dmarker
November 5, 2006, 12:39 PM
Why do I say this?
Before the Stonewall Movement between the years 1970 and 1975, society forced many homosexual men to live straight lives at least in public. Gay men married women and had premarital and/or extramarital sex with women to keep up appearances. But this did not change their natural inclinations, so they would seek male to male sex in "tea parties" or "gardens", often bathrooms in public places where names were rarely exchanged unless fake. And a man could have sex with multiple partners in a few hours.
With a disease with a long dormant period and symptoms caused by secondary diseases (AIDS is not the cause of death, the cancer or disease that comes with a suppressed immune system is the cause of death), the situation would have become truly horrific. Repressed homosexual men would have acquired HIV through anonymous sex and then returned to their "straight" lives to pass HIV to their female sex partners who would have continued to pass on the disease to hetrosexual partners and their unborn children.
Since these men would have died of cancers and other diseases without knowing that other homosexual men had suffered the same fate, doctors would not have discovered the underlying condition, HIV, until the disease had reached truly epidemic proportions.
But it was the Stonewall movement and the fact that homosexuals started to live openly that enabled doctors to discover the common root of these seemingly disparate diseases and cancers and slow the spread of HIV.
In conclusion, the Stonewall movement has saved many lives and we should be thankful to gay men for living as their natures intended.
Before the Stonewall Movement between the years 1970 and 1975, society forced many homosexual men to live straight lives at least in public. Gay men married women and had premarital and/or extramarital sex with women to keep up appearances. But this did not change their natural inclinations, so they would seek male to male sex in "tea parties" or "gardens", often bathrooms in public places where names were rarely exchanged unless fake. And a man could have sex with multiple partners in a few hours.
With a disease with a long dormant period and symptoms caused by secondary diseases (AIDS is not the cause of death, the cancer or disease that comes with a suppressed immune system is the cause of death), the situation would have become truly horrific. Repressed homosexual men would have acquired HIV through anonymous sex and then returned to their "straight" lives to pass HIV to their female sex partners who would have continued to pass on the disease to hetrosexual partners and their unborn children.
Since these men would have died of cancers and other diseases without knowing that other homosexual men had suffered the same fate, doctors would not have discovered the underlying condition, HIV, until the disease had reached truly epidemic proportions.
But it was the Stonewall movement and the fact that homosexuals started to live openly that enabled doctors to discover the common root of these seemingly disparate diseases and cancers and slow the spread of HIV.
In conclusion, the Stonewall movement has saved many lives and we should be thankful to gay men for living as their natures intended.