Living Out Loud with Darian

I've received my share of homophobic and racist hate mail over the years but it's always a treat when the mail is sent by someone of the professional wingnut sect. I had the pleasure of waking up to the following comment by "Dr." John Diggs on a post I wrote earlier this year about New Hampshire representative Nancy Elliot's distasteful and flat out wrong remarks regarding gay sex during a legislative session in an attempt to block marriage equality in her state.


"Gay men sexualize human waste, including the medically dangerous practice of coprophilia, which means sexual contact with highly infectious fecal wastes."


"Male homosexual behaviour is not simply either 'active' or 'passive,' since penile-anal, mouth-penile, and hand-anal sexual contact is usual for both partners. Mouth-anal contact is the reason for the relatively high incidence of diseases caused by bowel pathogens in male homosexuals."


JOHN R. DIGGS, JR., M.D.


everyone is learning what gay really is- and no amount of lying with change what everyone learns.."


Don't you just love it when they're not afraid to publicly attach their name and professional credentials to their brand of crazy? Now a little background on who this African-American(and I use that term loosely) spawn of Jerry Fallwell and Tony Perkins really is. Thank god (with a little g) for the "internets".


According to Diggs' profile on Ambassador's Speaker's Bureau website he is a board-certified Internist who has put his medical training and 15-plus years of clinical experience to work in developing a series of messages advocating the sanctity of human life and the proven benefits of sexual restraint. His central theme: Overwhelming scientific evidence supports the inherently reasonable and, at one time, universally held belief that sex belongs exclusively inside marriage.


A board certified doctor who has time to spew misinformation and homophobia on a little blog thingy? Really? Diggs' speaker's bureau has carefully sugar coated his vile and hateful message but the truth about who he is can be found after a simple google search. Thankfully South Carolina based black gay activist and Pam's House Blend diarist Alvin McEwen has already destroyed many of the "Dr's." talking points and outdated statistics written in his propaganda piece "The Health Risks of Gay Sex."


From Imp In Training: John R. Diggs' lies(PDF)


In another section, Diggs gives another distortion about gays and sexually transmitted diseases. In the summary section entitled Physical Health, he claims that :


“Common sexual practices among gay men lead to numerous STDs and physical injuries, some of which are virtually unknown in the heterosexual population.”


And what are these diseases? Diggs had this to say: There is an extremely high rate of parasitic and other intestinal infections documented among male homosexual practitioners because of oral-anal contact. In fact, there are so many infections that a syndrome called “the Gay Bowel” is described in medical literature. ‘Gay bowel syndrome constitutes a group of conditions that occur among person who practice unprotected anal intercourse, anilingus, or fellatio following anal intercourse.’ . . . the vast preponderance of patients with these conditions are men who have sex with men.”


Diggs is claiming that gay men are afflicted with “gay bowel syndrome.” But “gay bowel syndrome” is an obsolete medical term.“Gay bowel syndrome” is a term that religious conservative organizations often use in order to connotate the worst stereotypes about gay sex: gay men insert penises or whatever is handy when a penis is not available in the part of their bodies that are for waste disposal. Consequently, they are the victim to many diseases involving bacteria and feces due to this.


However, according to the "Free Online Dictionary and Thesaurus,” or
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com: “Gay bowel syndrome was a term first used in 1976 prior to the discovery of AIDS, to describe a series of parasitic disorders caused by oral/anal contact and allegedly related to gay male sexual activity. The term was abandoned by the medical community in the 1980s dismissed because the problems that attributed to it were not specific to homosexuals, not confined to just the bowels, nor did it meet the medical definition of a syndrome.”


The site also says the term is still commonly used by anti-gay organizations, as a reason supposedly why homosexuality has a negative effect. This is true, because when one searches online via yahoo or google, he will find a litany of anti-gay websites, which go into detail as what gay men supposedly do sexually. Details, not to prove any facts but to spark a negative reaction by exploiting whatever stereotypes exist about gay men and anal sex. No credible researcher or physician uses the term and those who once did are quickly getting rid of it.


I've written it before and I'll copy and paste it again: Why are some straight folks so obsessed with gay sex? I bet Diggs and his ilk would be shocked to know that anal sex is not practiced nor enjoyed by all gay men and there's a large amount of straight men and women who enjoy this particular sexual act.


Diggs is married and the "beaming father of three children" and is obsessed with gay men and gay sex which can only mean one thing and we all know what it is...cue Eddie Long and Ted Haggard.


You just continue being the black face of the religious wingnuts who are using you for their personal and political gain while they privately hate you and those who look like you Diggs. I gladly give you the Negro Please Award.