Living Out Loud with Darian

Last week I sat and watched the media and the right wing anti-gay machine use the spread of MRSA(Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus)amongst gay men as a tool to further demonize men who have sex with men. I sat in shock and disbelief as if it were the early 80's and G.R.I.D.(Gay Related Immune Deficiency) was just being discovered, the disease we would later come to know as AIDS.

Matt Barber, Policy Director for Cultural issues with Concerned Women for America (Concerned Women for America), said, “The medical community has known for years that homosexual conduct, especially among males, creates a breeding ground for often deadly disease. In recent years we have seen a profound resurgence in cases of HIV/AIDS, syphilis, rectal gonorrhea and many other STDs among those who call themselves ‘gay.’

“The human body is quite callous in how it handles mistreatment and the perversion of its natural functions. When two men mimic the act of heterosexual intercourse with one another, they create an environment, a biological counterfeit, wherein disease can thrive. Unnatural behaviors beget natural consequences.

A week later the doctors from The University of California San Fransisco involved in the statement that went around the world regarding MRSA infection in gay men are scrambling to retract the statement or at least be more specific in the language used.

We deplore negative targeting of specific populations in association with MRSA infections or other public health concerns,” Dr. Henry Chambers, one of the report’s authors and a professor of medicine at the University, said he was surprised by how the report had been spun.

“I think we were looking at this from a scientific point of view and not projecting any political impact,” he said. “We were focusing on the data. You want to make sure it’s as right as possible and written up in a form that reviewers would understand what you’re trying to say, and do it in a clear manner so it’s not subject to misinterpretation. Which is what happened later, it appears.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which helped finance the study, affirmed on Wednesday that the disease was not sexually transmitted or limited to a certain type of person. It is transmitted through skin-to-skin contact, the agency said in a statement, and is widespread in hospitals and among hospital workers.

“These infections occur in men, women, adults, children and persons of all races and sexual orientations,” the statement read, adding that while the particular strain identified in the report had been found in gay men, it had also been found in people who were not gay.

But I guess the media failed to report the last part of that statement. I wish I could say I was surprised.

Read the entire article from the New York Times here.