive stimulant.

Similar sites exists in other cities. The phenomenon — while affecting only a small part of the gay community — underscores the spread of meth from the U.S. rural areas where it gained an early foothold.

Health officials worry that the ease in using the Web to find meth — which erases inhibitions and judgment and creates a voracious sexual appetite — and people to do it will fuel a resurgence among gays in infections of HIV, the virus which causes AIDS.

About half of new patients diagnosed with HIV by counselors at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, New York’s largest private clinic for gay men, said that meth or alcohol was a factor, said Gal Mayer, the center’s medical director.

Men who are high on meth are four times more likely to have unprotected sex than those who aren’t, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Continue reading at Reuters…

Americans For Truth’s Sonja Dalton offers a few thoughts on the San Francisco Chronicle story below about four “transgender” girls:

• “Real women” have two X chromosomes, and they do not have a male sex organ;
• Adult homosexual and “transgender” activists, like lesbian writer Chris Beam, often affirm confused “GLBT” youth in dangerous and wrong behaviors;
• Nothing is sadder to see than a confused young person who has been deceived into renouncing his God-given identity and sexuality;
• Churches need to prepare to intervene with vulnerable boys and girls (kids from dysfunctional, broken, or abusive homes; kids that don’t “fit in”; kids that have been molested). Godly men and women need to come alongside vulnerable kids, put their arms around them, reinforce their God-given identity, and motivate them with a vision of the fulfilling life they can enjoy.

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The following is excerpted from Shaking Up Transgender Assumptions, a book review by Julie Foster, published Jan 7, 2007, by the San Francisco Chronicle:

Transparent: Love, Family, and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers
by Cris Beam

Real women can have penises. And “the brain and the heart are the only organs with a gender, and … all genital modification or lack thereof is simply a personal aesthetic choice.” These are some of the titillating ideas explored in “Transparent,” Cris Beam’s first book.

…In 1998, [Cris Beam] was a freelance magazine writer with spare time. She began volunteering at a high school in Los Angeles for gay and transgender teens.

After 2 1/2 years Beam burned out and quit. But she loved her students, even with “their attitudes, and the occasional danger and regular tragedies,” and she maintained contact with several of the kids.

“Transparent” is the result of those meetings, which occurred from 1998 through the summer of 2005. Beam found her way into this nuanced world through the lives of four transgender girls, Christina, Domineque, Foxxjazell and Ariel, genetic males living as females…

It hasn’t always been so. Beam reveals the “rich history of transsexuality — or cross-gender behavior — documented back to the pre-Christian era.” She cites examples from early American Indian cultures, including the Mohave, Navajo and Lakota, which seem to have not been so hung up on the male-female dichotomies. “For these tribes, there weren’t just two genders posted at opposite ends of a field, with a rule against hanging out in the middle.”

She chronicles the tragic homelessness, common to many transgender teens, which exacerbates their already complicated lives. She weaves in the story of Foxxjazell, “a really great drag mother,” and one of the many “transsexuals who have already been living in their rightful gender and are in the position to teach their younger counterparts.”…

Five years after Beam began her interviews, things changed. Beam and her partner, Robin, moved back to New York. Domineque committed a serious crime and was sentenced to time at an all-male prison. And 19-year-old Christina, who by then had become a part of Beam’s family, reached her goal of getting a social outreach job with a Latino AIDS organization…

Continue reading in San Francisco Chronicle…

We trust that you have enjoyed a blessed Christmas this year. We know that your year-end giving opportunities are plentiful, but please consider a tax-deductible gift to Americans For Truth (AFTAH) to assist us in our mission of helping Americans confront the homosexual and transsexual lobbies — which are serious about converting the next generation to their harmful agenda.

Click HERE to give safely online or mail your check to: Americans For Truth, P.O. Box 5522, Naperville, IL 60567. Or click HERE to become a regular monthly “Truth Team” giver.

To appreciate why AFTAH’s work is so important, consider how one radical gender activist responded to our heart-warming article last week about an EX-transgender young man.

Recall the wonderful story we shared about an Illinois high school student “John” who overcame adolescent “transgender” confusion after becoming a born-again Christian. In response, two websites – one “gay” and one “lesbian” — published a reply from a terribly confused man who goes by the name Autumn Sandeen (pictured below).

Transvestite Autumn Sandeen, as interviewed by the pro-homosexuality
newspaper, San Francisco Bay Times (July 6, 2006):

“My penis doesn’t bother me as a body part…[but] as a sexual organ I’m very uncomfortable with it.
I’m going to be an op, I’m a pre-op I guess, but at the same time
I’m not really sweating how long it takes me to get there.
But at the same time love is out of the question for me.
Well, not out of the question but I feel uncomfortable with relationship stuff.
I’ve literally only had one partner in my entire life and I’m just not interested in sex.
If I could have a relationship with someone that was just as intimate
as a sexual relationship—but without sex—I would love that.”

In his response to AFTAH, Mr. Sandeen rejects wrote of his own frequent “conversions”:

Yet he concludes by denying that change (overcoming homosexuality or gender confusion) is possible.

You don’t need an academic degree to see the irony of this man — and he is still a man — being troubled at our report of a young man overcoming the pull of “transgender” deviance in his life. We live in a world in which “the experts,” often with impressive sounding credentials, dismiss healthy change yet put their stamp of approval on homosexual and gender-confused identities like that above. Science has been politicized and is being used to guide young people into harmful and unnatural behaviors.

To most Americans, religious or not, leaving homosexuality or gender confusion behind is a good thing. To homosexual and gender-bending activists, any ex-“gay” testimony threatens their central propaganda myth that some people are intrinsically (born) “gay,” bisexual or “transgender.” Some homosexual activists like Wayne Besen and the fellows at “Ex-Gay Watch” have dedicated themselves to discrediting ex-“gay” change by hyping the cases of people who have returned back to homosexual behavior. (Yes, change is difficult, but why focus exclusively on failed attempts? Imagine if someone tried to “prove” that overcoming drug addiction was impossible by popularizing only those cases of addicts who tried to go clean but fell back into their drug-abusing lifestyle.)

As you read on, give thanks that high school student “John” was transformed by Jesus Christ (rather than by modern secular psychiatrists) and will not have to suffer the severe emotional confusion and deep loneliness inherent to “transgender” delusion. “John” is truly free now — to experience gratitude for his body, to fall in love with a woman, to enjoy sex in marriage, to accept the natural blessing of children and grandchildren, to worship and serve his God, to know joy.

Please support groups like Americans For Truth that cut through the fog of the homosexual lobby’s lies and tell young people, especially, that nobody has to be “gay.” Homosexuality and gender confusion are not permanent, predestined “identities” — as evinced by the thousands of men and women who have overcome homosexuality and related deviancies in their lives.

Also offer up a prayer for Mr. Sandeen’s genuine ‘trans’-formation as well, for, as the Christmas story teaches, nothing is impossible with God. (Click HERE for a great ex-“gay” resource.) It’s certainly not too late for Mr. Sandeen to experience the only “conversion” that counts. God bless. — Peter LaBarbera

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The following commentary was carried on two homosexual activist blogs, Ex-Gay Watch and Pam’s House Blend, in response to our story on a high school student who overcame gender confusion through Jesus Christ:

Statements of Conversion: Student ‘Trans’-formed by Christ

By Autumn Sandeen
Posted Dec 22, 2006

Here on the Ex-Gay Watch I know I frequently point out logical fallacies in logical (or perhaps better said illogical) arguments, and my peers here do the same thing. My peers and I have noted ex-gay and ex-gay affirming organizations — such as NARTH and Exodus International — often use Statements Of Conversion to make their points, vice referencing statistically sound research or widely recognized subject matter experts.

From the Dec 8, 2006, issue of “Washington Update by Tony Perkins, Family Research Council:

For the last three days, media outlets from across the country have flooded FRC with calls on our reaction to the news that Vice President Cheney’s daughter, who has a lesbian partner, is expecting a child. We have purposefully declined to comment on the story, in order to maintain FRC’s focus on policy discussions. However, when an event such as this is used by some as a catalyst for advancing a political agenda or promoting public policy that attacks traditional marriage or parenting, I have no reservations about stepping forward and defending morality and the family — regardless of who is involved. Today’s Washington Post features such an attempt by editorial columnist Ruth Marcus. With an air of noble tutelage, Marcus writes, “Whether she intends it or not, [Mary Cheney’s] pregnancy will, I think, turn out to be a watershed in public understanding and acceptance of this phenomenon.”

Unlike Marcus, authorities on child and family health do not use anecdotes as the basis for public policy. Their analysis is fact-driven, not emotion-driven. And those facts have seldom changed. Marcus writes that “To be a badly wanted child… in a home with two loving parents is no tragedy. If they’re worried about ’emotional devastation,’ they would do better to reserve their lamentations for children in poverty, those who are abused or neglected, or for children in families splintered by divorce.” Children’s needs, however, are more than the sum of the wants in the lives of the adults who reside with them. Study after study demonstrates that no amount of care or financial privilege can compensate for the missing physical and emotional benefits experienced by children who enjoy the lifelong love and presence of a married mother and father.

Comprehensive studies published in the peer-reviewed journals Archives of General Psychiatry, Interpersonal Violence, Social Service Research, Consulting and Clinical Psychology, Nursing Research, Developmental Psychology, Adolescence, and others too numerous to list here, all cite the devastating effects of domestic violence, increased substance abuse, mental health problems, sexual identity confusion, depression, and suicide associated with the homosexual lifestyle. A child fortunate enough to escape those realities still faces a distinct disadvantage throughout childhood — the irreplaceable influence of the missing biological parent. In rearing children, the complementary contributions of a mother and father are rooted in the innate differences of the two sexes, and can no more be arbitrarily replaced than can the very nature of male and female.

But besides dismissing science, Marcus misrepresents the reality of Virginia law. In her eagerness to exploit the circumstances, she asserts that the state’s new marriage protection amendment “casts doubt on the ability of Cheney and Poe to write binding medical directives and wills.” The law casts no doubt on the matter. It implicitly allows individuals to engage in private contracts. Here Marcus succeeds in personalizing her argument but not substantiating it. She concludes, “[This] high-profile pregnancy will help the Republican party come to grips with [the] facts of life. If not, [Mary Cheney] will have to explain to her child what mommy was doing trying to help a party that doesn’t believe in fairness for families like theirs.” What is at stake in these debates, however, is ultimately not the fate of political parties or the lateral “fairness” adults seek, but what is fair and favorable for children, all of whom have a stake in whether our nation stands by the ideal of homes embraced by, and embracing, a mother and father, a husband and a wife.

Excerpted from Catholic Bishops’ ‘Gay’ Guidelines ‘Gravely Flawed’, by Mary Jo Anderson, published Nov 9, 2006, by WorldNet Daily:

“Gravely flawed” – that’s the dire warning of medical experts who have seen copies of the proposed guidelines for “Ministry to Persons with Homosexual Inclinations,” to be released by the Catholic Bishops of the United States at their annual conference in Baltimore next week.

Catholic psychiatrists and physicians have quietly sent selected bishops detailed memos outlining their objections to the document in advance of the Nov. 13-16 meeting. Among the chief objections to the document, the critique notes, is that a truly charitable ministry includes “the truths that medical/psychological science has discovered about homosexuality … In particular, the health risks inherent in the lifestyle and the real grounds for hope of recovery and healing are never mentioned in the [proposed] document.”

The memo summarizes key points from medical and psychological literature on homosexuality that these experts had hoped the bishops would acknowledge, including:

• no genetic basis [for same-sex attraction] was found in last year’s [human]genome study
• fluidity of sexual attractions, with people spontaneously moving out of the lifestyle
• rampant promiscuity
• inability to maintain commitment

Richard Fitzgibbons, M.D., a contributor to the Catholic Medical Association’s statement on “Homosexuality and Hope,” was explicit:

“Persons with SSA (Same-Sex Attraction) suffer real physical and emotional physical illness in this lifestyle. There is no mention [in the document] of the deleterious effects of homosexual behavior on the person; the abuse, the diseases and the psychological pain that accompanies that lifestyle.”

Continue reading at WorldNet Daily…

If you need an example of how far astray politically correct “experts” will take us, this is your article. Of course it’s the children who suffer from excessive “tolerance.” When there are no boundaries, anything goes. –Peter LaBarbera

The following is excerpted from Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn’t Clear, by Patricia Leigh Brown, published Dec 2, 2006, by The New York Times:

…Children as young as 5 who display predispositions to dress like the opposite sex are being supported by a growing number of young parents, educators and mental health professionals.

Doctors, some of them from the top pediatric hospitals, have begun to advise families to let these children be “who they are” to foster a sense of security and self-esteem. They are motivated, in part, by the high incidence of depression, suicidal feelings and self-mutilation that has been common in past generations of transgender children. Legal trends suggest that schools are now required to respect parents’ decisions.

“First we became sensitive to two mommies and two daddies,” said Reynaldo Almeida, the director of the Aurora School, a progressive private school in Oakland. “Now it’s kids who come to school who aren’t gender typical.”

…Cassandra Reese, a first-grade teacher outside Boston, recalled that fellow teachers were unnerved when a young boy showed up in a skirt. “They said, ‘This is not normal,’ and, ‘It’s the parents’ fault,’ ” Ms. Reese said. “They didn’t see children as sophisticated enough to verbalize their feelings.”As their children head into adolescence, some parents are choosing to block puberty medically to buy time for them to figure out who they are — raising a host of ethical questions.

While these children are still relatively rare, doctors say the number of referrals is rising across the nation…

At the Park Day School in Oakland, teachers are taught a gender-neutral vocabulary and are urged to line up students by sneaker color rather than by gender. “We are careful not to create a situation where students are being boxed in,” said Tom Little, the school’s director. “We allow them to move back and forth until something feels right.”