America's Immune Deficiency Syndrome

The headlines are kind of alarming these days.

Old, forgotten diseases suddenly are making a comeback. And new strains of old plagues are deadlier than anything previously seen.

You've heard of AIDS (acquired immune deficiency syndrome). Is America's immune system under attack?

The latest news out of San Francisco is not good. A drug-resistant strain of potentially deadly bacteria has moved beyond the borders of U.S. hospitals and is being transmitted among homosexual men during sex. Does this sound familiar? Shades of the 1980s?

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is beginning to appear outside hospitals in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles. According to a study done at the University of California, San Francisco, gay men are 13 times more likely to contract the disease, which spreads during skin-to-skin contact. That means it easily could spread to the general population. When it does, the results could be cataclysmic.

"Once this reaches the general population, it will be truly unstoppable," explains Binh Diep, the researcher who led the study.

While AIDS disproportionately affected intravenous drug users, hemophiliacs and, of course, homosexual men practicing their own special brand of risky and unnatural acts, it never did break into the general population in a big way. AIDS was actually hard to get.

This new bug is not. But the very same people are spreading it: a special-interest group defined proudly by their sexual deviance, a special-interest group actually empowered politically by the very AIDS crisis that once threatened to wipe it out.

It's just another alternative lifestyle, we're told.

Yet it is a lifestyle that is deadly — one that serves as a breeding ground for AIDS, syphilis, rectal gonorrhea, dozens of other sexually transmitted diseases and now MRSA.

I have a profound question to ask: Isn't it time to make anal sex taboo again? I mean look what we have learned during the past 20 years!

What do you suppose is riskier: smoking or anal sex? That's right. Anal sex is far more dangerous. Those practicing it live far shorter lives and frequently die more painful deaths. Yet it's increasingly more difficult to find a place to have a smoke than it is to have homosexual sex.

Let's face it; it's cool to be gay on television, in the movies, in public schools and in America's newsrooms. It is not nearly as cool to smoke. Why? Because people recognize smoking is a health threat. But they don't recognize that sodomy is a much more serious health threat.

Simply for writing this column, I will be subjected to the most vicious hate speech imaginable. I will be called a bigot, a Nazi, a homophobe and worse.

Not once have I ever heard anti-smoking crusaders referred to as bigots, Nazis or tobacco-phobes. Please explain the difference.

I'll tell you the difference. Give me a choice between smoking and anal sex, and I'll choose smoking every time. Not just because anal sex has no appeal to me whatsoever but because anal sex is far more dangerous.

Isn't it time we stopped promoting it on TV, the movies, in public schools and in America's establishment press?

Joseph Farah's previous column contained some information provided by a reader that originated in a Washington Times column by David Deming. The information was not attributed to Mr. Deming. Mr. Farah apologizes and regrets the error.

To find out more about Joseph Farah and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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