Once again we renew our call for the closure of all sex clubs and bathhouses, which as, this article shows, are helping to victimize straight spouses who are unaware of their partner’s secret perversions.– Peter LaBarbera

The following is excerpted from Double Lives on the Down Low, by Benoit Denizet-Lewis, published Aug 3, 2003, by The New York Times Magazine:

…In its upper stories, the Flex bathhouse in Cleveland feels like a squash club for backslapping businessmen. There’s a large gym with free weights and exercise machines on the third floor. In the common area, on the main floor, men in towels lounge on couches and watch CNN on big-screen TV’s.In the basement, the mood is different: the TV’s are tuned to porn, and the dimly lighted hallways buzz with sexual energy. A naked black man reclines on a sling in a room called ”the dungeon play area.” Along a hallway lined with lockers, black men eye each other as they walk by in towels. In small rooms nearby, some men are having sex. Others are napping.

There are two bathhouses in Cleveland. On the city’s predominantly white West Side, Club Cleveland — which opened in 1965 and recently settled into a modern 15,000-square-foot space — attracts many white and openly gay men. Flex is on the East Side, and it serves a mostly black and Hispanic clientele, many of whom don’t consider themselves gay…

Today, while there are black men who are openly gay, it seems that the majority of those having sex with men still lead secret lives, products of a black culture that deems masculinity and fatherhood as a black man’s primary responsibility — and homosexuality as a white man’s perversion. And while Flex now offers baskets of condoms and lubricant, Wallace says that many of the club’s patrons still don’t use them.

Wallace ticks off the grim statistics: blacks make up only 12 percent of the population in America, but they account for half of all new reported H.I.V. infections. While intravenous drug use is a large part of the problem, experts say that the leading cause of H.I.V. in black men is homosexual sex (some of which takes place in prison, where blacks disproportionately outnumber whites). According to the Centers for Disease Control, one-third of young urban black men who have sex with men in this country are H.I.V.-positive, and 90 percent of those are unaware of their infection…

Many of the men at Flex tonight — and many of the black men I met these past months in Cleveland, Atlanta, Florida, New York and Boston — are on the Down Low, or on the DL, as they more often call it. Most date or marry women and engage sexually with men they meet only in anonymous settings like bathhouses and parks or through the Internet. Many of these men are young and from the inner city, where they live in a hypermasculine ”thug” culture. Other DL men form romantic relationships with men and may even be peripheral participants in mainstream gay culture, all unknown to their colleagues and families. Most DL men identify themselves not as gay or bisexual but first and foremost as black. To them, as to many blacks, that equates to being inherently masculine.

DL culture has grown, in recent years, out of the shadows and developed its own contemporary institutions, for those who know where to look: Web sites, Internet chat rooms, private parties and special nights at clubs. Over the same period, Down Low culture has come to the attention of alarmed public health officials, some of whom regard men on the DL as an infectious bridge spreading H.I.V. to unsuspecting wives and girlfriends. In 2001, almost two-thirds of women in the United States who found out they had AIDS were black.

With no wives or girlfriends around, Flex is a safe place for men on the DL to let down their guards. There aren’t many white men here either (I’m one of them), and that’s often the norm for DL parties and clubs.

Continue reading at The Balm in Gilead…

Remember when Rick Garcia of Equality Illinois told the Naperville Sun that he didn’t know what goes on in Steamworks (a Chicago homosexual bathhouse)? Maybe this story and the one above on the “down low” will help him understand:

It’s no secret that gay bathhouses are associated with gay sex, said Earl Pike, executive director of the AIDS Taskforce of Greater Cleveland.

And studies show that bathhouse users are more likely to test positive for HIV than other gay men.

– Excerpted from Bathhouse Image Worries Cleveland Gay Leadership, by Robert L. Smith, published Jun 2, 2006, by The Plain Dealer

If Garcia genuinely desires to “defend and protect” homosexual men, he should join Americans for Truth in calling for the city of Chicago to SHUT DOWN THE BATHHOUSE.

WARNING: THIS E-MAIL TO AMERICANS FOR TRUTH
IS NOT SUITABLE FOR SENSITIVE READERS

From a homosexual reader, Dr. Eric Glare, who serves on the staff of PLWA (People Living With HIV/AIDS) Victoria and as editor for their newsletter, “PosLink”…

From: Eric M Glare [mailto:__________]
Sent: Wednesday, June 07, 2006 12:11 AM
To: americansfortruth@comcast.net
Subject: Informed choices

Hi Americans for “truth”

So you say that you want people to be able to “make informed choices on how to spend their hard-earned dollars.”

http://www.theconservativevoice.com/article/14886.html

But you don’t want people to make informed choices about their sexuality and its expression even when the informing is not in public??

The truth is that I love my husband and I love it when he puts his fist up my arse. It does not hurt. It is extremely pleasurable. I orgasm every time. That is the truth and you can not change the truth.

Yours most sincerely,

Dr Eric M Glare PhD
Melbourne
Australia – Truth knows no boundaries!

Response from Americans for Truth…

From: “Americans For Truth”
To: “‘Eric M Glare'”
Subject: Dr. Glare…RE: Informed choices
Date: Wed, 1 Nov 2006 11:39:31 -0600

Dr. Glare,

If what you say is true, then you are a bonafide pervert, and a proud one at that. You may love the pleasure that comes from your perversion, but that doesn’t make it any less perverted, or any less wrong. Whether your “fisting” is done in private or on a stage, I don’t think I could imagine any act that strays farther from the truth of God-ordained sexuality than this particular depravity. Perhaps that makes you even more proud, but have you ever contemplated how you got to the point where you, presumably an educated and intelligent man, are boasting of such dangerous depravities? Take a step back and look at how pathetic that is.

Yes, God gives you the choice on how you will live, but He remains the Judge, and he sets parameters: you may want to “choose” to live eternally and go on “fisting forever”–as twisted as that may be–but alas, you like all of us will die, and then you will have to answer to someone higher and far wiser than yourself for the choices you made in life. Don’t blame your homosexual excesses or even your “orientation” on God at that point…

Consider repenting of your sins and becoming a new person in Christ (try reading the 2nd chapter of Corinthians–don’t mean to be condescending, but I’m not sure of your Biblical literacy). I believe that’s your best hope for recovering some decency in your life and leaving your reprobate mind (Romans 1) behind.

Sincerely,

Peter LaBarbera
Americans For Truth
www.americansfortruth.org

(PS. You have no “husband,” just a partner in sin, and sorry for the late response to your note)

Excerpted from Ex-Gay Advocate Urges Telling Truth About Molestation-Homosexuality Link, by Ed Thomas, published Oct 26, 2006, by Agape Press:

The executive director of an organization that offers support to members and to the families of members of the “ex-gay” community — former homosexuals and those struggling with unwanted same-sex attraction — has a unique perspective on the Mark Foley scandal. While reproaches and recriminations abound in the media, she says someone needs to offer the disgraced former Congressman and others like him a message of hope and truth.

Regina Griggs of the group Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, or PFOX, says it is not enough for the public discourse to ignore Foley’s homosexuality or to affirm its existence while condemning his immoral and possibly criminal actions — specifically his alleged sending of sexually suggestive e-mails to underage boys in the Congressional Page Program. But even getting to the bottom of a criminal investigation of the allegations against Foley, she suggests, would not adequately address his situation.

“So why are we not providing hope? Why are we not publishing the facts?” Griggs wants know. And why is no one really telling the clear though politically incorrect truth — about the link between his sexual initiation and his sexual orientation — to “people like Mr. Foley, who decided that he was gay based on something that took place during his teen years?” she asks.

Continue reading at Agape Press…

From The Politically Incorrect Truth, by Tony Perkins, published Oct 5, 2006, by the Family Research Council:

In the last few days I’ve worked nearly two dozen media interviews on the scandal surrounding Republican Cong. Mark Foley (R-FL) into an already tight schedule that has had me crisscrossing the country. [View appearance on MSNBC’s “Hardball”] The response has been interesting. I’ve been attacked by the Left and some partisans on the Right. One issue that has sent the Left into a tizzy is the point I made in Monday’s Update about the link between male homosexuality and child sexual abuse. The more recent revelation that Foley himself was molested as a teenager, and his lawyer’s acknowledgment that he is indeed a homosexual, simply reinforce a pattern well-attested in the scholarly literature.

For example, the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy found that boys molested by men are almost four times more likely to become homosexual or bisexual than boys who weren’t molested. Homosexual activists don’t want you to know that, because it undermines the myth that people are “born gay.”

Although homosexuals and bisexuals are less than 3% of the male population, male-on-male abuse accounts for about a third of all child molestation.

The Archives of Sexual Behavior reported that “eighty-six percent of offenders against males described themselves as homosexual or bisexual.” Homosexual activists don’t want you to know that either, because it undermines the myth that homosexuality is an entirely harmless “identity,” rather than a psychological and behavioral pathology. Not all homosexuals are child molesters, and not all child molesters are homosexual–but the link is simply too strong to ignore – even if it is politically incorrect.

We should step back and look at what we’ve become as a nation as tolerance and diversity have been made the guidepost for public life. Our children are not even safe in the midst of some of our nation’s leaders. Do we like what we see?

Excerpted from Ex-Congressman Foley Needs Sexual Reorientation, Not Alcohol Rehab, published Oct 23, 2006, by PFOX:

Like Mr. Foley, many were taken advantage of sexually by adults when they were young teenagers. They never had a chance to fulfill their heterosexual potential and often feel guilty or at fault. But there is an alternative to unwanted same-sex attractions. No one is born gay. Thousands of ex-gay men and women have overcome their same-sex attraction. Sexual reorientation therapies and ex-gay ministries provide a safe place to talk about the painful past and receive help in overcoming unwanted same-sex attractions.

Continue reading this PFOX press release… 

Another tragic, untimely death…

Excerpted from AIDS Activist Jeff Getty Dead at 49, published Oct 15, 2006, by Associated Press:

Jeff Getty, a prominent AIDS activist who in 1995 received the first bone-marrow transplant from a baboon to treat the disease, has died. He was 49.

Continue reading at Forbes…

Excerpted from Surviving AIDS Can Wreak Havoc on the Brain, published Oct 2, 2006, by Associated Press:

…The AIDS virus can sneak into the brain to cause dementia, despite today’s best medicines.

Now scientists are beginning to test drugs that may protect against the memory loss and other symptoms of so-called neuroAIDS, which afflicts at least one in five people with HIV and is becoming more common as patients live longer.

With almost 1 million Americans, and almost 40 million people worldwide, living with HIV, that’s a large and underrecognized toll.

“That means HIV is the commonest cause of cognitive dysfunction in young people worldwide,” says Dr. Justin McArthur, vice chairman of neurology at Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University, who treats neuroAIDS. “There’s no question it’s a major public health issue.”

While today’s most powerful anti-HIV drugs do help by suppressing levels of the virus in blood — so that there’s less to continually bathe the brain — they can’t cure neuroAIDS. Why? HIV seeps into the brain very soon after someone is infected, and few anti-HIV drugs can penetrate the brain to chase it down.

Continue reading at MSNBC…