Tuesday, August 7, 2018

It Only Gets Better If You Don't Make It Worse - Faithful Monogamy Is Superior To Promiscuity

I happened to remember that 33 years ago, this morning, I was in a church attending the funeral of one of the first of scores of people I knew who died of HIV-AIDS.   I don't know why that date sticks in my mind but it makes me think it's a long time since I wrote about that experience and why the promotion of promiscuity in the wake of that epidemic has to count as some of the worst moral irresponsibility in the present day. 

I don't have time to write about it today so, though I'm allergic to the TED brand, I think this short talk by Dr. Edsel SalvaƱa packs more information into less than five minutes than just about anything else I've read or heard on the topic.



Here is another short report from Deutsche Welle that is also worth your time.


His description of the genetic versatility of HIV is pretty stunning and disturbing when you put it together with the encouragement to men to be promiscuous which has become ubiquitous with the internet and the free-speech, free-market license for commercial sex to flood the world.

After I read it, I wondered if people who claim that monogamy is impossible or unhealthy ever consider that someone could follow their advice and become infected with HIV.  I wonder if Dan Savage ever thinks about that, the (criminally irresponsible) sex advice guys and gals at Salon or Alternet.   Dan Savage, of the generally positive "it gets better" campaign should point out that it doesn't get better if you get infected with HIV or other, serious, STDs.  But I doubt anyone would consider that groovy and career enhancing for them.

Since so many of those guys are exactly the kind of Darwinian true believers I've mocked so much over the past month, wouldn't it be something if their encouragement to promiscuity ended up with the imaginary "strain" of human beings who are susceptible to them became extinct through STDs.  I don't for a second believe that would happen, I'm not the Darwinist, but I do have to wonder why they don't consider the consequences of what they claim to believe in.

Faithful monogamy is superior to promiscuity, I'll go out on a limb an say that a rigorous epidemiological study would find that as so many have that religion leads to longer, healthier and happier life.  The campaign to discourage faithful monogamy among gay men (often by promoting even the most dangerous and self-hating forms of promiscuity) is among the worst things that have been done to us.  It turns us into our own oppressors and killers.   I added that just to piss certain people off.  And because it's true.  Thinking about this makes me really angry at a lot of people who refuse to learn anything.

2 comments:

  1. "Faithful monogamy is superior to promiscuity, I'll go out on a
    limb an say that a rigorous epidemiological study would find that as so
    many have that religion leads to longer, healthier and happier life."

    I'll go out on a bigger limb and say that a rigorous epidemiological study would find that total hypocritical religious assholes die at higher rates than normal people.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, Stupy, how funny you are. As the old Maine joke goes, "What's the death rate here?"
      "One, each."

      The relevant measure would be length of life and that's known. Religious people live longer than atheists.

      A number of studies have shown associations between attending religious services and living a long time. One of the most comprehensive, published in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2016, found that women who went to any kind of religious service more than once a week had a 33% lower chance than their secular peers of dying during the 16-year study-follow-up period. Another study, published last year in PLOS One, found that regular service attendance was linked to reductions in the body’s stress responses and even in mortality–so much so that worshippers were 55% less likely to die during the up to 18-year follow-up period than people who didn’t frequent the temple, church or mosque.

      http://time.com/5159848/do-religious-people-live-longer/

      Delete