AIDS

Yes, I know there's a thread on gay marriage but that's not what I'm wanting to discuss.
Just want to throw that out there before I get members posting that there is a gay marriage thread, yes I know.

So the other day someone said to me
"Now that gay marriage is completely legal, we are going to have an outbreak of aids."

So what are your thoughts on this statement??

wasn't it always legal to have aids ?

there's statistics about how aids is and isn't spreading in different areas. last time I checked, sharing needles is most likely.

why would marriage effect the amount aids cases? i would guess that gay sex was going on long before the legalization of gay marriage.

gay sex is legal. so the same amount of bodily fluids were still being passed around last month as this month. well, there might be an upswing in the fluids since marriage is now legal and more sex is being had simply because gay people can finally get married. they are now entitled to the 'honeymoon' period just like everyone else.  

don't share needles, peeps. have safe sex.  

My thoughts on your statement? ... Don't talk such utter arse, mainly.

Logic would seem to dictate, in most scenarios, if AIDS were a concern, gay marriage would cause a distinct diminishment in the number of AIDS cases, ne c'est pas?

Now, this is, of course, assuming this whole idea isn't spurious to begin with.

However, engaging in this thought experiment: marriage would seem to, for the most part, encourage monogamy, monogamy would then dictate cleaving solely to one partner sanctioned by matrimonial bonds. This would mean removal then of two people from the general mayhem of the profligate consensual sexual playing field resulting in less possibility for transmission of AIDS.

Now, extrapolate those two to hundreds, potentially thousands of people getting married and removing themselves from said playing grounds. Provided they remain monogamous, the natural outcome would be a lessening in transmission of STDs of all sorts including AIDS, certainly not an increase - if, of course, AIDS were being spread rampantly throughout this community.

I must confess, however, I feel compelled to note I agree rather wholeheartedly with Missy DeMeanour's rather pithy assessment... ;-p

That's what they call me, love. Mrs "pithy assessment"

I also tend to agree with Mrs Pithy Assessment on the matter at hand.

i just can't grasp how someone would think it would increase the spreading of aids/hiv. people make no sense to me.

That is Highly Wrong,
Just Because Gay Marriage is Now Legal doesn't Mean That We're Going to have an Outbreak of AIDS
Unless they'd Already had it, And Didn't use Protection, and Had Sexual relations with another Person After Contracting the Disease, It's Wrong.
Wrap Your Tool, and Don't be a fool.

i mean, we could say the same thing about glitter.

"now that gay marriage is legal, we will find more and more glitter everywhere."

or anything really. people are dumb.

BUT i bet bridal industry is going to be BOOMING in the next year.  

"Now that gay marriage is completely legal, we are going to have an outbreak of aids."
In my opinion, that's complete nonsense. First of all, the spread of AIDS is promoted by promiscuitive, unsafe sexual behaviour. I can't see how gay marriage will promote that kind of behaviour.
Second, have a look at those countries where AIDS was spread in the past like a wildfire, South Africa and Botswana in particular. The most affected group in each population is the vast majority of heterosexual people.
Therefore, I don't expect any significant rising of the number of AIDS cases among gay married couples in the U.S.

I don't know the current stats. on this, but I can ask this:  

Where did AIDS come from when did it become a giant issue?

From the 60s free love to "...Didn't use Protection, and Had Sexual relations with another Person After Contracting the Disease, It's Wrong. Wrap Your Tool, and Don't be a fool."

Didn't do any of that shit and am still here.  I say:

Didn't wrap
got the clap
recovered nicely
and did it all again

Didn't protect
things that got erect
cause the rubber got in the way
and mama wouldn't come out to play  

I think there's enough awareness out there, where HIV is far more contained than in the ignorant past.  Even though we still have no cure, we do have better drugs to control it and assuming outbreaks are always due to homosexual activity, is ignorance again.  HIV has spread by tainted blood supplies as well, during transfusions, which also we have stiffer regulations on, and it is also spread in utero from mother to baby.

There's a film I show to my students, each year, called "Bad Blood" and it hits hard on the topic of HIV and Hepatits infected blood supplies, the human aspect of it, and you don't forget it after you've seen it. It's 90 min long, and worth the educational viewing. Can find it on Amazon or maybe through your local library.

I had to quickly check what Aids roughly is, can't say that it is something that is around me or that I have had much contact with (ha ha!?).

So now I have to ask: What The Fuck?

How on earth does gay marriage equal an outbreak of aids, without having a thought process that says 2+2 = its going to rain tomorrow. There seems to be a logic gap, or logic leap, where an assumption has been made and is now processed as fact and conveyed as such. Gay marriage would only mean widespread Aids, if gays were all infected and were all dipshits when it came to matters of protection in sex.
If anything, being a penalised or non-mainstream thing, homosexual sex would be even more careful, rather than cavalier: better to use protection than have to explain and admit it to others when it was not fully accepted to be gay.

Though on the topic of aids, might as well vaccinate/ cleanse everybody of it, just because it sounds like a disease. And we should be working towards making all diseases null and void in harm to humanity, even the 'common' cold.

Kind of confused here Danii. You talk about not wanting to talk about gay marriage then use the phrase in the quote. A rather loaded quote to boot. A quote which in itself causes confusion in its derpiness.

Where's my rubber ducky of sense?...

Viddax said:

How on earth does gay marriage equal an outbreak of aids,




Because AIDS was brought to the forefront of the public eye, due to skyrocketing instances within the gay community, hence it's been branded a homosexual disease.

Switching gears here, just to give a little medical background on it, AIDS is caused by the HIV virus, and what the virus does is attack a certain class of white blood cells called T-Helper(T4) cells or CD4 cells.  Your white blood cells are responsible for immune response, and killing off any foreign substances in your body, that can make you sick.  The function of a T4 cell, is to bring chemical messages to another type of white blood cell, called a B-lymphocyte, to trigger it to make antibodies against the foreign substance, in this case the HIV virus.  The virus invades the T4 cells, takes over it's DNA and uses it to replicate itself into more viruses to start the process all over, thus making the T4 cell unable to perform it's normal function and in turn, no antibodies are made against the virus to stop it.  It's sort of like shooting the messenger, so the message to act, never gets delivered.

Without a properly functioning immune response, the body becomes susceptible to all sorts of diseases that it normally would be able to fight off--this is called an opportunistic infection, where it only really happens when the opportunity arises, meaning a stunted immune system.  Chemo would give the same set up scenario for an opportunistic infection, because it blows away the normal response pathway of immunity.

So getting back to AIDS, this is the active, full blown form of an HIV infection, and the person suffering this, usually gets hit with all these weird infections, and if death results, it's because of the opportunistic infection, and not being able to fight it off.  That's why AIDS brings a response of fear, because of all the OTHER things you can get from the initial HIV virus.  

As I previously mentioned, HIV/AIDS isn't just a gay person's disease--it has affected many others from blood transfusion recipients, neonates, healthcare workers who come in contact with tainted blood and body fluids, hemophiliacs who took clotting factor products made from donate blood, during certain years in the past, but the disease is associated with gays just because it did run rampant in that community when it was first coming to the forefront during the 1980's.

So just giving a bit of insider info, food for thought, from the medical perspective, for what it's worth, and the reason why we don't have a vaccine yet, is that the HIV virus is what's called a "retro-virus" where it can tweak it's structure so that any antibodies that do get made against it, don't work because they don't recognize it, as antibodies are made for a specific invading substance, or "antigen" as we call it in immunology.  By the time new antibodies are formed for the tweaked structure, the virus can revert back to the original form or change again.  Sort of like hide and seek.

Gay marriage will not create an outbreak of AIDS, gay marriage will create more gay divorce.