posted at 07:38:43 AM by Dominion

Fri, Jul 25 2003

Sorry I did not get to this yesterday but some personal business came up that required me to spend the day away from the computer (or at least my computer).

I am almost done with Mr. Bomford's paper. Monday we will look at the last section of the paper, Tuesday we will take a closer look at his radio appearance then Wednesday we will discuss what it all means.

Phase One

To gain the acceptance of homosexual addiction as a normal healthy lifestyle. One would think that this would be a difficult objective in an educated society. Consider the fact that one has to immunize oneself with antibiotics to engage in the behavior. Despite this precaution the average homosexual male has his life expectancy reduced by 17 to 30 years* depending on where he lives.

* Cameron Obituary Study 1994, International Journal of Epidemiology 1997, Mendola Report: A new look at Gay couples 1979, British Columbia Center for Excellence in HIV/Aids Saint Paul’s Hospital Canada

How can any intelligent person be convinced that a behavior with a consequence like that is normal? They have convinced people through propaganda, political pressure and pseudo science. Homosexual leaders pushed NAMBLA into the closet until they could gain acceptance of the objectives of Phase One. Now they have convinced some of the leadership of the Republican Party to accept their position and they have always had Democrat support. Since they have indoctrinated a substantial portion of the general population that they are correct it is time to move on to,

You know, I thought this was going to be funny, and by god, I was right. This time Bomford was kind enough to leave us some references for his "life expectancy" statistic. As with most of Bomford's paper, this is simply bullshit.

The only study that would qualify as a "life expectancy" study on Bomford's list is the infamous Paul Cameron Obituary Study. More on that below. The rest of Bomford's references are so much crap. For example.

I looked up the International Journal of Epidemiology for the year 1997. You will note that, unlike most people that use references, Bomford does not give us the name of the article, the issue number, the page number, hell not even the month of publication, and there is a very good reason why he does not. Naturally this required me to look up all six issues they published that year, and attempt to guess which study Bomford is talking about. There was only one study done that year that even comes close, "Premature mortality in Italy during the first decade of the AIDS epidemic: 1984-1993" by S Conti, M Masocco, G Farchi, G Rezza, and V Toccaceli. Unfortunately for Bomford, nowhere does it say that homosexual men's life expectancy has been reduced. What it does claim is that people in Italy who have AIDS tend to die young:

Background: AIDS has become a leading cause of premature mortality in many countries, owing to the decline in other major causes of premature death and the increase in AIDS itself. This study was carried out to determine the trends in premature mortality due to selected causes in Italy.

Methods: Data from the Italian Mortality Data Base, for the ten years from 1984 to 1993 (the first decade of the AIDS epidemic) were analysed. Premature mortality was measured in terms of years of potential life lost before the age of 70 years (YPLL), excluding infant mortality. Trends in premature mortality due to AIDS were compared with those of the principal causes of premature death: lung cancer, colon- rectum cancer, stomach cancer, leukaemia, female breast cancer, uterine cancer, myocardial infarction, stroke, liver diseases, suicide, road accidents and overdose.

Results: In this period there has been a marked increase in premature mortality from AIDS both among males aged 1-69 years (from a rate of YPLL of 0.01 per 1000 in 1984 to 3.71 in 1993) and females of the same age group (from 0 deaths in 1984 to a rate of YPLL of 1.02). Throughout the same period all the other causes of premature death have been declining, with the exception of suicide and overdose among males, and overdose and lung cancer among females. For people aged 25-44 years, AIDS has become the greatest cause of premature death. The increasing trend in premature mortality due to AIDS is most pronounced in the northern and central areas of Italy.

Conclusions: AIDS is the leading cause of death among males aged 25-44 years in Italy and is having an important impact on premature mortality among females in the same age group.

You can read the entire study by clicking here (warning .pfd file).

Bomford's third source "Mendola Report: A new look at Gay couples 1979" is being misused. This is what the claim looks like:

An openly lesbian M. Mendola, in 1979, polled 405 homosexuals by mail. The median age of those polled was 34, and only 10% were 50 or over. Source: The Mendola Report: A New Look at Gay Couples.

This is supposed to somehow "prove" that gays have a reduced life expectancy. But the Mendola Report is not a valid sample. The questionnaire was handed out in gay bars and passed from friend to friend, which meant the study included only those who wanted to be included. This is a very unscientific way to create a statistical sample. Another problem is that the sample size is too small to be of any use in extrapolating life expectancy. Don't get me wrong. The Mendola Report is just fine for what it claims to be, a close look at "lesbian and homosexual couples who are quietly living happy and full lives with the partners of their choice." It is not M. Mendola who is coming up with this crap.

Bomford's fourth source is nothing more than a name. Although the British Columbia Center for Excellence in HIV does do studies, Bomford does not name one. Doing a search for studies done by this organization comes up with 2,470. Life is too short for me to look at each of these webpages to find a study that Bomford does not even bother to name.

So this leaves us with his first reference, the only one that really had something to do with the life excpectancy of homosexuals, and it should surprise no one that has been following this that Bomford would use such a source. Ya see, Paul Cameron is nothing more than a homophobe. Before we take a look at the study, let's spend some time with Paul:

Psychologist Paul Cameron has used his own studies to claim that homosexuals threaten public health, social order, and the well-being of children. His conclusions are generally at odds with other published research, and objective indices show that his work has had no apparent impact on scientific research on sexual orientation.

Although Cameron has been criticized in the popular press, extensive scientific critiques of his group's research have not been widely available. Those that have been published have been brief or appeared in obscure journals. This inattention by the scientific community is perhaps not surprising, given the poor quality of the Cameron group's data and the low prestige of the journals in which they have published. Most scientists have simply ignored the Cameron studies.

Well this is not a good start at all. It seems that Cameron does not enjoy the respect of his peers. Could it be because he cooks his stats?

On December 2, 1983, the American Psychological Association sent Paul Cameron a letter informing him that he had been dropped from membership. Early in 1984, all members of the American Psychological Association received official written notice that "Paul Cameron (Nebraska) was dropped from membership for a violation of the Preamble to the Ethical Principles of Psychologists" by the APA Board of Directors. Cameron has posted an elaborate argument about his expulsion from APA on his website, claiming that he resigned from APA before he was dropped from membership. Like most organizations, however, APA does not allow a member to resign when they are being investigated. And even if Cameron's claims were accepted as true, it would be remarkable that the largest professional organization of psychologists in the United States (and other professional associations, as noted below) went to such lengths to disassociate itself from one individual.

At its membership meeting on October 19, 1984, the Nebraska Psychological Association adopted a resolution stating that it "formally disassociates itself from the representations and interpretations of scientific literature offered by Dr. Paul Cameron in his writings and public statements on sexuality."

In 1985, the American Sociological Association (ASA) adopted a resolution which asserted that "Dr. Paul Cameron has consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented sociological research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism" and noted that "Dr. Paul Cameron has repeatedly campaigned for the abrogation of the civil rights of lesbians and gay men, substantiating his call on the basis of his distorted interpretation of this research." The resolution formally charged an ASA committee with the task of "critically evaluating and publicly responding to the work of Dr. Paul Cameron."

At its August, 1986 meeting, the ASA officially accepted the committee's report and passed the following resolution:

The American Sociological Association officially and publicly states that Paul Cameron is not a sociologist, and condemns his consistent misrepresentation of sociological research. Information on this action and a copy of the report by the Committee on the Status of Homosexuals in Sociology, "The Paul Cameron Case," is to be published in Footnotes, and be sent to the officers of all regional and state sociological associations and to the Canadian Sociological Association with a request that they alert their members to Cameron's frequent lecture and media appearances."

The Obituary study was as flawed as all the other Paul Cameron studies:

Obituaries in gay community newspapers do not provide a representative sampling of the community. This is evident in the fact that only only 2% of the Cameron group's obituaries were for lesbians. Moreover, community newspapers tend overwhelmingly to report deaths due to AIDS (only 11% of Cameron's gay male obituaries were not related to AIDS). In addition, community newspapers tend not to print obituaries for people who are not actively involved in the local gay community, those who are in the closet, and those whose loved ones simply don't submit an obituary to a local gay newspaper.

The Cameron group's gay obituary study reports many numbers and statistics. However, they are absolutely worthless for estimating the life expectancy of gay men and lesbians.

Postscript In a 1997 column in the Weekly Standard, former Secretary of Education William Bennett referred to the findings of Cameron et al.'s obituary study, although he did not cite Cameron by name. He again referred to Cameron's conclusion about the truncated life span of homosexuals in an appearance on ABC's "This Week" program.

In 1998, after Andrew Sullivan wrote an article challenging the statistic, Bennett wrote in a letter to the New Republic (1998, February 23, page 4): "Given what I now know, I believe there are flaws with Paul Cameron's study. One cannot extrapolate from his methodology and say that the average male homosexual life span is 43 years."

So much for Paul Cameron.

Phase Two

To gain acceptance of pedophilia as normal and healthy. In a reflection of 1973 the American Psychiatric and Psychological Associations are once more in the lead to convince the public. The Psychiatrists recently removed pedophilia from its list of mental illnesses. The Psychologists did likewise and in addition they published an article supporting pedophilia as normal and healthy. The article was "A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples, by Rind Tromovitch and Bauserman. This report claimed that the negative effects of child adult male sexual encounters are overstated and in fact may be beneficial to the child. The study advocates new speak in relation to pedophilia, such as non judgmental terms replacing harsh terminology. They would replace child abuse and molestation with adult child sex. They suggest people discuss the level of intimacy instead of severity of abuse. The preferred term of endearment of the homosexual addict and his relationship with children is intergenerational sex.

This is simply untruth mixed in with a bunch of half truths. First off, the article in question had nothing to do with the APA. It did run in the Psychological Bulletin in 1998, (Vol 124, No 1, pp 22-53.) (you can read it here), but note that no where in their conclusions did they mention removing pedophilia from the DMS, nor did they say that CSA was beneficial:

Many lay persons and professionals believe that child sexual abuse (CSA) causes intense harm, regardless of gender, pervasively in the general population. The authors examined this belief by reviewing 59 studies based on college samples. Meta-analyses revealed that students with CSA were, on average, slightly less well adjusted than controls. However, this poorer adjustment could not be attributed to CSA because family environment (FE) was consistently confounded with CSA, FE explained considerably more adjustment variance than CSA, and CSA-adjustment relations generally became nonsignificant when studies controlled for FE. Self-reported reactions to and effects from CSA indicated that negative effects were neither pervasive nor typically intense, and that men reacted much less negatively than women. The college data were completely consistent with data from national samples. Basic beliefs about CSA in the general population were not supported.

Nor does Bomford mention that this is a very controversial study.

Claiming that the APA removed pedophilia from the DMS is simply a lie. Bomford certainly heard about the symposium on pedophilia but just because the APA holds a symposium on the subject does not mean they are thinking about removing pedophilia from the DMS. At the time of the symposium Dr. Darrel A. Regier, director of research for the APA, said there were "no plans and there is no process set up that would lead to the removal of the paraphilias from their consideration as legitimate mental disorders." The APA in a press release dated June 17th 2003 has this to say (warning .pfd file):

Pedophilia, included in the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) since 1968, continues to be classified as a mental disorder. The DSM is the standard classification of mental disorders used by mental health professionals and provides clear, objective descriptions of mental illnesses, based upon scientific research. Pedophilia is categorized in the DSM-IV-TR as one of several paraphilic mental disorders. The essential features of a Paraphilia are recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors that generally involve nonhuman subjects, children, or other nonconsenting adults, or the suffering or humiliation of oneself or one’s partner.

An adult who engages in sexual activity with a child is performing a criminal and immoral act and this is never considered normal or socially acceptable behavior.

So as we can see, Bomford is not above spreading an untruth to help make his point.

NAMBLA now out of its closet is posting the "good news" on its web page. This long time advocate for the normalization of pedophilia is pleased with this study. NAMBLA states that "The current war on boy lovers has no basis in science". It continues "on average nearly 70 percent of males in the studies reported that as children or adolescents their sexual experiences with adults had been positive or neutral". Intergenerational sex is on the way. The last phase of the homosexual addicts plan involves the "last taboo"

Well I am sure that NAMBLA would have considered removal of pedophilia from the DMS great news, if it had actually happened. But it didn't. Besides, what does NAMBLA have to do with homosexuals? Oh that's right, nothing at all.

Phase Three

The acceptance of incest as normal. Using Denmark where the age for consensual sex for boys was lowered to twelve and nine is under discussion as a guide, the sexual addicts have become civil rights advocates. Intergenerational sex requires a guarantee of sexual civil rights for children. They have a right to choose to have sex with anyone they please whenever they desire it. Although they disavow physical and psychological coercion they insist on consent. The fact that a child is automatically coerced at least psychologically by an adult that he trusts apparently escapes them. Sexual Civil Rights for Children in Intergenerational sex is the mantra.

I can find nothing from any gay organization here in the United States that is for "accepting incest as normal". Nor can I find one that equates "intergenerational sex requires a guarantee of sexual civil rights for children". Nor do I understand just what lowering the age of consent in Denmark has to do with accepting incest as normal in the US. Once again, Bomford is simply stating as fact, a bunch of horseshit.

The fact of the matter is that your kids are much more likely to be sexually abused by people who identify themselves as heterosexual than homosexual. For example Dr. A. Nicholas Groth (actually) wrote: "Are homosexual adults in general sexually attracted to children and are preadolescent children at greater risk of molestation from homosexual adults than from heterosexual adults? There is no reason to believe so. The research to date all points to there being no significant relationship between a homosexual lifestyle and child molestation. There appears to be practically no reportage of sexual molestation of girls by lesbian adults, and the adult male who sexually molests young boys is not likely to be homosexual" (Groth, A. N., & Gary, T. S. (1982). Heterosexuality, homosexuality, and pedophilia: Sexual offenses against children and adult sexual orientation. In A.M. Scacco (Ed.), Male rape: A casebook of sexual aggressions (p. 147). New York: AMS Press).

Or how about the 1994 study of 269 sexually abused children that showed that "a child’s risk of being molested by his or her relative’s heterosexual partner is 100 times greater than by someone who might be identified as a homosexual." (Carole Jenny et al., Are Children at Risk for Sexual Abuse by Homosexuals?; 94 Pediatrics 41; July 1994)

In truth there is no evidence that homosexuals are interested in pedophilia, engage in pedophilia, or even talk about pedophilia anymore than heterosexuals. Hell from a purely anecdotical observation (hey if Bomford can get away with it why not me?) the chances are greater your child will be molested by the clergy than by a homosexual!

Monday: Thank God Almost Done

posted at 08:13:59 AM by Dominion

Wed, Jul 23 2003

Homosexuality and Pedophilia

Jim Bomford gets downright disgusting

We have come to the point where I think Bomford becomes his most offensive. This is where he tries to link (in spite of the best scientific evidence that is available) homosexuality and pedophilia. The following is to set up his grand "three point plan" that homosexuals must have in order to make molesting children an easy task. This is what we call down here in Texas...bullshit.

There is a close relationship between homosexual addicts and our children. According to a survey by homosexual researchers in The Gay Report, seventy three percent of homosexual addicts surveyed reported having sex with children sixteen to nineteen or younger. Further support is given to this survey by the fact that homosexual addicts chose for their gay day annual event, the number one destination for children world wide, Disneyworld. There are small children and toddlers everywhere. If they are not attracted by the presence of the children, then why are they there?

Maybe because they want to ride the rides and see the shows?

Ladies and gentlemen, can it get any dumber than this. His support for "The Gay Report's" statistics is that gays like to go to Disney World! Do I really need to say anything about evidence that is so stupid?

But what about that statistic Bomford brings up from "The Gay Report". I have done all I could to find out about this number short of actually buying the book.. I could not find anyone that directly contradicts this statistic, but I am not at all sure I trust the source.

This comes from The Family Research Council. The paper is called Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse by Timothy J. Dailey, Ph.D. This is what Dr. Dailey claims:

In The Gay Report, by homosexual researchers Karla Jay and Allen Young, the authors report data showing that 73 percent of homosexuals surveyed had at some time had sex with boys sixteen to nineteen years of age or younger."

The first thing that strikes me is the curious term "at some time"! This makes me suspect that Dr. Dailey is fudging the number a bit. Reading it raw, the number sounds shocking, but consider. What if the "homosexual" that is having sex with that sixteen to nineteen year old were themselves sixteen to nineteen years old. That is not quite as shocking.

But Dom, you might be asking yourself, why would you suspect Dr. Tim Dailey of doing such a dishonest thing. Can we not trust The Family Research Council? Well in fact we can't:

First off, Dr. Dailey is not a medical doctor. He is not a psychologist. His PhD is in religion.

Second, he certainly misrepresented someone else's work:

The Human Rights Campaign today criticized an anti-gay "study" by the Family Research Council falsely linking pedophilia and homosexuality as biased, scientifically unsound and a twisting of the facts to further its right-wing political agenda.

The Washington Blade also published a story today where a researcher cited in the anti-gay group's study, A. Nicholas Groth, asked FRC to remove his name from the report, "Homosexuality and Child Sexual Abuse," because the group "misrepresented" his work.

"Since your report, in my view, misrepresents the facts of what we know about this matter from scientific investigation, and does not indicate that my studies on this topic reach conclusions diametrically opposed to yours, I would appreciate your removing any reference to my work in your paper lest it appear to the reader that my research supports your views," Groth wrote in his letter to FRC.

You can read the full text of Groth's letter here.

The North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) has always been a major part of the big City gay parades. Many homosexual addict outreach offices provide information to pedophile concerning prevention of discovery and legal assistance if caught. Some of the information is directed to pedophile teachers. Teachers in fact have forced the establishment of a High School in NYC dedicated to the indoctrination of children into the addiction. Sexual addictions like all other addictions can be spread through recruitment. If you can get enough kids to try it by presenting it as normal and healthy some will become addicted. According to an article" Tune In Come Out" published in Newsweek in November of 1993 this is a successful tactic. The story banner declares "Spurred by media images and a new climate of acceptance teenagers are experimenting with gay and bisexuality". Sadly though, according to a press release issued by the Office of National AIDS Policy fully half of the new HIV infections in the US each year occur in our youth.

Once again we are being treated with a bunch of assertions without anything to back them up. For example, I live in a big City (Houston Texas). I have been to numerous Gay Pride parades held in my big City. I have never seen NAMBLA as part of the parade. Now then, is this proof that NAMBLA has never been in a big City Gay Pride parade? Of course not, all it proves is that NAMBLA was not part of the Gay Pride parades I have attended in Houston Texas. Hell not even that, all it proves is that I have never seen NAMBLA, not that NAMBLA has never been there. And I should not even have to comment on the stupidity of thinking that any addiction is spread by recruitment. Once again Bomford is being his simple self.

(Sigh) This really does begin to get tiresome. The "indoctrination" high school that Bomford is talking about I can only assume is the Harvey Milk School, part of the Hetrick-Martin Institute (HMI). The creation of this school was not forced by teachers. Caring people saw a problem and did something about it:

IThe Harvey Milk School, a collaborative effort between The Hetrick-Martin Institute and the New York City Department of Education’s Career Education Center Alternative High School Program, is the nation's first accredited public high school designed to meet the needs of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth (LGBTQ).

The school offers LGBTQ youth an opportunity to obtain a secondary education in a safe and supportive environment. It is the goal of The Hetrick-Martin Institute and the New York City Board of Education that youth enrolled in the Harvey Milk School are challenged to achieve their full potential. The Harvey Milk School strives to develop life-long independent learners by creating a participative educational environment focused on academic excellence, with a special emphasis on arts and technology. Integrating an accredited curriculum with life experience, we seek to incorporate appropriate after school services and the evaluation of their impact. We believe that success requires the ability to respect and value the diverse human community.

HMI was started because:

In 1979, Doctors Hetrick and Martin heard the heart-breaking story of a homeless 15 year-old boy who had been beaten up and kicked out of his emergency shelter because he was gay. They were so moved that they gathered a group of concerned adults and created what was then called the Institute for the Protection of Lesbian and Gay Youth (IPLGY). In 1988, the Institute was renamed The Hetrick-Martin Institute in honor of Emery Hetrick and Damien Martin’s life-long commitment to serving the needs of lesbian and gay youth.

As a father who has a teenage girl attending a high school where a teacher's aid felt entirely comfortable with assaulting a gay student, I think that is an excellent idea!

Nor am I sure Newsweek is the most un-bias of sources when it comes to what gay youth is up to: (warning .pfd file)

What must journalists do to get a story right?

Perhaps never before has this question been asked by so many people as it has this year, when the public watched a number of respected journalists stumble in their drive to report something new about a White House intern’s affair with the President.

But what matters in the end is not just the question but the answer, and not just the answer in the case of the President and Monica Lewinsky but in all that we do. In short, perhaps now more than ever, we must ask ourselves if we still have a common set of professional standards that work - and if we do, how we may best stick by them.

This paper attempts to shed light on these issues by exploring the practice of journalistic standards over the past half-century on one of the most challenging subjects in contemporary America: the rise of gays and lesbians and their demand for the civil rights shared by other Americans.

I highly recommend reading the above, Lisa Bennett relies on Newsweek quite a bit to make her point.

The homosexual addicts have a three phase plan according to information gathered from their various websites and publications.

Oh boy. Talk about paranoia.

Tomorrow: Homosexuals and Pedophilia? The Experts say No.

posted at 08:23:04 AM by Dominion

Tue, Jul 22 2003

Antibodies, Drug Resistant Disease, and AIDS. Is There a Correlation?

Jim Bomford continues to accuse Gays of being dirty, disease-ridden beings

As we saw yesterday, Jim Bomford is trying to scare the rest of us into believing that homosexuals present a clear and present danger. Below is another section of Bomford's paper. It is as full of twist, spin and half-truths as the first section.

Since before the advent of the Gay Plague (AIDS) homosexual addicts have regularly abused and misused antibiotics. Prior to engaging in their behavior they ingested large quantities of antibiotics in order to stave off the Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STD) and other diseases that they routinely encountered while feeding their addiction. They did this while attempting to convince society that this addiction was really a normal lifestyle. This prophylactic misuse of antibiotics has contributed to the breakdown of the effectiveness of these wonder drugs. Added to this misuse is the use of antibiotic and anti viral agents on AIDS patients who in effect have no immune system to support. It is the function of these medicines to support an immune system in the effort to fight off disease. Since these patients have no immune system the course of the use of the antibiotic is long and according to CDC data the longer an antibiotic is in use the greater the likelihood that the microbe it is combating will adapt. This has in fact been the case. We are now faced with a host of super microbes upon which our current antibiotics are becoming useless. A July 5 2002 report states that in one case in Japan and two in the US a common microbe Staphylococcus aureus (Staph) which has slowly been developing resistance to our entire arsenal of antibiotics has now developed a resistance to Vancomycin. This was the last and one of the most powerful medicines that we have.

Well once again we are treated with nothing but assertion with absolutely no research to back it up. This seems to be Bomford's specialty.

Once again Bomford is being "simple". The reasons for the rise of antibiotic resistance of bacteria are complex but one thing is for sure. Homosexual "abuse" of antibiotics have absolutely nothing to do with it. Let's take a look at some of the real reasons that bacteria is evolving resistance to most common antibiotics.

The first and most basic cause is simply evolution in action:

Resistance to antibiotics results from the transfer of genetic resistance traits among bacteria of the same or of different species. In general, the more a specific antibiotic is used, the greater the risk of emergence and spread of resistance against it, thus rendering the drug increasingly useless. To avoid such resistance, new antibiotics with similar, but not identical, chemical properties were developed which remained effective until resistance emerged and spread to these new drugs, too.

Another problem is the over prescribing of antibiotics by the doctors themselves:

Doctors wrote 12 million antibiotic prescriptions in a single year for colds, bronchitis and other respiratory infections against which the drugs are almost always useless, a study found.

Such indiscriminate use of antibiotics has contributed to the emergence of drug-resistant bacteria, a growing problem in the United States, the researchers said.

More than 90 percent of upper respiratory infections, including bronchitis and colds, are caused by a virus and are therefore impervious to antibiotics, researchers noted in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Doctors usually know this, but studies have suggested they may yield to pressure from patients -- or what they perceive to be the patients' expectations -- to prescribe a drug, even if it is unlikely to help.

Then of course we have patients that take antibiotics improperly, not finishing the entire prescription but taking it until they feel better:

Your child says her throat feels like sandpaper, her nose like a clogged pipe. Her eyes are watering and her head throbs. You ask her doctor for an antibiotic, but he tells you she probably has a viral cold and that antibiotics are useless for such illnesses. You plead and press until the doctor prescribes an antibiotic.

Or perhaps you're the patient and have been prescribed an antibiotic for a bacterial infection. Your doctor stresses that you take the medicine for the entire prescribed period. But you stop taking the antibiotic when you start to feel better, sticking the half-empty pill bottle in the cabinet.

These examples illustrate a common problem in health care - the misuse of antibiotics. Prescribed medicine is usually seen as the first line of defense against many infections. However, frequent and inappropriate antibiotic use has led to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Since these bacteria have outsmarted many standard antibiotics, stronger and more costly medications are needed to treat some infections.

Traditionally, the overuse of antibiotics was considered a physician’s problem. Now it’s seen as a patient’s problem as well. Although doctors are ultimately responsible for writing the prescriptions, they often do so at the persistence of patients. Therefore, you share responsibility with doctors in using antibiotics carefully and correctly

Even veterinarians are somewhat responsible:

Misuse and overuse of antibiotics in livestock and agriculture. Sometimes antibiotics are mixed into livestock feed in an effort to help the animals grow. Although the amounts are too little to treat infection in livestock, they may be just enough to keep resistant bacteria going strong. In addition, antibiotics may be sprayed on plants and trees to destroy bacteria on produce. The antibiotic residues left on these fruits and vegetables may attack the good bacteria in our intestines--and let the more powerful, resistant, and harmful strains survive.

I was able to find 25 studies on PubMed on the causes of bacterial resistance to antibiotics, yet I can't find one study that shows that gay abuse of antibiotics was one of the causes. And not just PubMed, a search on Google also failed to turn up anything. Hell I can't even find a study on just homosexual abuse of antibiotics. Needless to say I could also find no study linking bacterial resistance to AIDS patients.

Contained in a paper that I wrote in 1994 were reports on the effect of this behavior on public health and safety employees. It was then reported that a new strain of airborne tuberculosis (MDR) has developed. In NYC’s St. Clair’s Hospital seventy of the eighty health care workers working with homosexual AIDS patients contracted the disease In Florida MDR/TB swept through two prisons killing a guard and inmates. NYC a focal center for homosexual addiction has also become the epicenter of the TB infection. In 1992 Harlem had a TB rate 20 times the US average. In North Carolina migrant labor camps at that time the infection rate was 3600 per 100,000, ten times the rate of sub Saharan Africa. Florida is one of the top five States for HIV infection in the Nation.

Ooooo a paper that Bomford himself wrote in 1994 showing the effects of homosexual behavior on the rise of resistant bacteria and it's effect on health employees. What was Bomford's medical degree in? Oh that's right, he is a retired NYC cop! Yes I certainly trust retired cops to write competent medical papers! Give me a break, you would think that he could have come up with something a tad more current.

In fact MDR is on the rise for a reason that has already been mentioned. Patients taking their TB medications inncorrectly:

Multi-drug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) refers to TB cases that are difficult to treat with available drugs. MDR-TB has developed as the result of TB patients that did not complete their treatment with TB medications. The bacteria that survived developed a resistance to the drugs. MDR-TB poses a serious threat, particularly to people that have weakened immune systems, such as persons with AIDS or patients taking drugs to treat cancer.

Nor is MDR a "new strain of airborn (sic) TB", TB is an airborne disease and always has been:

How Is Tuberculosis Spread?

TB can only be spread by individuals with active tuberculosis disease! People who have been infected with TB but do not have active disease are not contagious!

Tuberculosis is transmitted through the air (airborne) by microscopic droplets of saliva or sputum containing the TB bacteria. Individuals with active TB disease spread infectious droplets by coughing, sneezing, singing or just talking. These droplets can be inhaled by anyone in the area. The bacteria can survive in moist or dried sputum for up to six weeks, but TB is killed by sunlight or ultraviolet light (UV) in a few hours.

Here is Lilly's take on the causes of MDR-TB: (warning: .pfd file)

Multi-Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis (MDR-TB) is a type of tuberculosis that often develops in patients who do not complete the proper treatment for TB. This can occur when a physician does not prescribe proper treatment regimens or when a patient is unable to adhere to therapy with first-line drugs. Once a strain of MDR-TB develops, it can be spread to others just as "normal" TB.

Or perhaps The American Lung Association:

Multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR TB) is a form of tuberculosis that is resistant to two or more of the primary drugs used for the treatment of tuberculosis. Resistance to one or several forms of treatment occurs when the bacteria develops the ability to withstand antibiotic attack and relay that ability to their progeny. Since that entire strain of bacteria inherits this capacity to resist the effects of the various treatments, resistance can spread from one person to another. On an individual basis, however, inadequate treatment or improper use of the anti-tuberculosis medications remains an important cause of drug-resistant tuberculosis.

Once again, the literature is bereft of any mention of homosexuals abusing antibiotics as a reason for the rise in MDR TB. One begins to wonder just what Bomford is so scared of!

I should not have to point out to my readers (well most of them), that correlation does not imply causation. Just because health care workers get MDR TB working on AIDS wards does not mean that MDR TB is caused by AIDS patients use of antibiotics. Or caused by AIDS patients at all.

Now in Orlando Hepatitis B, a fatal disease clearly connected to the sexual and drug addicts, has affected a number of EMS workers. While the City appears to be attempting to disconnect the infection from their employment there appears to be substantial evidence for the employees claim. Each of those employees could have unknowingly spread the infection to others in their care. In fact according to CDC in Dec 2001 there were 22,420 known active and former health care workers known to be infected with HIV. These are the known cases and may be only a small portion of the real number. Confidentiality restrictions in some States prevent even spouses from being informed when their mate is infected. Worse yet is the fact reported by Steve Sternberg of USA Today that 75% of the young homosexual addicts are unaware that they are infected.

Wow, Bomford gets a few things right. Yes there is a sexual component to the transmission of Hepatitis B. Yes, health care workers do become infected. My mother is in the fight of her life right now because she was exposed to Hepatitis C while working in a hospital lab. And yes, health care workers become infected with HIV. That is the risk they take when they decided to become health care workers. Both of my parents work in the health care field. My mother is a phlebotomist and my dad is a Registered Nurse. I remember quite well the reaction to HIV to the health care worker. Many of them refused to treat HIV positive patients. I asked my dad (who is a surgical nurse) how he felt about it. I was never so proud as when he replied "Such people do not belong in the health care field. You don't refuse to work on anyone, and if they refuse to work on HIV patients then this is not the career for them". Is this really surprising? Policeman do get shot, firemen do get burned and health care workers do get exposed to diseases. I really don't know what point Bomford is trying to make here. The blame does not lie with the person who is sick, nor the health care worker themselves. The blame lies at the feet of the hospital, who all too often do not provide adequate protection to the worker (warning .pfd file).

One more thing that Bomford gets right is that 75% of young homosexuals are unaware that they are infected. All things considered this is not so surprising. AIDS symptoms take years to manifest. The only way to insure that infected people know they are infected is regular testing, especially if they are members of a high risk group. No this was not the surprising part of the report, and you really have to wonder why Bomford neglects to tell us what the real surprise was:

The rates of unawareness among minority gay men ages 15 to 29 in the study were staggeringly high. Among those found to have H.I.V., the AIDS virus, 90 percent of blacks, 70 percent of Hispanics and 60 percent of whites said they did not know they were infected.

That's right, it is the fact that so many black men are unaware that they are infected with AIDS:

"It is alarming that in the third decade of the epidemic we don't know why so few black gay men know their status," said Phill Wilson, executive director of the African-American AIDS Policy and Training Institute in Los Angeles. Mr. Wilson said more research was needed to send "the best prevention messages to ensure that these men know their risk and understand how to prevent infection."

The study's findings got the conference off to an unnerving start as health officials reported that the spread of H.I.V in the United States continued to be disproportionately high among blacks.

Disease centers officials, who are responsible for tracking the AIDS epidemic in the United States, reported that 55 percent of new H.I.V. infections in 25 states from 1994 through 2000 were among blacks, which make up only 12 percent of the population in the United States.

[...]

In 2000, the latest year for which data are available, blacks accounted for 43 percent of AIDS cases, whites for 34 percent. Hispanics, who make up 13 percent of the population, accounted for 21 percent of the cases. Other ethnic groups accounted for the rest.

"The study shows that the very men who are at greatest risk of H.I.V. infection are those who are least likely to think they are at risk," Mr. Wilson said. "That's a direct call to develop not only new prevention messages but also new messengers." He added, "The reality is also that many African-Americans are not within the health care system at all."

Well I will admit that this sounds like a good argument to increase funding for AIDS education, but not much else.

Once again we are left with not a whole hell of a lot. Bomford has done nothing in the above but once again make a bunch of assertions with nothing to back them up. In fact, research seems to prove his assertions to be completely bogus.

Tomorrow: Homosexuality and Pedophilia. Is There A Correlation?

posted at 07:25:43 AM by Dominion

Mon, Jul 21 2003

Just a short note to let my readers know that I finished the remix of The Blue Man Group's song "What is Rock". Go give a listen if you dare.

posted at 08:31:25 AM by Dominion

Jim Bomford: Live in Fear of Homosexuals!

Because they are nothing more than disease-ridden sex addicts!

As promised here is the first close look at Jim Bomford's paper detailing the dangers of rampant homosexuality. As usual when dealing with large articles I am going to split this up into several sections. I will probably spend the whole week dealing with Bomford, with the last article on his radio appearance.

What Bomford is attempting to do here is fill heterosexuals with fear of homosexuals. He does this by making a lot of assertions with nothing to back it up, using scary languages, and dealing in a lot of half-truth. I am going to skip the first part of Bomford's paper for right now. I think you need a clearer idea of just how this Republican operates before we deal with his "I'm really a nice guy with lots of homosexual friends" tripe!

Homosexual addicts are a clear and present danger to our society. They are a threat to the public health, our economy, our health care delivery systems, and our children. Their affliction is self imposed by a conscious choice. There is not now nor has there ever been any viable evidence of a "gay gene" or any other physical cause for this addiction. As long as this choice had no affect on their normal neighbors it was of little importance and the debate could be limited to moral or religious issues. The parameters of the debate have changed dramatically over the past twenty years and now serious discussion of this addiction has become necessary. I will attempt to make my comments as simple as possible so the nature of the danger in promoting this addiction becomes obvious.

Well we can certainly agree that Jim is keeping his comments as simple as possible. In fact, he seems to love to use emotionally charged language instead of using facts and research!

First we have this idea that by the very fact that they are homosexual gay's must be sex addicts. This is not something Jim tries to prove, this is just something he choose to believe. As I have previously stated, I do not think the term "addiction" when joined with "sex" means a whole hell of a lot. One of the aspects of addiction is a physical dependency from a substance upon the human body. I have seen some therapist claim that the body becomes dependent on endorphins that are released during orgasm, but not one of them points to any research showing this is so. A very good argument as to why the addiction model is probably not the best way to work through sexual dysfunction can be found here:

But even if we were to agree that sexual addiction is a real disorder, Bomford still fails to show that homosexual behavior is a result of sexual addiction. In fact, the only people I found that described homosexual behavior as an addiction, as Jim does above, are religious organizations.

It is even worse than that. The reason Jim wants to claim that homosexual behavior is a result of addiction is because then he can claim (again without any evidence whatsoever) that their "affliction is self imposed by a conscious choice". This is simply nonsense. Let's take as an example one of the most common addiction, that of alcohol. Certainly it can be argued that taking that first drink is a "conscious choice", but the addiction itself is certainly not. There seems to be a strong genetic component to addiction (see here, here, here, and here ) something that Jim will completely deny in the next line.

As far as there being no "viable evidence of a "gay gene" or any other physical cause for this addiction" I suppose that depends on how one defines viable. I have a feeling that "viable" in Bomford's world and "viable" in a scientific sense is quite different. Viable in the scientific sense means that it is a developing (or developed) science, that research is ongoing and (most important) that money is available to do such studies. If Pubmed is an example, I would say that, at the very least, the question is an open one.

Yet even again, if we were to take Bomford's statement at face value, he still has a long way to go in proving that homosexuality and heterosexuality are "conscious" choices (needless to say, if homosexuality is not a choice, then neither is heterosexuality). Even if it is purely environment, personality formed by the environment can be just as immutable as one formed by genetics.

Then we have the kicker. The reason's to object to homosexuals does not have to be based in biblical morality, we can simply say that gays are a dirty disease-ridden danger to our lily white way of life!

AIDS in the USA is in all of its manifestations the disease of the homosexual addict. In 1982 the CDC established the link between AIDS and a French Canadian flight attendant named Gaetan Dugas. This homosexual addict was found to be intentionally spreading AIDS among gay men in California. He was reported to have had two thousand five hundred sexual partners. After establishing this connection CDC named the disease Gay Related Immune Deficiency (GRID) As in the case of the APA political pressure caused CDC to change the name to the less specific and more politically correct AIDS. AIDS spread from the homosexual addicts to the drug addicts due to male prostitution by the drug addicts. Some homosexual addicts also attempted to spread the disease to the normal population through female prostitutes. Drug addicts in turn spread the disease through shared needles. This was exacerbated by the replacement needle programs which increased not decreased needle sharing. In turn AIDS was spread to their children and into the blood supply through the sale of blood. Even today blood screening is not foolproof for HIV. Sterling Johnson a Federal Judge in the Northeast admitted the heterosexual Haitian/African strain when he ordered INS to admit 150 infected Haitians into the USA. The US AIDS strain was spread predominately by sodomy and intravenous drug use. The Haitian/African strain is spread by the mucous membrane of the vagina and promiscuity. There are approximately 1 million HIV/AIDS patients in the US today. The resulting AIDS related drug resistant diseases from this epidemic are both airborne and contact infectious.

So much misinformation in one paragraph. The mind simply reels. First off, AIDS was never a "gay" disease and it still ain't. The AIDS virus could give a shit if your gay or not gay. Now your gonna have to forgive me if this conversation dips into the distasteful but let's face it. What caused AIDS to make such inroads in the gay community of the 80's was not that it was the "gay" community but simply that male homosexuals engaged in a sex act that made transmission easy and the lack of protected sex. The gay community is a relatively small community so it should come as no surprise that these three factors is what caused AIDS to spread through the gay population. Nor should I have to point out that it is not only gays that engage in anal sex, heterosexuals have also been known to indulge. Let's not be silly, if AIDS were really "in all of its manifestations the disease of the homosexual addict" then why did it not spread in the same manner through the lesbian population? They are just as gay as males!

No anti-gay screed would be complete without mention of the infamous Gaetan Dugas. To say that Gaetan Dugas "was found to be intentionally spreading AIDS among gay men in California" is to make simple (and Jim did say he was going to be simple) determination from what is really a complex case. When the CDC found Gaetan they themselves were not all to sure how AIDS was spread. As is pointed out by the Urban Legends Reference Pages (Scope.com):

Hardest of all to classify are the motivations of Gaetan Dugas, AIDS "Patient Zero." In 1980 this charming and handsome Canadian airline attendant was diagnosed with Kaposi's sarcoma (a type of skin cancer). Until his death in 1984, he continued to engage in episodes of unprotected sex with a variety of partners. These were the early days of AIDS (which incidentally didn't get its name until 1982), and what was going on, let alone how it was being transmitted, wasn't at all clear. Back then there was no strong central authority braying out messages that unprotected sex could kill or even that AIDS was communicated through sexual contact. In the absence of that, those with a mind to could well ignore what was slowly surfacing in the press or dismiss it as so much hooey.

Dugas appeared to move between denial that whatever he had could be transmitted sexually ("Of course I'm going to have sex. Nobody's proven to me that you can spread cancer"), depraved indifference to his partners' wellbeing ("It's their duty to protect themselves. They know what's going on out there. They've heard about this disease"), and a desire to take others with him ("I've got gay cancer. I'm going to die and so are you"). Possibly his rationale came down to something much simpler -- he loved sex, if not his partners. Living under a death sentence, perhaps he was determined to enjoy his last moments on earth, and consequences be damned.

It would have been a lot more simple for Gaetan to ignore warnings about having sex at a time when the CDC could not offer any concrete evidence that sex spread AIDS. A lot harder to understand would be the largest example of the deliberate spreading of the AIDS virus. Unfortunately for Bomford, it was not a homosexual that did the spreading. Again from the same page:

There have been actual cases of the HIV-infected engaging in unprotected sex without first informing their partners of their condition. In the largest documented case of its kind, Darnell "Boss Man" McGee infected at least 18 women and girls. McGee, 28, had more than 100 known sex partners before he was slain in 1997 in an apparent robbery attempt.

I am not sure where Bomford picked up the idea that the name "GRIDS" came as a result of finding Gaetan, it was called GRIDS because at the time gay men were the ones getting the illness. At first the CDC thought that the disease might be a lifestyle-associated illness, linked to excessive stress to the immune system. One hypothesis regarding the cause of the new disease placed the blame on amyl nitrate, or "poppers" which are used to heighten sexual pleasure. This hypothesis soon fell by the wayside as the CDC became more and more sure that the cause was a highly infectious agent which depleted T cells, and could be transmitted through intercourse, blood, or blood products from mother to fetus. The name AIDS came about because the disease started to infect hemophiliacs, who had received contaminated blood transfusions. AIDS is a better description of the illness than GRIDS.

Nor should the number of partners Gaetan had be all that shocking. I seem to remember Magic Johnson, whom last I checked was a committed heterosexual, had an equally impressive number of partners.

The rest of Bomford's paragraph is nothing more than a lot of assertions, with nothing to back them up. All he is trying to do is provoke a feeling of fear when it comes to gay men and women. It is just as likely that AIDS made it into the heterosexual community because of bisexuals as it is homosexuals. There is no evidence that "Some homosexual addicts also attempted to spread the disease to the normal population through female prostitutes." Hell I would love to know just what "attempted to spread the disease" means! There is no evidence that those 150 Haitians spread anything to anyone, nor was the case just a simple (note again that word) order to allow some sick refugees in this country. (Click here for a small news note from the CDC) In fact, it appears that the spread of Subtype C (See below) is caused by men in the military stationed in countries where Subtype C is prevalent:

...routine testing of American servicemen in a San Diego naval medical center found three men with subtype E and two with subtype A.

The following year, screening conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at a Bronx, New York hospital found two people infected with HIV subtypes that are new to the United States. Whether these subtypes have spread further is unknown, but if they do take hold in the United States, Essex believes, a new, more diverse pattern of HIV infections may be imminent.

There is no such thing as a "US" strain of HIV and an "African" strain. There are subtypes to be sure, and Bomford does dimly have it right that one subtype has an easier time being spread through heterosexual intercourse (Subtype C):

Of the ten identified subtypes of HIV-1--the more virulent of the main two types of HIV--the only subtype prevalent in the United States and Europe thus far is B. Subtypes A, C, D, and E dominate the AIDS epidemic in the developing world, where the virus is spreading with horrifying speed. According to Essex, the subtype with the most frightening profile is C, which now accounts for half the infections in the world. Once it has spread into new countries, it often quickly surpasses the subtypes already there.

"We know many reasons why C really is different," Essex says. "It can, for example, copy its genome faster and probably mutate faster than any other HIV subtype." Essex adds that subtype C may also be activated more efficiently by cell factors released from the genital ulcers associated with sexually transmitted infections. As the virus has evolved, he notes, "it has adapted to do these things in a strategically important way."

Harvard AIDS Institute researchers have found that subtypes C and E grow far more readily in Langerhans cells--which line the cervix, the vagina, and the foreskin of the penis--than does subtype B, which appears to spread primarily through blood and blood products. Essex contends that these subtypes are spread more efficiently through vaginal intercourse, which helps explain why the U.S. epidemic of subtype B has spread most quickly among homosexual men and injection drug users, while in Africa and Asia, subtypes C and E have spread rapidly among heterosexuals.

However, he is quite wrong in his claim that "The US AIDS strain was spread predominately by sodomy and intravenous drug use. The Haitian/African strain is spread by the mucous membrane of the vagina and promiscuity." As we can see above, Subtype B "appears to spread primarily through blood and blood products". Whereas promiscuity does increases the chances of being infected with AIDS it is wrong to say that is how it is spread. More importantly, we are not talking about two different forms of AIDS, a "gay" form and a "heterosexual" form, We are talking about different viruses within HIV. The virus is evolving and finding better ways to transmit itself, it is not determining who is gay (so that gays get subtype B) and who is not (so the rest will get subtype C).

But this is exactly what Jim Bomford wants you to think. You are personally in danger because of those evil, dirty, diseased homosexuals that are doing everything they can to spread AIDS into the heterosexual community. This is rank nonsense.

The last sentence in this section is just another assertion with nothing to back it up. To say that "The resulting AIDS related drug resistant diseases from this epidemic are both airborne and contact infectious." is meaningless unless Bomford tells us just what those "drug resistant diseases" are. Perhaps he will offer us some evidence of this tomorrow!

So far Jim is not doing so well. Tomorrow we will look at another section of Jim Bomford's paper on the danger of homosexuality!

Tomorrow: Antibodies, drug resistant disease, and AIDS. Is there a correlation?

posted at 08:02:13 AM by Dominion

Thu, Jul 17 2003

Well I have all my computer woes fixed, the sun is shining and I am feeling pretty darn good. Hopefully nothing else will go wrong, and I will be able to post until I take my vacation (in late July).

It was really surprising that yesterday was as rainy as Tuesday. I thought for sure that once Claudette landed, it would clear pretty fast here in Houston. She hit nowhere near the city. By afternoon things were getting clear. That proved to be deceptive. We were in between to rain bands that did not stay apart for long. Yesterday morning was worse than when Claudette actually hit.

One of the worse things about being without a computer is my inability in keeping up with the contests on Acid Planet. They had eight contests running and I managed to miss six of them. I was able to upload my entry in the "Venus Hum" remix contest yesterday. Go give it a listen. Or click on the "Listen to My Stuff' link on your left if you want a whole list of my work.

Right now I am working on the "Blue Man Group" remix which is pretty cool. Blue Man Group does some interesting things with sound. One of these days I really will have to go watch their show.

In any case things are back to normal and hopefully "A Skeptical Blog" will once again be filled with text.

posted at 08:02:19 AM by Dominion

My Secret Life on the SCREC Mail List

How I was able to sneak on a public mail list and hide for over a year.

Well it looks as if (finally) Jim Daly has been made aware that I was on the Seminole County Republican Executive Committee (SCREC) mail list, and boy is he upset. Does my soul good to see this, since a person like Jim should be made upset. Thrice a day if at all possible. He seems to think I somehow sneaked on to the list, and was quite proud of being able to find my email account (it wasn't hard but more farther down) so I decided to share my story.

I first became aware of the SCREC mail list when a good friend of mine sent me an email written by Jim Bomford, the guy that thinks all homosexuals are sex addicted. It was on the proposition that this was a Christian Nation. In doing so he strung together a bunch of quotes by the Founding Fathers that were...well...inaccurate. You can read the article "The Myth of the Separation between Church and State!" by clicking here. This proved to be one of my most popular articles...I still get links to it.

Well needless to say I became interested in this SCREC group. So I went to visit their webpage as I was researching Bomford's letter. If you page down you will see that they have a Yahoo Group button for those who want to join the list. So I did. As we can see, there was no sneaking required. All I had to do was put my email address in the box, hit the button and voilà, I was a member. When I signed up I decided to use my spam address. I had belonged to email groups in the past and knew that the volume of mail sometimes exceeds what is reasonable. I didn't want my regular account to become cluttered with a bunch of email so I used (now pay attention) dominion@ev1.net. Wow I really worked hard to hide myself eh?

To tell the truth I did not think that there would be all that much there. The majority of mails seemed to involve meeting times and picnic locations and such. But every once in a while Jim Daly would let loose with a whopper that had me gaping! The first indication that this was going to be a list worth being on happened in December. In an attempt to spread a little Christmas cheer Daly decided to share a joke with everyone on the list. This was during the Trent Lott controversy and it really did surprise me that old Jim would feel that comfortable relaying a racist joke at the same time the most powerful Republican in Congress was losing his position for saying a lot less.

Jim also likes to repeat email he gets without bothering to check their source. In January he shared a piece he got called "I am a Bad American". At the time I did not comment on it, because I felt the piece spoke for itself. Then in May Jim re-sent the same screed this time crediting Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes. Jim seems to have forgotten that he sent this crap out in January since he claimed that Andy had said it "few weeks back". The body of the text had also changed in the "few weeks" that Jim had posted it. I had a hard time believing that Andy Rooney would say "ass" on TV, so this time I looked to see who really wrote it. Needless to say it was not Andy Rooney (nor George Carlin who has also been credited with this spew) it was a member of the Free Republic, under the title "I'm a Bad Republican".

Nor was it only Jim Daly and Jim Bomford who managed to make fools of themselves in front of the "enemy" so to speak. The list was up in arms over the possibility that gay high school students might enjoy a "Day of Dignity". Although I did not list names I should point out that the first letter is from none other than Jim Bomford (he outs himself by the "retired NYC Cop" claim).

The last two jokes that Jim shared with the list (and I shared with y'all) that finally gave me away. Boy he sure seems mad, not that I blame him. It must be embarrassing as hell to be caught in public in nothing but your panties so to speak. And btw Jim, you will have to wait till next week to see my response to Bomford's nonsense on the radio but not to worry, you will have a response. Because of my computer problems I have not been able to do much research, but what little I have leads me to conclude that Bomford has read a lot more into this "research" than is warranted.

So there it is. How I was able to get on the SCREC mail list and remain hidden for so long. I invite Jim Daly to continue to use the comment section (of course, it would be nice if he learned to use the comment section first. I had to delete a whole bunch of repeat entries, but as usual I did leave at least one copy, well except for the four blank entries). Spew all the bile you want Jim, I simply love knowing that I have gotten under your skin.

posted at 07:23:22 AM by Dominion

Tue, Jul 15 2003

Hurricane!

When it rains it pours. In more ways than one.

Well I have the computer up and running again. Still not sure just why my windows directory became corrupt, could be anything to a virus, to a bit of webpage code, to improper shut down. One of the great things about Windoze is it's inability to tell you what went wrong. Ah well. Things seem to be working just fine last night so I will keep my fingers crossed.

But of course, since I now have a working computer something else must go wrong. And so it has. We are in the midst of Hurricane Claudette. It looks like the eye will miss the Houston area (I hope, hurricanes are notorious for changing their minds) but the feeder bands are playing havoc with our weather. Lots of rain, lots of lightening and lots of thunder. Since I have had so much trouble with my computer lately I am going to upload this and shut it down. I don't want to take any chances.

Still this storm should not last long, I expect it to be clear by this evening. So I should be up and running at full strength by tomorrow. As long as we keep our electricity!

I may put off the look at Jim Bomford's white paper till sometime next week. Lots happening and an inability to comment on them is driving me crazy.

So it should be no later than Thursday before everything is up and running. I can't tell you how happy that makes me.

See ya soon!

posted at 09:28:54 AM by Dominion

Tue, Jul 08 2003

Computer Melt Down!

Damnit! Once again I find myself without computer. Monday morning after a re-boot I found I could not open windows. Kept telling me it could not find win.com (the file that starts Windows, not the website). It went into Dos easy enough so I decided to take a look. All of the files in my Windows folder were screwed. The directory structure was screwed. All of my system folders were screwed. Everything was screwed.

So I am in the process of once again formatting my drive and installing all of my programs. I don't think it will take a week this time. I am hoping that I will have everything up and running by tonight. Still ya know what they say about the "best laid plans of mice and men".

As soon as I am up and running we will take a close look at the Jim Bomford white paper. I have had a chance to take a closer look at some of the claims. Pretty much as expected...but more on that as soon as I can.

So see ya as soon.

posted at 09:05:19 AM by Dominion

Fri, Jul 04 2003

We are off for the weekend. Usually we spend the weekend at the Kemah Boardwalk, but this year we decided to go to Galveston. I had completely forgot that it was the 4th so I don't know how much editing I will get done, but at least I should be able to put together the first section of Bomford's paper.

Let us all remember those brave men and women who are involved in the thankless task of trying to bring peace and stability to the middle east. They did not ask to be there, but they are doing the best they can. Let's hope that there is no more death among our troops and that they will be able to come home soon.

Have a great holiday!

posted at 06:41:54 AM by Dominion

When I read this one over the SCREC mail list I just about had a cow. The stupidity of some people is simply amazing! I have some personal experience in this area but more on that later. Let's take a look at the complaint

Let me explain the situation in our office building and open it up for all to share their opinions.

My office is in a building shared by multiple companies. Their are four floors with a restroom on each floor, one men's and one women's. Because of the lack of respect we receive from a telemarketing company on the 3rd floor, the building was forced to lock the restrooms and issue keys to all it's tenants. My office is on the fourth floor. We recently had a new company move in that has one person that is confined to a wheel chair. The men's restroom has two urinals and two stalls of which one was set up for handicap. I guess there wasn't enough room and a complaint was filed (I believe with the city of Altamonte Springs), so the building owners were required to make the two stalls into one stall (removing the other toilet and covering the pipe with cement). They literally cut the divider out and made the two stalls into one. This must not have been enough room still, because the next phase was to put a divider down half the entire room, unplug the cemented drain pipe, and move the toilet from the one drain pipe to the other and now filling the other pipe (using something easier to remove than cement). However, the toilet paper roll is nowhere near the toilet and now gets put on the floor. Did I mention, in case some don't know, that toilets are taller for handicapped people and uncomfortable for most non-handicapped people. This also now means that the entire floor only has one stall for the men to use (I feel like the ladies do at sporting events already, having to wait in line).

Please don't get off on a tangent in support of the handicapped, because I certainly feel for their individual situations and trials. Especially those who have become handicapped while defending our United States. They deserve kudos.

My question is how much is too much. When does the minority out number the majority? Understanding both sides of the issue, I know there must be a line, but would like your opinion on this issue. We've been talking about rights to smoke and rights to breathe freely all day. Here's an issue as I see it, as one groups convenience vs another's.

Thanks in advance for your opinions, and don't laugh about the very comical turn of events; because it is happening and is unforutnate for the person footing the bill and comical at the same time.

Wow! Don't you just feel so sorry for this guy? Having to wait in line on his two good legs. Those same good legs can't reach the floor now, and he has to use his good ability to bend over in order to get to the toilet paper! When I read this I almost cried aloud in sympathy! Is it not horrible that the desire of one guy in a wheelchair to be able to fit in the bathroom stall would inconvenience so many healthy people? Not to mention the cost to the poor building owner. Laugh? Heaven forfend! Why it is enough to make you weep!

Yet I must send kudos because not everyone on the list seemed to miss the point:

At first read I thought your e-mail was a joke, written to strike confusion and dismay amongst the readers. You can't seriously consider compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act as some sort of overbearing intrusion on your life.

The fact that your feet dangle from the closest toilet to your office, thus causing you the inconvenience of having to walk ALL THE WAY to the third floor (oh wait, the telemarketers!) -- second floor, really strikes me as an odd complaint from a healthy, intelligent man as yourself.

When I was in my late teens - early 20s I used to do volunteer work for the Muscular Dystrophy Association. I never worked the telethon because it made me very uncomfortable to see people who were terminally ill paraded around as a sympathy sop to raise money. But I had a good friend who's brother and sister both had MD. So I worked at the MDA summer camp. We would take every child in Houston that had MD (and wanted to go) to a camp in the Big Thicket. There was a joy involved in enabling kids who normally would never get a chance to go camping to build a fire, put up a tent, and absorb nature. Of course this was back in the day when there was no law to insure that handicapped people had equal access to the normal comforts that we healthy people enjoy.

The camp we took the kids was not modified in any way. Therefore doing something as simple as going to the potty was impossible for the kids. Their wheelchairs would not fit through the camp bathroom doors, and even if they could the stalls were too small to fit a wheelchair, nor were their handrails. In order to help these kids do the simple act of going to the bathroom, we would have to lift them, carry them into the bathroom and hold them on the toilet so that they would not slip off.

I will never, ever forget the year we had a new camper, a fifteen year old boy, who was new to his wheelchair (been in it less than a year). He had loved to camp prior to the disease becoming so advanced, so it seemed natural to him to attend the MDA camp. The first time he had to go to the bathroom he was sobbing so hard that it broke my heart. Understand that he was humiliated because someone had to carry him to the toilet, pull down his pants and hold him on. And yes, the person who was helping him was me.

People this is not about the rights of the disabled superseding the rights of the healthy. It is about a person that could not use the toilet inconveniencing a dumbass.

This, to me, illustrates perfectly the difference between the right wing and the left wing in this country. The left wing realizes that in order to have a good society we have to give up a few creature comforts, for the comfort of all in the society. The right wing merely cries "What's in it for me".

Bah!

posted at 04:59:49 AM by Dominion

Thu, Jul 03 2003

Before I get too busy and forget, we have four new additions to the blogroll. So let's all give a great big Howdy to

Dodona Internet News
Burnt Orange Report
John Hoke's Personal Asylum
Prometheus 6

All of them are worth a read.

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posted at 06:12:38 AM by Dominion

As I told you yesterday, I am going to post Jim Bomford's entire screed against gays. I am going to do it without comment now, because it is going to take me a while to research it. But I want you to get a chance to see just how silly his arguments are. Friday I will post the SCREC discussion on the disabled. Then over the weekend I will edit the radio program and research this paper. I will spend all of next week going over it section by section.

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To: XXX Log Cabin Republicans

From: Jim Bomford

In Re: The Sexual Addiction of Homosexuality and Pedophilia commonly referred to as the "Gay Lifestyle"

Since any debate concerning this particular sexual addiction always results in personal attacks by its supporters upon the opposition I would like to be clear about my background and position.

Stereotype I

Our opponent is a "Homophobe". I have lost three friends to AIDS, two were Homosexual Addicts one was normal. Of the two men who were addicts one was a very good friend and I was Godfather for one of the children of the normal man. It was a horrible way to die suffering the pain of Kaposi’s sarcoma or the suffocation of Pneumocystis Carnii Pneumonia. Even more tragic is the fact that one of the addicts was considering treatment for his affliction when in 1973 the American Psychiatric and Psychological Associations under pressure from several small sexual addicts groups changed their opinion that Homosexuality was a mental illness. He did not have to die. A Homophobe would never have nor be concerned about such friends.

The normal man contracted AIDS when stuck with a contaminated needle during the course of his normal occupation. His death was also unnecessary.

Stereotype II

Our Opponent is a religious nut or a Bible thumper. I am not an active member of any religious organization. Any religious belief that I might hold would be personal and based on faith not fact. It is counter productive to use a metaphysical argument to support a political discussion. Metaphysics is based on opinion and by its very nature can not lead one to an empirical conclusion. In this context and for this discussion my religious beliefs are irrelevant.

Stereotype III

Our Opponent is attempting to impose his morality on the rest of us. A simple response to this is that all law is based on morality. A very basic example is Western Law penalizing polygamy, bigamy, adultery etc. It could be argued that the natural state of a male is polygamous. However we as a society have decided that it is in the best interest of our children and the family to restrict that impulse. Western restrictions on bribes and gratuities are also based on moral assumptions as are some of our laws relating to theft. The list goes on but in the case of the sexual addiction referred to as the "Gay Lifestyle" a moral decision is not necessary as I will demonstrate during this discussion.

Homosexual addicts are a clear and present danger to our society. They are a threat to the public health, our economy, our health care delivery systems, and our children. Their affliction is self imposed by a conscious choice. There is not now nor has there ever been any viable evidence of a "gay gene" or any other physical cause for this addiction. As long as this choice had no affect on their normal neighbors it was of little importance and the debate could be limited to moral or religious issues. The parameters of the debate have changed dramatically over the past twenty years and now serious discussion of this addiction has become necessary. I will attempt to make my comments as simple as possible so the nature of the danger in promoting this addiction becomes obvious.

Patient Zero USA

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