Archive for February 28th, 2009


Premature Postage

February 28th, 2009 by Oskar Kennedy

Don’t you hate it when you have a half-finished post that needs serious revising, and you accidentally hit “Publish” instead of “Save,” and then you don’t notice until people have already started to comment on it? No? Oh, it’s just me. You’re too careful to do something that stupid.

My post about the Colorado Republican state senator who thinks that an HIV-infected baby is an appropriate punishment for promiscuity wasn’t ready for a late-night infomercial slot, let alone prime time. Once it’s banged into proper shape, it will go back live, with all of your thoughtful comments intact, I promise.

Unless I hit a wrong button again.

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HIV Testing and Hot MILF Action

February 28th, 2009 by Oskar Kennedy

Here’s another tale from the state legislature files, where a politician can have a long public career by catering exclusively to the quivering, paranoid hindbrain of the electorate. 

Meet David Schultheis, state senator from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Mr. Schultheis recently took a remarkably principled offensive stand, standing as the lone vote against a bill which would require HIV testing for pregnant women in the state. It’s an important initiative; modern treatment for HIV-positive mothers can all but eliminate the risk of transmitting the disease to the baby, provided that the mother and her physician are aware that she has the disease.

Mr. Schultheis voted for the bill when it was in committee, but by the time it got to the floor of the state senate, he’d had a change of heart. He decided to vote no because HIV infection “stems from sexual promiscuity,” and he couldn’t vote for a law that would “remove the negative consequences [of] poor behavior and unacceptable behavior. 

The mind boggles at the brainfuckery in that statement. Anyone who has paid even the slightest bit of attention to public health literature since about 1982 should know that plenty of non sex fiends have contracted HIV. Partners who cheat, or who don’t know they’re infected, can pass the virus to women who may have never had another sexual experience. A woman who has unprotected sex with multiple partners is certainly more likely to get the disease, but AIDS is no more exclusive to sexually reckless women than it was to homosexuals or IV drug users when Ronald Reagan so casually dismissed it.

But I’m particularly flabbergasted by one necessary inference in that whole twisted train of thought. How, exactly, does HIV testing encourage promiscuity? Who would ever, EVER say to themselves, “Hey, I have a reliable way of knowing that I have contracted an incurable disease, which I could possibly communicate to my unborn baby. Time to go barebacking around town!” (I suppose they don’t call it barebacking when it’s a straight couple, but it’s just a fun verb to say.)

Seriously? I can almost, and I emphasize ALMOST, understand the fear that safe sex education will increase promiscuity. There’s a glimmer of paranoid logic to the idea that making any activity a little less mysterious and a whole lot less dangerous might embolden a few folks who wouldn’t otherwise have the guts to try it. It’s fearful and myopic and stupid, but not entirely without logic.

The thought process here, however, is just completely balls-up idiotic. HIV testing doesn’t prevent anything, and it certainly doesn’t cure the disease. It doesn’t make unprotected stranger sex any less dangerous. It just makes it possible to prevent the spread of the disease to the innocent unborn that usually give neocons such a legislative boner.

I have a hard time believing that anybody would seriously take the ability to detect a disease as license to stop worrying about catching it. That’s like saying we should stop testing people for cancer, because they’re just going to go out and start huffing weaponized plutonium. Then again, I may be underestimating how socially and intellectually crippled the victims of abstinence only education may be.

Thankfully, Mr. Schultheis later clarified his perspective, with this statement reported by the Rocky Mountain News:

“What I’m hoping is that yes, that person may have AIDS, have it seriously as a baby and when they grow up, but the mother will begin to feel guilt as a result of that. The family will see the negative consequences of that promiscuity and it may make a number of people over the coming years … begin to realize that there are negative consequences and maybe they should adjust their behavior. We can’t keep people from being raped. We can’t keep people from shooting each other. We can’t keep people from jumping off bridges. People drink and drive, and they crash and kill people. Poor behavior has its consequences.”

Yes, that’s right. This representative of the people of Colorado Springs wants to encourage the spread of HIV to babies that could otherwise be protected, so that their whoring mothers will feel guilty, and they and their families will understand the negative consequences of slutting it up.

But – and I’m just spit-balling here – isn’t the fact that now you or your relative has contracted HIV enough of a “negative consequence?” Yes, it’s a much more manageable illness these days, but it isn’t curable. An infected individual is obligated to take a daily regimen of expensive medication for the rest of her life. She must guard vigilantly against infection, knowing that, as the disease mutates at its usual alarming rate, the efficacy of the medicine will evntually dwindle, leaving her at the mercy of whatever infection comes her way.

Also, the phrase “We can’t keep people from being raped” is excruciatingly hypocritical. It’s true, we probably can’t stop every instance of rape. But your party, Mr. Schultheis, would prevent a rape victim from aborting a resulting pregnancy, because the life of that fetus is so important. Why, then, is the life and health of a baby conceived in a non-violent manner so much less worthy of protection that it should be sacrificed just to give its mother a massive guilt trip? If we have to further punish HIV-positive women for not being chaste can’t we just hand out scarlet letters, and not make the babies have AIDS?

What we’ve got here is a legislator so driven by the urge to punish female sexuality that he’ll abandon his party’s staunch defense of the rights of the unborn, along with any pretense of compassion or common sense, in order to make sure that HIV-positive mothers get the message that they are filthy tramps who deserve what they got. It’s a massive vortex of classist rage and sexist phobia, and it’s all so appalling that I have to go and lie down.

[Also, is it just me, or does it seem like whenever a politician exhibits this kind of anti-sex fervor, it usually turns out that he's running a 24-hour sex dungeon staffed by meth-snorting teenaged rent-boys out of the basement of his summer cottage in the Hamptons?]

Via Skepchick.

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