Mission America

Christian Commentary on the Culture

Will Tom Price Clean Up Feds' HIV/AIDS Program?

The latest figures from the business-as-usual HIV/AIDS epidemic were just released from the Centers for Disease Control, a division of the U.S. Health and Human Services agency. December 1 was World AIDS Day.

And reporting for the year 2015, CDC acknowledges a disease picture largely unchanged, with nearly 40,000 new HIV infections, almost 29,000 among males who have sex with males (70%).

And as most well-informed Americans know, no person is born “gay,” so this conduct is completely unnecessary.

HIV is still serious and sometimes fatal, yet around one million people are living with and sharing this disease with others, believing it’s not such a big deal in the era of anti-retroviral drug treatment.

But many Americans have wept as sons, brothers, and friends have perished from AIDS, and long for an Uncle Sam public health message that tells the truth: no male ever needs to engage in anal sex with another male and we need to stop accommodating homosexual behavior and ‘gay’ identity at the CDC.

Will Tom Price do this as head of HHS?

The CDC is a division of the U.S. Health and Human Services agency, and Trump’s nominee to head the agency, Georgia Congressman Tom Price, has a solid and admirable track record as a pro-life, pro-family conservative. There could not be a more promising prospective administrator to bring some sense to bear on ObamaCare, HHS agency mandates on abortion, and the many diabolical funding streams that end up in Planned Parenthood coffers.

But another nest of vipers lies in the CDC HIV/AIDS program. If we are going to drain the swamp, this is a great place to start. And Price is from Georgia. With the CDC headquarters in Atlanta, it’s quite possible he has already formed an opinion about the problems endemic to CDC HIV/AIDS policy.

Will CDC continue to treat homosexual behavior as a respectable identity instead of what it actually is-- high-risk, unnecessary deviance that no one needs to engage in?

And this becomes especially important in formation of a responsible public health strategy for adolescents. GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, is a group whose purpose is essentially to persuade children and teens that homosexual and transgender conduct is worthwhile. GLSEN bypasses parents and school officials if necessary to corrupt children directly.

So it was with horror that many of us read in 2009 that the GLSEN founder had joined the Obama administration as a deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Education, in charge of “safe schools.” Kevin Jennings lasted two years before the negative publicity about his background-- totally deserved, by the way-- was too much and he resigned.

But not before somehow, GLSEN had landed a federal grant from the CDC’s department of adolescent health. That’s right. People who think it’s fine for 12-year -old boys to have anal sex with each other-- or with someone older-- received a grant to position this deviance among American children as “safe.” The five-year grant was to create “safe spaces” for “LGBT youth” in selected school districts across the U.S.

The deeply insidious lies in such a grant begin with the destructive notion that there are separately-constructed humans like “L,””G,” “B” or “T.” Or that children should adopt such identities and the bizarre, self-destructive sexual activities that accompany them.

But to award a federal grant to encourage more of this? Such child-endangerment must be rooted out of the HHS, the sooner the better.

CDC has become largely ineffective on the HIV/AIDS issue related to homosexual behavior, adopting shoot-itself-in-the-foot tactics of self-perpetuation. For instance, one new CDC HIV program is called “Doing It.” This suggestively-named campaign validates the known transmission vehicle of anal sex.

“Doing It” refers to the recommendation to get tested for HIV. That’s the current CDC epidemic-management emphasis, virtually ignoring the real solution: abstinence.

The CDC’s “National Gay Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day” was observed on September 27. It’s another example of truth-avoiding foolishness.

No male is “gay,” first of all, and the CDC’s own clinical description of the transmission category, “males who have sex with males,” has avoided the nebulous “gay” label in favor the more accurate description of behavior. So why use misleading identity politics’ terms? The agency culture seems to favor propping up the mythological “gay” identity, when it should be dismantling it.

 So this epidemic-tracking agency funded by taxpayers has descended to sympathy for active disease transmission, instead of aiming for a goal where incidence declines. That could be achieved with a clear message: don’t have anal sex, period.

This September “awareness day” featured tepid tactics like getting tested for HIV, starting a conversation with one’s partner, using the prophylactic drug treatment PrEP, limiting the number of partners, don’t share needles, and use condoms consistently and correctly.

In other words, don’t hesitate about having homosexual sex (or even using IV drugs) but just play the “risk reduction” game with us as we enable harmful behavior.

The current CDC only reflects the pervasive radicalism of the Obama Administration. The root cause of HIV-risky behavior, according to the White House Office of AIDS Policy, is “stigma” and “discrimination.” That’s right. Disapproval drives males to have anal sex with multiple partners:

Stigma and discrimination must be eliminated in order to diminish barriers to HIV prevention, testing, and care. HIV-related stigma can be confounded by or complicated with stigma related to substance use, mental health, sexual orientation, gender identity, race/ethnicity, or sex work.”

“Sex work” is the leftist term for prostitution, attempting to legitimize the sale of one’s body for sex, often by teens coerced by adults.

This is not public health. This is pro-deviance, government-funded propaganda. And praise the Lord, this corrupt administration is on its way out the door.

Yet the CDC bureaucracy will continue to fund useless, sodomy-enabling local and state programs, unless grown-ups show up for work.

 Like possibly Tom Price.