This 7th-grade photo of Jesse Dirkhising is from the Lincoln (Middle) School yearbook in 1999 — the same year he was killed after being sadistically raped and sodomized by homosexuals (and lovers) David Don Carpenter and Joshua Macave Brown. Dirkhising’s murder was largely ignored by cultural elites — while homosexual Matthew Shepard’s murder was given extraordinary, worldwide media coverage (based on a false “hate crime” narrative).

[WARNING: GRAPHIC LANGUAGE, DESCRIBING PERVERSE ACTS]

Update 9/26/2014: Fifteen years ago today, a 13-year-old Arkansas boy, Jesse Dirkhising, was sodomized to death by two older homosexual men who used him as their “sex toy.” This account by my friend and AFTAH adviser Allyson Smith gives the sordid and astonishing facts of his sadistic rape-killing.

Both of Jesse’s assailants, the more sinister (and older), David Don Carpenter, who planned the sickening, penetrative assault on Jesse, and his (their)  lover, Joshua Macave Brown, were friends of Jesse’s mother, Tina Yates, who naively allowed the boy to go away with the men and stay the night in another town. Tragically, Yates’ “pro-gay” attitudes contributed to the cruel death of her son.

We remember this Victim of Homosexuality today. Jesse would be 28 and in the prime of his life today were that life not robbed from him by sadistic “gay” predators who used him for their deviant sexual pleasures. More coming on this. — Peter LaBarbera. AFTAH

________________________

The Homosexual Rape-Murder of Young Jesse Dirkhising

No National Cathedral memorial event for Arkansas boy — while “progressives” continue to stoke Matthew Shepard “hate crime” myth shattered by new Stephen Jimenez book

The following article by my good friend and AFTAH writer Allyson Smith is adapted from her definitive 2002 WND.com article on the horrific and gruesome murder of a 13-year-old Arkansas boy, Jesse Dirkhising — who died from asphyfixiation and drugging after being brutally and sadistically sodomized by a homosexual man, under the twisted guidance of another (his much older “gay” lover). As WND reported,

“Dirkhising was found by police unconscious on the floor of a Prairie Grove, Ark. residence around 5 a.m. Sept. 26, 1999, his hands bound with duct tape and his mouth gagged. Police later determined Dirkhising had been repeatedly raped over a period of hours, including with foreign objects, by [Joshua] Brown, then 22, and Davis Don Carpenter, then 38….[A]uthorities said after the last rape he was left bound and gagged while his attackers ate a sandwich. He died of suffocation, a coroner’s report found.”

The two homosexual lovers who sexually tortured the boy — Joshua Brown and his older partner, Davis Don Carpenter — were both friends of Jesse’s mother, who reportedly was happy to let her son hang out with the men and even stay over the weekend in their apartment in a town 32 miles away. [Go HERE to read a PDF facsimile of the initial police report of the crime.] In 2000, AFTAH’s flagship newsletter, Lambda Report, reported:

“Evidence from the Jesse Dirkhising case suggest the Arkansas boy’s killers were following bondage and sodomy rituals of the type laid out in scores of books and magazines fueling the growing “leather” subculture — popular among “gay” men — that eroticizes pain, dominance and humiliation.”

As fate would have it, only a year and a few days separate the anniversary dates of the rape-murder of Dirkhising (September 26, 1999) from that of the assault on murdered Wyoming homosexual college student Matthew Shepard (October 6, 1998). But only one murder — with its contrived, convenient and politically-correct “hate crime” story-line — became useful to pro-homosexual “progressives” and the liberal media, while the other was largely ignored.

Shepard’s 1998 murder (condemned by this writer and many pro-family groups and leaders at the time) drew worldwide coverage as a supposed “anti-gay hate crime.” It is still commonly commemorated as such — despite the publication of homosexual author Stephen Jimenez’s new book, The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard, which shatters that the longstanding media and LGBT activist narrative that Shepard was targeted and murdered “because he was gay.”

Jimenez, building on his groundbreaking 2004 ABC News 20/20 expose showing that Shepard’s death was largely a drug robbery, demonstrates conclusively that Shepard not only knew his killer, Aaron McKinney — who like him was a methampthetamine dealer — but partied with him and may even have been involved sexually with him. (In his murder trial, McKinney attempted a “gay panic” defense, claiming that he sought to punish the supposed stranger Shepard because the latter came on to him at a bar.) Jimenez interviewed ten sources who testified that McKinney knew and associated with Shepard.

National Cathedral marks Matthew’s death, not Jesse’s

Seemingly oblivious to the well-researched revelations in Jimenez’s book, the Washington National Cathedral, in the nation’s capital, held an anniversary event last weekend in remembrance of the Shepard murder in the context of “honoring gay youth.”

In contrast, there were no national commemorations last week of Dirkhising’s 1999 murder. Conservatives have attempted with little success over the years to get the “mainstream” media to acknowledge that the pedophilic, sadistic-sex killing of young Dirkhising by two homosexual lovers deserved as much coverage as the brutal beating of Shepard. But the response that often came back was that the Shepard case (as an alleged “hate crime”) had something to teach America (i.e., about “hate” and tolerance) while the Dirkhising case was merely another sordid sex crime.

Symbolizing the media double-standard, TIME magazine essayist Johnathan Gregg wrote back in 1999:

“The reason the Dirkhising story received so little play is because it offered no lessons. Shepard’s murder touches on a host of complex and timely issues: intolerance, society’s attitudes toward gays and the pressure to conform, the use of violence as a means of confronting one’s demons. Jesse Dirkhising’s death gives us nothing except the depravity of two sick men. There is no lesson here, no moral of tolerance, no hope to be gleaned in the punishment of the perpetrators. To be somehow equated with these monsters would be a bitter legacy indeed for Matthew Shepard.”

In a courageous work, openly homosexual author Stephen Jimenez has laid bare the many media myths surrounding the Matthew Shepard murder — which was a drug crime and not a “hate crime.”

Now the evidence continues to mount that the entire foundation of the Shepard story underlying Gregg’s tendentious thesis is bogus and its true lessons have nothing to with hate or “gay tolerance” — but rather the dangers of meth addiction, drug and alcohol abuse, family breakdown, reckless living and even the effects of homosexual molestation. (Ironically, the Dirkhising story teaches some of those same lessons.) Jimenez documents (HIV-positive) Shepard’s repeated sexual aggressions, and the book ends with this shocking revelation:

“Matthew Shepard was a victim of sexual abuse and molestation as a boy and as a teenager…Apparently, his wounds from being sexually victimized also manifested in another common, but tragic pattern: The victim becomes a perpetrator himself….At age fifteen Matthew was arrested for molesting two eight-year-old boys in his Casper [Wyoming] neighborhood…Matthew’s juvenile arrest record had been quietly concealed.”

Not all crime victims are equal

Unfortunately, there is a politically-correct hierarchy of victims in the United States — and (white, middle class) “gay” victims are at the top while, perhaps, boys seduced and abused by homosexual pedophiles are at the bottom. Most Americans have never heard the basic facts surrounding Jesse Dirkhising’s troubled upbringing and the savage sexual assault that cruelly cut short his life as a young teenager. On the other hand, most Americans have heard a false and grotesquely simplified ‘spinning’ of the Shepard murder that just happens to fit the needs of the “Gay” Lobby and the liberal media who have come to be its most important allies. — Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH

PS. Americans For Truth has obtained firsthand materials surrounding the prosecution of Dirkhising’s murderers and will have more on this story. We will also lay out in greater detail some of the startling facts about the Shepard murder brought forth by Stephen Jimenez in his The Book of Matt. [Allyson Smith’s article is after the jump]

________________________

Radical quotations and LGBT writings reflect a revolutionary and destructive sexual/gender movement

Photo from the NAMBLA website of the late “gay” icon Harry Hay (far right, wearing hat) speaking at a 1984 meeting of the North American Man/Boy Love Association in San Francisco. Hay said “gay” boys ages 12-15 benefit from sexual relationships with adult homosexual men.

Americans For Truth renews its Halloween tradition of delivering some very scary – or at least highly disturbing — quotes from LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) activists and publications. (There is also a frighteningly evil quotation from LGBT “straight ally” Eve Ensler.) Whether it’s promoting pedophilia, sullying Christianity, telling the awful truth about the realities of homosexual sodomies – or one of the biggest Heroes of Homosexuality saying that bestiality is OK (as long as the animals don’t mind, of course) – the following quotations and writings testify to the perverse nature of modern homosexualism. Needless to say, they are not likely to find their way into the liberal media or politically-correct history books taught to schoolchildren.

Most of what homosexual activists and their liberal, straight cheerleaders say about “homophobia” is tendentious nonsense, designed to demonize people like you and me. But Americans and moral-minded folks the world over certainly should fear the real-life ramifications of normalizing sexual perversion and gender confusion in the culture. To quote pro-family advocate Gary Morella, “A civilized society must justly ‘discriminate’ in favor of health over disease, right over wrong, moral over immoral, and discriminate use of sexuality over indiscriminate sexual expression.” People suffer and societies crumble when immoral, unhealthy behaviors are not just tolerated, but fostered and even celebrated by the State and corporate/cultural elites.

So be scared. Be very scared. And please pass around these decidedly “queer quotes” to educate others. – Peter LaBarbera, AFTAH.org

[Warning: A few of quotations below contain explicit descriptions of homosexual acts]

________________________________________

One Lesbian’s ‘Better Two-Thirds’

“Lucky that on this national coming out day I can safely be a proud queer woman blessed with two awesome partners.”

— Olga Tomchin, taken from testimony in Transgender Law Center post on “Coming Out,” October 11, 2013 (Oct. 11 is deemed “National Coming Out Day” by LGBT activists); http://transgenderlawcenter.org/archives/9257

Bad News for Straight Soldiers

Military-oriented pornography is apparently very popular among homosexual men. Lesbian Camille Paglia says it is absurd to argue that “gay” men will not ogle and lust after straight soldiers in military showers and barracks. The nudity on this video cover above –from a “gay” porn video website — was blocked for decency.

“It is ridiculous to assert that gay men are interested only in other gay men and would never ogle straight men in barracks showers. When I heard this on TV, I burst out laughing. Anyone who belongs to a health club knows better. Sexual tension and appraisal are constants, above all among gay men, who never stop cruising everything in sight. Seduction of straight studs is a highly erotic motif in gay porn.”

—Camille Paglia, Vamps & Tramps, pp. 87-88. (Vintage Books: 1994). “Cruising” is a popular “gay” term for searching for sex partners. Paglia’s assessment is confirmed by the popularity of homosexual pornography with military themes.

They’re Here, They’re Queer, They’re Reporters with a Clear Conflict of Interest

“We Here! We’re Queer! We’re on Deadline.”

— Slogan of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA). See author’s report for America’s Survival, Inc.: “Unfair, Unbalanced and Afraid: Fox News’ Growing Pro-Homosexual Bias and the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association.” Perhaps appropriately, the NLGJA slogan plays of the old “Queer Nation” street activists’ chant: “We’re here! We’re queer! Get used to it!”

Agenda-driven Homosexual Journalists Tout ‘Born Gay’ Myth as Fact

“Sexual orientation: Innate sexual attraction. Use this term instead of ‘sexual preference.’ See lifestyle….

“Sexual preference: Avoid. Politically charged term implying that sexuality is the result of a conscious choice. See sexual orientation.”

—NLGJA “Stylebook” entries, showing the organization’s politicized application of the unproven “born gay” theory. The homosexual journalists’ group uses the Stylebook to guide (pressure) “mainstream” journalists on how to write (and think about) homosexuality. Obviously, this biased definition – beyond being an opinion and not factual — encourages the notion that homosexuals have no responsibility for their same-sex behavior, thus negating the idea that homosexuality itself is a moral issue. Studies show that people who think “gays” are “born that way” are less likely to resist the LGBT activist agenda. For the best refutation of “born gay” ideology and pro-“gay”-politicized science, see the website of Dr. Neil and Briar Whitehead, co-authors of My Genes Made Me Do It: www.mygenes.co.nz. See also author’s “Unfair, Unbalanced and Afraid” report.

Black Women, Beware: ‘Down Low’ Men Hate Condoms

“Women involved with DL men [‘Down Low’ denoting men who act straight in public but secretly practice homosexuality] are being infected with HIV because these men do not believe in wearing condoms and they don’t know their HIV status. Condoms take away from the very thing they are seeking—the thrill of spontaneity. Condoms take away that feeling when having man-to-man sex….

“But for the most part, a man on the DL isn’t even thinking about all that. He’s not thinking about a condom or diseases. DL men look at themselves as invincible, strong black men. They ain’t catching that ‘gay disease.’”

—J.L. King with Karen Hunter, On the Down Low: A Journey into the Lives of ‘Straight’ Black Men who Sleep with Men,” pp. 25-26; (Broadway Books: New York: 2004).

DL Foster, founder of Gay Christian Movement Watch (www.gcmwatch.com), speaks at Jan. 17 pro-family press conference protesting the Southern Poverty Law Center, in Montgomery, AL. At center is Pastor Patrick Wooden, and at right is AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera.

WARNING: Graphic descriptions

This is Part Four of our interview with Patrick Wooden [Click HERE to listen], pastor of the Upper Room Church of God in Christ, based in Raleigh, North Carolina. This was pre-recorded and aired February 4, 2012. Wooden and AFTAH President Peter LaBarbera are joined in this discussion by DL Foster, founder of Gay Christian Movement Watch, based in Atlanta. Homosexual activists have sought to make fun of Wooden for describing in these AFTAH interviews) the body-destroying perversions associated with male homosexuality. But LaBarbera, noting that the Homosexual Lobby a “sin movement,” says one would expect it to yield heinous perversions like “fisting,” rimming and “water sports” (“gay” slang for men urinating on and in one another for sexual pleasure).

Foster says that the portrayal of himself, Wooden and other Black leaders who participated in AFTAH’s Jan. 17 press conference [click HERE for audio] outside the Southern Poverty Law Center headquarters as somehow being controlled by “white organizers” “highlights the high level of racist arrogance inside the homosexual movement” — which he said he experienced when he was active as a homosexual. “The white gay movement needs to deal with its own latent racism,” he said.  Wooden said he’s never been called “Nigger” so much (by white “gay” activists) than since his interviews with AFTAH went public.

Foster and LaBarbera talk about the case of Jesse Dirkhising, a 13-year-old Arkansas boy who was raped and grotesquely sodomized in 1999 by two older homosexual men who left him for dead after drugging, gagging and penetrating him with foreign objects including a cucumber.

[Click HERE to watch a YouTube video of DL Foster’s speech as the SPLC press conference; and click HERE for Part 1, HERE for Part 2, and HERE for Part 3 of LaBarbera’s interviews with Pastor Wooden.]

HOW TO LISTEN: This is an mp3 file, supported in most operating systems by Windows Media Player, Quick Time and/or I-Tunes.  Real Player is not supported and there may be difficulty when attempting to listen with it.  Left click once on the link below to play. (Please be patient, depending upon the speed of your internet connection it may take a moment or two to load.)  OR right click the link then “save target as” to download the whole show.

2-4-12, Patrick Wooden with D.L. Foster, Part Four

[NOTE: JERNIGAN TALK POSTPONED: Due to a death in the family of a dear friend, Linda Jernigan’s dinner-lecture presentation at AFTAH tomorrow (Friday, June 25) has been postponed]

Linda Jernigan (www.RescuingHomosexuals.net) has found freedom from lesbianism through Jesus Christ.

Here is Part One of AFTAH’s June 19, 2010 interview with Linda Jernigan, a former lesbian who — beginning at the tender age of 12 — was lured into the homosexual lifestyle by an older woman who was supposed to be her “mentor.” Linda’s Chicago-based ministry, Rescuing Homosexuals, now helps people get out of the “gay” lifestyle, like she did through the grace of God. 

HOW TO LISTEN: This is an mp3 file.  Left click on the link below to play.  (Please be patient, depending upon the speed of your internet connection it may take a moment to load.) OR right click the link then “save target as” to download the whole show.

6-19-10, Linda Jernigan, All

Huge sadistic celebration another marker of America’s steep moral decline

San Francisco politicians voted to ban the sale of cigarettes in city drug stores — while they extol the Folsom Street Fair with its illegal public orgies, celebration of hyper-promiscuous homosexual “pig sex,” and promotion of disease-spreading gay sex clubs like “Blow Buddies” and Steamworks. Meanwhile, Folsom doubles as an AIDS fundraiser and the San Francisco Department of Public Health has two booths at the event — go figure. 

Below is the statement that I read at our press conference Friday, over the shouts of intolerant homosexual activists. Can you imagine if our national media reported on America’s moral decline with the urgency that it has covered the current economic crisis?–Peter LaBarbera

Statement by Peter LaBarbera, President, Americans For Truth, at press conference condemning San Francisco Folsom Street Fair, Sept. 26, 2008, San Francisco City Hall:

I want you to forget for a moment that the four people who stand before you are religious or that we represent conservative organizations diametrically opposed to the GLBT movement.  Discount that three of us come from outside the Bay area and put aside, if you can, the stereotypes that some of you have of the so-called “Religious Right.”

Now consider what we are here to expose and criticize.  Every year – in fact, twice a year now – San Francisco plays eager host to street fairs like the Folsom Street Fair this Sunday that feature the following (most of which I have personally witnessed as a critical observer):

•    Rampant public nudity including men walking the streets in nothing but their socks and sneakers;
•    Public street orgies in which men engage in heinous sex acts – as depicted on these enlarged photos [blow-ups of AFTAH web photos like those HERE and HERE] — as thousands of fairgoers walk by;
•    Public sadistic whippings, acts of “consensual” degradation including men urinating on one another – for pleasure — and “master-and-slave” partners or perverse arrangements in which one partner plays the role of an animal, led around on a dog-collar by his “master”;
•    Blatant anti-Christian bigotry – e.g., the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” — transvestite mock “nuns” who work closely with Folsom; and religious-themed “sex toys” sold by vendors;
•    Public health hazards: Folsom promotes local gay sex clubs like “Blow Buddies” and Steamworks, a Berkeley bathhouse where men go for anonymous sexual encounters with other men (including condomless, “barebacking” anal sex) that spread diseases;
•    Police blame their inaction amidst all the illegal, debauched acts on politicians who tell them not to intervene or enforce the law. At the same time, the SFPD recruits at this sordid affair [the police have a booth at Folsom again this year] — an all-time low and embarrassment for men in blue everywhere whose mission is supposed to be “law enforcement.”

I think Matt Barber missed a prime opportunity here to apologize for his rampant homophobic bigotry, his shameful verbal gay-bashing, and his unbridled heterosexism. For goodness sake, the guy was once an undefeated heavyweight boxer — send him to the Lavender Gulag at once! Joking, of course. Matt hits the nail on the head below. — Peter LaBarbera

MRSA Outbreak Among ‘Gays’ – Let the Whitewash Begin  

By J. Matt Barber

Reprinted with permission of CWA, which posted this article January 25, 2008

By even reporting on this study the media has ticked off that 500-pound homosexual activist gorilla.

You can’t help but feel a little sorry for Amanda Beck. She’s a reporter from Reuters who was among the first to cover a new study conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, which warns about an outbreak of a virulent, drug-resistant, and potentially deadly strain of Staph infection afflicting certain segments of the homosexual community.

Although outbreaks of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, have primarily been confined to hospitals in the past, the study determined that, due to “high risk behaviors” beyond hospital walls – such as “anal sex” – men who have sex with men are now 13 times more likely to contract the infection.

 Dr. John Diggs says male homosexual behavior should be discouraged for public health reasons. In 2002, Diggs authored a white paper on the “Health Risks of Gay Sex.”

The following is excerpted from an article in CNSNews.com:  

Homosexuals Squelch Facts About MRSA Outbreak, Conservatives Say
By Pete Winn
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
January 28, 2008

(CNSNews.com) – Conservative groups say the truth about a new “multi-drug resistant microbe” prevalent among homosexual men is not being presented to the public because of political correctness.

Almost two weeks ago, researchers announced they have isolated a new form of MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, an infection that is spreading through San Francisco’s homosexual community and could spread to the general community.

“These multi-drug resistant infections often affect gay men at body sites in which skin-to-skin contact occurs during sexual activities,” said Binh Diep, the University of California-San Francisco scientist who led the team that made the finding.

In fact, the researchers determined that this variant of MRSA infection is 13 to 14 times more prevalent in homosexual men than for the general population.

But the media are now obscuring that fact, according to Matt Barber, director of cultural policy for Concerned Women for America (CWA).

“The real story here is the way that the media have whitewashed this outbreak,” Barber told Cybercast News Service. “It is amazing to see what they’ve done with this.”…

Internationally known infectious disease specialist Dr. John Diggs is siding with the conservatives. The Massachusetts-based physician said treating any infection in a politically correct manner could be dangerous. Treating MRSA that way could prove fatal.

“This outbreak is especially troubling because it is a community-based form of MRSA,” said Diggs, who is an executive committee member of the Physicians Consortium. “Until recently, MRSA has typically been confined to hospitals. The implications are very serious, because we don’t know exactly where this is going to go.”

Medically speaking, any break in the skin that is exposed to the organism can then set off an infection, which can destroy “a lot of tissue” before it’s brought under control, Diggs said.

“You can take something that was relatively isolated in a small place, and suddenly, when it spreads to the general population, things such as school wrestling matches, or football games or basketball games or other sporting events, can take on a specter – they can become deadly,” he added.

The fact is, the epicenter for this outbreak is among men who are having sex with men, Diggs told Cybercast News Service. Researchers identified the rates of drug resistance on the basis of ZIP codes, not ideology.

“The particular ZIP codes they looked at were ones that were associated primarily with men who were having sex with other men,” he said, “the Castro district in San Francisco and also a healthcare center called the Fenway, here in Massachusetts, in Boston.”

Diggs noted that the study itself pointed out that the infection manifests as “an abscess in the buttocks, genitals or perineum” and concluded that it “probably started out in San Francisco, and has been disseminated by the frequent cross-coastal travel” of homosexual men traveling from San Francisco to Boston.

“Men who practice anal sex, men who have promiscuous sex, men who have multiple partners in short periods of time are much more likely to spread this disease,” he said. “It’s not because of who they are. It’s because of that they do.”

“Now I know that a lot of people have attacked those who have brought this to people’s attention as being homophobic, but the real issue – and you have to face the facts – is that men who have sex with men have very high rates of sexually transmitted disease,” Diggs said.

“When you face that reality, then you have to start taking a serious look and deciding that the best public health intervention is to discourage behavior that causes the infection to spread.”

The biggest problem with this new strain – as with any variant of MRSA, Diggs said, is that it is increasingly difficult to find drugs that will effectively combat the problem.

Click HERE to read the whole CNSNews.com article

 Will homosexual groups like HRC, GLAAD and Lambda Legal take action against homosexual bathhouses like Steamworks, which make it easy for men to have anonymous sex with other men? Above, a float for the Chicago Steamworks bathhouse participates in the city’s 2007 “gay pride” parade. Does the homosexual lobby take “pride” in these perversion centers? Photo: AFTAH.

Well, folks, I’m not exactly expecting Human Rights Campaign and the rest of the “gay” lobby to hop on this request for cooperation from my good friend Matt Barber of CWA, but it sure would be progress if they did. It is unbelievable that 25 years after the outbreak of AIDS, homosexual bathhouses and other venues for anonymous sodomitic encounters are flourishing.

Over the years, we’ve heard from a few homosexual men and lesbian women who agree with us that the sex clubs should be closed down. They are the politically incorrect voices within their community. There are some things on which we can find common cause, and making it as hard as possible for men to hook up anonymously with other men to engage in dangerous sexual practices should be one of them. This is not rocket science, so why isn’t the CDC leading such a campaign? — Peter LaBarbera  

Concerned Women for America

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

JANUARY 22, 2008 

Concact: Natalie Bell: (202) 488-7000 ext. 126

Homosexual Groups Invited to Work to Curb Spread of MRSA

Washington, D.C. — Because Concerned Women for America (CWA) cares deeply for the health and well being of all Americans, CWA is sending letters inviting the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, GLAAD and Lambda Legal to put aside profound ideological differences with CWA — for the sake of the lives and health of their members — and to call for commonsense steps to help curb the spread of a potentially deadly strain of Staph infection. 

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA bacteria, is infecting men who have sex with men in major cities at an alarming rate.  A study conducted by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, found that “gay” men are 13 times more likely to contract the infection. 

The study determined that the spread of MRSA, “among men who have sex with men is associated with high-risk behaviors, including use of methamphetamine and other illicit drugs, sex with multiple partners, participation in a group sex party, use of the internet for sexual contacts, skin-abrading sex, and history of sexually transmitted infections.”  But ultimately, the study warned that, “Having male-male sex seems to be a risk factor for [MRSA].”        

Dr. Binh Diep, the researcher who led the study, told Reuters, “Once this reaches the general population, it will be truly unstoppable.”  The study found that the “[MRSA] epidemic probably started in San Francisco and has been disseminated by the frequent cross-coastal travel of men who have sex with men.”

Matt Barber, CWA’s Policy Director for Cultural Issues, said, “We now have a wonderful opportunity for ideological opponents to come together for the common good.  Steps must be taken to keep this MRSA outbreak, which is occurring within certain segments of the homosexual community, from becoming a more widespread epidemic.

“HRC and other homosexual groups have a profound leadership role in their communities and a responsibility to protect their members from behaviorally related threats to their health and well-being.   Therefore, these groups should publicly condemn those specific ‘high-risk behaviors’ which this study has concluded are responsible for spreading MRSA among homosexuals. 

“We’re asking HRC and other groups to denounce, through word and deed, ‘sex with multiple partners,’ ‘group sex [parties]’ and to actively promote the notion that it is never okay to ‘use methamphetamine and other illicit drugs.’”

“In light of this behaviorally related MRSA outbreak,” said Barber, “we additionally ask HRC and other groups to call on local health agencies to shut down the many bathhouses and sex clubs around the country where men meet for anonymous sex with other men, often multiple partners, on a daily basis.  These places create the ‘perfect storm’ for infectious disease, including MRSA.

“Now’s the time for us all to come together,” concluded Barber.  “Let’s do what needs to be done to help curtail this regrettable MRSA outbreak.”