C. Everett Koop, the real man and the wingnut myth-to-be

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Now that C. Everett Koop, the man who made the Surgeon General's position into a bully pulpit (setting aside Luther Terry and the warnings on cigarette packs in 1964) has died at the age of 96, it's time for taking stock.

Before the wingnuts start inventing stock, like they did with St. Ronald of Reagan.

I can already tell you, he's going to be proclaimed as an anti-abortion zealot.

But the truth, even if we restrict ourselves to abortion, is more nuanced.

Koop never lessened his personal opposition to abortion. But, while Surgeon General, he refused to sign off on bullshit pseudomedical "research" that claimed abortion damaged many women's mental health. If the greater wingnuttery of claiming abortion caused cancer had been brought up 25 years ago, Koop would have kicked those people out of his office, I think.

And, setting aside whatever personal thoughts he had about gay sexuality, or extramarital sexuality in general, he stressed the use of condoms rather than abstinence in fighting the spread of AIDS.

Koop personally opposed homosexuality and believed sex should be saved for marriage. But he insisted that Americans, especially young people, must not die because they were deprived of explicit information about how the HIV virus was transmitted.

Again, this is as opposed to abstinence-only sex education that Rick Perry and other wingnuts say they "know" works, without any evidence, without any, per Koop, explicit information.
Hell, he even supported advertising condoms on TV!

Also, per his New York Times obit, he tried to get both Reagan and Poppy Bush to do more about getting more people to have health care, even if he later opposed Obamacare.

In short, Koop was a man of integrity. And, as a sidebar, this is another reason why Gnu Atheists should be a bit slower about blanket "bashing" of people of religion.

Robbie Alomar has AIDS?

Or, does he have a gold-digger ex-girlfriend?

Ilya Dall, who lived with Alomar for three years, is suing him for $15 million, claiming the former, and that he had unprotected sex with her even after an AIDS test.

Given the dinero involved, the fact that, after he allegedly tested positive, Dall says she stopped having sex with him, and the fact she claims her children were “exposed” to the virus …

Sounds like a gold-digger to me.

On the other hand, a schadenfreude-minded friend of mine said that, if Alomar does have AIDS, it would be “funny” if he got it from a shared steroid-infection needle.

Globally, gays still get little help with AIDS

Internationally, just 1 percent of AIDS prevention money goes specifically to gays.

As the story indicates, coming out of the closet can still be a huge thing, and not just in Muslim countries. In Malawi, for example, gay sex is punishable by up to 14 years in prison.

Black AIDS rates in U.S. approach Africa

In D.C., for example, 5 percent of the population is HIV-positive.

I agree that the feds need to provide more funds for treatment and prevention, as well as for education and information. But those funds won’t do a lot of good unless a fair-sized subsector of African-Americans doesn’t get over homophobia, especially as driven by black churches. (And, despite being liberated enough to have an AIDS ministry, Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s conspiracy theories on the cause of AIDS, also held by many black Americans, don’t help.)

Gay sex “on the down low,” with bisexual partners then infecting women, is a major vector for the spread of AIDS among blacks.

Instead of an AIDS bill, why not AIDS itself?

I propose trumping North Carolina Sen. Elizabeth Dole’s idea of naming an AIDS bill after Jesse Helms.

Let’s just name AIDS itself after Jesse Helms.

Arguably, he may have had as much influence on AIDS’ spread in the United States as any other single person, so it would be appropriate, too.

So, there you have it.

On this blog, until further notice, we will refer to Helms’ disease.

Wright is an AIDS conspiracy theorist

Yes, I’m aware of the Tuskegee medical experiments our government conducted on blacks from 1932-72. But, that doesn’t make two wrongs a right, or a Wright.

Slate has this direct quote, that Wright said the government “invent(ed) the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color,” in an article about AIDS conspiracy theories.

The Washington Post confirms the full quote, “The government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color,” as coming from a 2003 sermon.

(The “genocide against people of color” plus “Jeremiah Wright” gets 45 Google News hits.

“Inventing” is the key word. Rev. Wright is, sadly, an AIDS conspiracy theorist.

Beyond that, it is true, as a generalization, that the black church has been hostile to gays, which means that gay blacks in a church like Wright’s face a double stigma if they test HIV-positive.

They’re stigmatized as gay, and now, the conspiracy theorists probably think they’re contagious, too.

And, while Barack Obama tackled some other of Wright’s comments in Obama’s much-ballyhooed March 18 speech, he didn’t even reference this one. He probably doesn’t want to touch it with a 10-foot pole.

Re Obama’s relations with Wright, Bloomberg unearths a tidbit about Obama’s financial support for Wright and Trinity UCC.

Obama gave the church $22,500 in 2006, according to tax returns. That certainly doesn’t sound like someone unaware of what his pastor was saying.