AIDS a Gay Disease?
This is a one of the most disturbing comment from a critic. One gets the feeling that the critic would rather punch a homosexual in the face instead of showing them the love of Christ. AIDS is our disease, not a gay disease.
Zachary,
I don’t know where you’ve been for the last 25 years but I remember very distinctly where AIDS came from and when it all started in the early 1980’s. The first reported cases of AIDS came from the homosexuals and for years it was exclusively the domain of homosexuals, transmitted through sodomy. The disease exploded in numbers due to the horrifying and revolting promiscuity of homosexual males where they can have hundreds of partners over the course of a year’s time. This is why the disease began spreading like wildfire. By the mid to late 1980’s the disease had spread to hemophiliacs who were infected by the criminal negligence of the homosexuals who then donated blood for money to the blood banks of this country. From the hemophiliacs it then spread to IV drug users, many of whom were also homosexuals. Then because of re-used needles hetero drug users were infected. From there women were infected by their drug-using hetero partners and now, it’s also in the hetero community. AIDS is a horrifying disease, caused and spread by the sin of sexual promiscuity. Millions of innocent people were infected as a result of the sexual sin of its origination.Don’t you ever come on this blog and spread foolish propaganda that AIDS isn’t a “gay diseaseâ€. Sir, it isn’t anymore because the “gay†individuals, living in moral revolt against God’s laws, began this disease and continue to spread it, all the while trying to lump it in with cancer and heart disease. Just another disease. Hogwash.
I would suggest you do some research on the etiology of HIV in the West. A good place to start would be www.familyresearchinst.org with researcher Dr. Paul Cameron, the same medical researcher who coined the term “Second-hand cigarette smoke†when he testified before congress on the issue.
http://www.sliceoflaodicea.com/?p=637#comments
Thanks Zachary Forrest y Salazar
August 14th, 2007 at 10:01 pm
Ha… only Ingrid would direct someone to Dr. Paul Cameron, a “scientist” who has been completely debunked by credible science.
He has been kicked out of the American Psychological Association (APA) because of his misrepresentation of the research and terrible methodology.
Of course… Ingrid has never been too worried about facts.
August 14th, 2007 at 10:13 pm
The American Red Cross had tainted blood donated from gays before anyone knew any better and they don’t buy blood.
Secondly, HIV has been around for a very long in other primate species with no harm to them. The problem is that it crossed from one species, where it did no harm, to humans.
The same potential problem exists with animal parts (pig valves and such) being transplanted into humans.
August 15th, 2007 at 2:22 am
* Dr. Paul Cameron’s background is in psychology, so how is he a “medical” researcher?
* The field of psychology faces blanket condemnation in Ingrid’s fundamentalism.
* But to Ingrid, psychology is only cool when its discredited practitioner marginalizes homosexuality.
* How is Cameron a “medical researcher” specializing in the etiology of HIV?
August 15th, 2007 at 5:01 am
It is now widely accepted that AIDS came from chimpanzees in the early fifties. They were eaten by some tribes and one German company used infected chimps to make polio vaccines for approximately 100,000 Africans. It is true that the disease spread through the gay community, but its origin was not gay. The spread of AIDS in Africa was hetrosexual.
Ingrid again shows a compassionless and self righteous attitude toward everything and everyone. It is attitudes like that that have fueled the discussion about homosexuality in the emergent movement. Ingrid, an unscriptural woman judge, continues to show a complete lack of Christlikeness. They have the letter of the law, but not the Spirit of Christ.
Even a surface research about the origins of AIDS would debunk Ingid’s self serving view. I guess God doesn’t care about pedeophiles because they are disease free. Sometimes I feel like we are back in the middle ages, of course if we were Ingrid would have to shut up and stay home.
August 15th, 2007 at 6:20 am
When Ingrid claims it all started in the 1980’s she shows an American view. To assign divine motive to disease is to align oneself with Rev. Phelps and his ilk. Do we have no tears for the infected? No, not if God has put this disease on people. It is for this reason that I can understand the emergent reaction to the homosexual question.
Too often we have had to digest a disgusting and pompous attitude that so easily flows from the self righteous lips of people like Ingrid. And if one day they find a cure will that cure come from Satan? Where is Christ in all of this? He is living in believers who are presently in Africa and other places ministering to the poor people infected with AIDS. Some people just talk, other people are doers of the Word. Isn’t that the point of some of the emergents?
August 15th, 2007 at 7:14 am
I am sorry for another comment, but this issue affects me deeply.
http://judahslion.blogspot.com/2006/05/what-will-we-tell-jesus.html
August 15th, 2007 at 7:54 am
What a petty, hateful, misinformed woman. The lack of compassion and love from someone who claims to be a Christian is staggering. Can you imagine Jesus Christ typing those words, let alone believing them?
August 15th, 2007 at 8:05 am
Even it is a “gay disease” (which I don’t believe it is), what difference would it make? We all deserve to die for our sins, but God is compassionate towards us. Certainly we who have been forgiven and who have been shown mercy should offer forgiveness and mercy to others regardless of how they got into whatever predicament they’re in.
The truth is that comments like Ingrid’s show the same lack of understanding of God that the pharisee’s had.
August 15th, 2007 at 8:47 am
I would also add that by claiming that somehow God is punishing certain groups by sending disease, natural disasters, famine, etc. is to deny what Christ accomplished on the cross. If we truly believe that all of God’s wrath for humanity’s sin was dealt with on the cross, why would God still be sending diseases and such as punishment for our sin? It doesn’t make sense.
I guess if you have a Calvinistic view of limited atonement, you could say God is pouring out His wrath on the non-Elect, but that makes God seem very vengeful and hateful to me. He’s punishing people because He foreordained them to be damned. It just is illogical all around.
Either we believe what the Bible says in Isaiah 53, or we say Christ’s sacrifice wasn’t enough.
August 15th, 2007 at 9:04 am
Regarding the origin of AIDS and for the information of anyone really interested, here below is what a good friend of mine, a Hematology-Oncology specialist and a Christian, has written. Everyone- myself, Henry (Rick) and Ingrid included, has an opinion shaped by our own experiences and prejudices. As an example, growing up in Ghana, it was widely believed that AIDS was introduced to West Africa by European tourists who infected prostitutes. Ridiculous, you may say but you have to live it to understand the context.
That is why I will not blame Henry for his miguided use of statistics to make a valid point in the post he linked to on his blog. Unfortunately, that kind of talk by people who have never actually been to any country in the vast continent of Africa perpetuates ignorance and prejudice as you can see below.
So we can either try to look at the science objectively, or better still find out and do what God want of us in this age as children of the Light in a dark world.
August 15th, 2007 at 9:22 am
And yet Ingrid and the like have tried to say there is a vast difference between them and Fred Phelps! Hmmm not a far leap from:
“AIDS isn’t a “gay diseaseâ€. Sir, it isn’t anymore because the “gay†individuals, living in moral revolt against God’s laws, began this disease and continue to spread it,”
to: “God Hates Fags”
August 15th, 2007 at 9:23 am
From Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIDS#Origin_of_HIV
AIDS was first reported June 5, 1981, when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recorded a cluster of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (now still classified as PCP but known to be caused by Pneumocystis jirovecii) in five homosexual men in Los Angeles.[127]
Three of the earliest known instances of HIV infection are as follows:
1. A plasma sample taken in 1959 from an adult male living in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo.[128]
2. HIV found in tissue samples from a 15 year old African-American teenager who died in St. Louis in 1969.[129]
3. HIV found in tissue samples from a Norwegian sailor who died around 1976.[130]
Two species of HIV infect humans: HIV-1 and HIV-2. HIV-1 is more virulent and more easily transmitted. HIV-1 is the source of the majority of HIV infections throughout the world, while HIV-2 is not as easily transmitted and is largely confined to West Africa.[131] Both HIV-1 and HIV-2 are of primate origin. The origin of HIV-1 is the Central Common Chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes troglodytes) found in southern Cameroon.[132] It is established that HIV-2 originated from the Sooty Mangabey (Cercocebus atys), an Old World monkey of Guinea Bissau, Gabon, and Cameroon.
Most experts believe that HIV probably transferred to humans as a result of direct contact with primates, for instance during hunting or butchery.[133] A more controversial theory known as the OPV AIDS hypothesis suggests that the AIDS epidemic was inadvertently started in the late 1950s in the Belgian Congo by Hilary Koprowski’s research into a polio vaccine.[134][135] According to scientific consensus, this scenario is not supported by the available evidence.[136][137][138] Some have even speculated that the AIDS virus entered the human population through Dr. Serge Voronoff’s grafting of monkey testicle tissue on to the testicles of men while working in France in the 1920s and 1930s.
August 15th, 2007 at 9:31 am
The earthly origin is debatable and in the context of this discussion irrelevant. What Ingrid is suggesting that its true origin came from the throneroom of God to infect homosexuals. That is the self serving theory that eminates from the SOL throneroom driven by a loathing hatred for homosexuals. If she really believed that Christ died for them, would not her view have to be different.
Such is the heresy of limited atonement. Take notice Jim Bulbitz, I said heresy.
August 15th, 2007 at 9:41 am
This is from Wikipedia and it’s in regards to HIV, not AIDS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HIV#Origin_and_discovery
Although a variety of theories exist explaining the transfer of HIV to humans, no single hypothesis is unanimously accepted, and the topic remains controversial. The most widely accepted theory is so called ‘Hunter’ Theory according to which transference from simian to human most likely occurred when a human was bitten by a monkey or was cut while butchering one, and the human became infected.[20] The Times published an article in 1987 stating that WHO suspected some kind of connection with its vaccine program and AIDS-epidemic. The story was almost entirely based on statements given by one unnamed WHO advisor. The theory was supported only by weak circumstantial evidence and is now disproven by unraveling the genetic code of the virus and finding out that the virus dates back to the 1930s.[21]
August 15th, 2007 at 9:45 am
Henri- I agree that the source of the disease is not the issue. And I’m a 5 point Calvinist.
August 15th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Well Matt B, you happen to be a five point Calvinist with an Arminian heart. I have many friends such as you. The Calvinists that I refer to are the SOL type that sit in doctrinal towers and pass judgment on anyone who strays from their camp.
August 15th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Off topic-
I once heard a pastor explain the whole freewill vs predestination like this:
Imagine you are standing in front of two doors. One door leads to Christ and one door doesn’t. You are free to choose which door to enter. You choose to enter the door marked Christ. You look back and above the door you passed through you notice the phrase, “You were chosen by God.”
I know it makes no logical sense but it seems to deal with the supposed conflicts with predestination and free will in Scripture.
August 15th, 2007 at 10:06 am
Henry, I would also add that it’s easy for a person or group to be hyper-condemning of others for a sin or sins that they themsleves don’t struggle with.
August 15th, 2007 at 10:10 am
Amen. My sin God understands, your sin God hates!
August 15th, 2007 at 10:21 am
You know, this whole issue is pretty much tainted for discussion by Chritians because of how Christians have acted in the past.
The reality is that in the US, AIDS/HIV is largely a disease generally contracted by homosexuals. Unfortunately, because Christians have, in the past said, either 1) this is God punishing them, or 2) that’s their problem not ours and they’re probably getting what they deserve, any discussion of the issue by Christians that grapples realistically with who is suffering from this terrible disease gets interpreted as either God is punishing homosexuals or that its not our problem and they’re getting what they deserve.
I wonder if the church had responded by ministering (remember that word in the scriptures means literally “serving”) to those suffering from AIDs how things would be different.
August 15th, 2007 at 10:26 am
I like that!
And then there’s this gem from Joyce Meyer:
“Y’know, I didn’t stop sinning until I realized I was no longer a sinner.”
Has a familiar ring, no?
If we all could get past that type of thinking, there’d be a lot less territorialism, more humility and people wouldn’t be so prone to act like pompous religious “behinds.”
August 15th, 2007 at 10:41 am
No one knew at the time what the plague was that took out a quarter of Europe’s population, but that didn’t stop Christians then from risking their own lives to nurse non-believers back to health.
I wonder if they spent much time saying this was God judgement on people who must have done x or didn’t do y, or just realized disease is what you have to contend with in a fallen world.
August 15th, 2007 at 10:42 am
Since I have not looked into this topic very deeply, could someone/anyone comment:
1) Does Romans 1 speak to this disease?
2) Why or why not?
(I’m actually asking a serious question here)
August 15th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Romans does not speak specifically to a disease. And if you assume that verse 27 alludes to AIDS in a punishment sense, well that would mean that all the homosexuals before the 20th century escaped. Romans 1 also describes many other sins that accompany a reprobate mind including pride and covetousness. It is a leap to assume AIDS is described in the chapter.
Remember, AIDS in Africa is overwhelmingly a heterosexual disease, only in America was it considered a gay disease. If it was a disease sent from God, then we shouldn’t attempt to find a cure.
August 15th, 2007 at 11:10 am
I would say that we can’t read Romans 1 apart from the rest of the book. It seems to me that Paul is setting up the reason why we all need justification through Christ by showing the mess humans are in apart from Him. He is basically saying that God leave sinners yo their own devices if they continually reject Him. In a way, God’s wrath is a by-product of His love.
It seems to me that one could say AIDS may be a consequence of sin, but no more specific than other consequences of other sins.
August 15th, 2007 at 11:41 am
1) Does Romans 1 speak to this disease?
2) Why or why not?
1 - No.
2 - Because any assertion that Romans 1 “speaks to this disease” would clearly be adding to the text things that simply are not there in order to create an argument that doesn’t exist.
August 15th, 2007 at 11:55 am
Matt B:
Here’s another way to look at the predestination/free will thing:
You’ve been invited to come to a picnic.
Barbecued chicken will be served at the picnic.
It has therefore been predestined that chicken will be served to all who accept the invitation and come to the picnic.
August 15th, 2007 at 12:08 pm
I too remember this epidemic ravaging the gay community in the mid-80’s. I was working in a restaurant at the edge of Toronto’s gay village and almost all of our wait staff were gay. I was more than a little judgemental. One night two waiters were at the coffee station talking about the funerals they had attended. They had both been to more than 100 funerals in the last year, sometimes 2 or 3 in one day. This changed my perspective. It changed again when my boss - whom I liked working for a great deal - found himself in the Wellesley hospital, dying of AIDS, and I found myself sitting beside his bed. This, of course, is anecdotal, but the same wide-spread devastation wasn’t happening amongst my heterosexual friends. (Our sins, I suppose, being less obvious) AIDS has long since stopped being a “gay disease” (if it ever was at all) but we have to ask… what role did promiscuity - that is, what role did sin - play in the rapid and devastating spread of this disease through the gay communiity in the early to mid 80’s? How do we share the same grace, mercy and love that we have received - that we did not deserve - while keeping ourselves from condoning or endorsing sin - if only by omission? Ingrid has obviously gone places with her theoology that I’m not willing to go but… honestly, 20 years after the fact, I have yet to hear one Christian leader talk about what might have been the appropriate response for a believer to this terrible disease. I just did the best I could with what I had and, qutie possibly, Ingrid is too. Maybe it’s out there, but I have seen no Christ-like leadership whatsoever on this issue over the last quarter century. None. Calvinism? Arminisim? I have no idea what these words mean. All I know is that I watched my boss die and had no clue what to say or think or do, and neither did my pastor or anyone else I talked to.
August 17th, 2007 at 11:08 am
I know that you try to avoid naming names when it’s not absolutely necessary, but there’s an extra degree of “disturbed-ness” to the fact that it was the site owner (who moderates comments and let Zachary’s comment through) who told him voluminously that he shouldn’t comment.
August 17th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Wow, Brendt - we all missed that one! You’re ever-sharp
August 17th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Classic irony, Brendt. She would claim she was giving him a Christian mulligan, though!
August 17th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
I’m glad she did write that. She was out to punish him. It shows that she took the opportunity to exalt her own indignance at Zach’s expense, while at the same time she revealed her own ignorance and ethnocentrism. We now have a permanent record of it.
Oh yeah, she’s fervently opposed to the use of psychology, but she pulls a shrink out of the hat when one suits her purposes. But wait–that’s PRAGMATISM–and she hates that as much as anything.
Question: Now that she’s written herself into a corner, how long do you think that entry will remain online?