(Updated Oct. 18, 2004 to reflect Gary Glenn’s assignment of blame for uncorrected factual errors in the AgapePress article.)
From the religious-right propaganda service, AgapePress:
A Michigan pro-family activist says the single best way of preventing the spread of the virus that causes AIDS is to help get men to leave the lifestyle that accounts for most new cases of the disease. Thousands of AIDS activists recently held a “walk-a-thon” in Detroit, aimed at raising money supposedly to find a cure for the disease. Gary Glenn, president of the American Family of Michigan, sponsored the flying of a banner over the event promoting an “ex-gay” ministry website. The banner read: “Jesus Christ … HopeForHomosexuals.com.” According to Glenn, the statistics do not lie — sex between men is still the leading cause of HIV infections. He says, “Given that homosexual activity among men remains the single biggest cause of AIDS infection in the Detroit metro area and throughout the state of Michigan, the single most effective step we can take to stop the transmission of AIDS is to help men involved in that lifestyle escape it — get free of it.” It is not hateful, the pro-family activist adds, to offer someone a way out of a lifestyle that accounts for 61 percent of the new AIDS cases in the Detroit area. [Emphasis is XGW’s.]
AgapePress mocks a fund-raiser for medical treatments and cures for AIDS and misquotes Glenn’s AIDS statistics — or it is a misquote? In the comments below, Gary Glenn seems to say AgapePress misread statistics in his press release. If that’s the case, then why has no correction been issued?
The facts about HIV infection in Detroit were not difficult for XGW to find:
According to the Michigan Department of Community Health (PDF report), men who have sex with men (including gay, bisexual, “Down Low,” closeted, experimenting, and exgay men) accounted for 44 percent of new cases in 2002, and that percentage was declining steadily.
Other health news: Focus on the Family protests efforts to include the topic of sexual orientation in Massachusetts sex-education classes. Lacking a sensational incident to motivate readers, Focus invents one by implying that kindergartners are to be given lessons in gay sex techniques.
Whereas AgapePress at least seems to have a goal of arming its readers with [skewed] facts, FNIF seems solely dedicated to getting its readers worked up into an emotional tizzy. AgapePress stories will usually link to sources or organizations referenced in stories and provide those hard numbers which are still oftentimes wrong. These source citations and hard factual data is almost always lacking from Focus stories which really makes me wonder what is going on. Are they not genuinely interested in giving their supporters knowledge and talking points to arm themselves with in the culture war? Or could it be they are only interested in getting their readers so flustered they follow Focus’ instructions to call their elected officials. I’m beginning to think that the goal of Focus is essentially a pep rally.
Whether it’s 61% or 44% (not counting liars), that PDF paints a terrible picture for both gays and african americans.
It seems to me that the report paints a terrible picture in Michigan for:men who have sex with men without a condom, many of whom are coupled to women and (like exgays) claim not to be gay;intravenous drug users; andthe churches (many of them African American) that drive potentially risky behavior further into dishonest and unsafe territory through bigotry rather than compassionate conservatism.The ongoing percentage shift of new HIV cases away from MSM indicates that the disease has shifted further away from self-identified gays into the community of exgay, down-low, and drug-abusing men who play both sides — infecting uninformed women in the process.
Whether it’s 61% or 44% (not counting liars), that PDF paints a terrible picture for both gays and african americans.
Which has nothing to do with being gay or African American. If there are still a number of gay guys who refuse to use condoms, all the screaming the world won’t stop them.
With that being said, if these were heterosexual men, screwing women, then suddenly leaving once they find their girl friend or one-night-stand is pregnant, what would you say?
The problem is a MALE issue, not an exclusively gay, bisexual, African American or misc, if you make the orientation the issue, then you’ve completely lost the point of conversation.
Orientation and race don’t cause the spread of HIV/AIDS, ignorance and unsafe practices do.
Mike Airhart writes that “the facts about HIV infection in Detroit were not difficult for XGW to find,” but apparently they were hard to read.
First, Mike uses 2002 stats when more current stats (2003) are available on the web site of the Michigan Department of Community Health, which reports:
* Over 61 percent of AIDS cases in the metro Detroit area are the result of male homosexual behavior: 55.5 percent involve men who were infected by the disease through sexual activity with other men, and another 5.7 percent were men who were engaged in both homosexual behavior and injecting drugs.
2003 PDF form at: http://www.michigan.gov/documents/detroit_69466_7.pdf
And by “lifestyle,” I meant precisely that behavior to which these AIDS stats apply, i.e., homosexual activity between men.
Further, only 16 percent of AIDS cases in the Detroit metro area involve heterosexual activity, and only 0.7 percent involve a heterosexual person having sex with a partner that’s bisexual.
Did XGW fake its stats, or just use old stats and fail to report all the various categories that involve homosexual activity? Let’s see: The PDF that XGW cites does report that in 2002, only 44% of HIV infections were the result of men having sex with men. But Mike failed to include the additional 2% of cases in which men were involved in both homosexual activity and shooting drugs (a total of 46 percent).
It appears there may be a discrepancy between the 2002 cite by XGW and the 2003 cite by AFA-Michigan, in that the 2002 PDF reports only HIV infection rates, while the 2003 PDF we cited includes both new HIV infections and preexisting AIDS cases.
It appears unlikely that the two cites do in fact refer to the same combination of disease reports, because if they do, (1) the 2002 figures at 46% would be markably lower than has consistently been the case, and (2) it would reflect a very dramatic increase from 46% in 2002 to 61% in 2003.
Gary Glenn should reread the report that he linked, study his calendar, and learn the significant difference between a count of new diagnoses of HIV/AIDS and a count of all cases of HIV/AIDS.
His linked chart is dated January 1, 2003; it displays cumulative totals for all cases of HIV/AIDS, broken down by risk group, up until the end of 2002.
The report that I referenced analyzed new cases of HIV/AIDS diagnosed yearly from 1998 through 2002, and reported to the MDOCH through January 1, 2004.
I focused on the report’s assessment of new cases since that is what the Agape Press/Gary Glenn press release focused on: new cases.
The cumulative proportion of all living cases in metro Detroit, attributable to men-who-have-sex-with-men, is 61 percent if one includes combination MSM-drug abusers.
However, the Agape Press/Gary Glenn story misrepresented “61 percent” as the proportion of new cases, not all cases. In other words, Agape Press and Glenn misinformed their audience — and they continue to do so.
This is not a trifling matter; the distinction between all cases and new cases is critical, because new-case counts indicate current and future trends; cumulative totals indicate where the disease was five, 10 or 15 years ago when most of the infections occurred.
As the 2004 report indicated, the proportion of new HIV/AIDS diagnoses among men-who-have-sex-with-men was declining steadily in the Detroit area by the end of 2002.
The last paragraph of Glenn’s comment dated this morning again confuses a count of all cases with a count of new cases.
Furthermore, Glenn continues to demonstrate that he does not know the difference between sexual activity and a lifestyle.
I find any use of statistics and science by ex-gay activists to be incredibly disingenuous. They don’t care about science at all; it’s just a smokescreen to cover their real agenda–the repeal of any and all laws that protect GLBT people. Period.
What if science could prove “beyond the shadow of a doubt” that homosexuality is purely genetic (hint–that will never happen, because that’s a misunderstanding of the nature of proof). It wouldn’t matter. They’d hold onto their traditional interpretations of Scripture and say that we’re all sinners going to Hell, anyway. The ex-gay side only uses statistics and science when it suits their agenda.
Mike, I admire your efforts to point out inconsistencies, and I’m glad you’re doing so. But don’t lose the big picture here. Scientific evidence means nothing to the other side. It’s only a tool, another blunt instrument.
I appreciate the tutorial, Mike, but especially your acknowledgement that the stats cited by AFA-Michigan were in fact 100% accurate.
You wrote (as we did): “The cumulative proportion of all living cases (of AIDS) in metro Detroit, attributable to men-who-have-sex-with-men, is 61 percent if one includes combination MSM-drug abusers.”
I assume you’ll feel compelled to remove the allegation of “faked stats” from your original headline. Right?
Mr. Glenn,
I did not acknowledge that your stats were accurate, because they were not.
Once again: You and/or AgapePress falsely stated that 61 percent of new cases of HIV/AIDS were attributable to MSM:
That was false, not only because it overstated the proportion of new cases by 15 percentage points, but also because many of the new cases identify with the antigay “Down Low” movement, not a homosexual orientation.
Had it said 61 percent of all living cases of HIV/AIDS were attributable to MSM, and acknowledged that HIV/AIDS is growing fastest among the wives and girlfriends of antigay African-American men who have anonymous and secretive sex with other men, then I believe it would have been accurate.
Since the word “faked” bothers you, I have changed it to “false.”
Chris- good points. When scientific groups report that they believe gays cannot change their attractions, they are liberal groups. But, when science supports their claim, the religious right jumps to embrace it.
Mike, I am glad you pointed out his errors. Nothing gets under my skin more than “religious” people that speak out against the sin of homosexuality, yet use intentionally false information while doing so.
Mike, it’s your web site, but even your own readers can see that it’s you who’s making false allegations.
For example, you wrote above (in a previous post):
“The last paragraph of Glenn’s comment dated this morning again confuses a count of all cases with a count of new cases.”
In fact, the very paragraph to which you refer (in my original post above) states that “it is UNLIKELY” that we’re talking about the same thing.
As you’ve made clear, you’re talking only about “new” cases, obviously to try to minimize the overwhelming cause-and-effect relationship between male homosexual behavior and AIDS transmission.
And as I wrote in my original post (next to last paragraph), the Michigan Dept of Health stats AFA-Michigan cited “includes BOTH new HIV infections and preexisting AIDS cases.”
And our MI DEP of Health stats as originally cited are in fact 100% accurate, as you yourself acknowledged when you wrote (in a previous post above):
“The cumulative proportion of all living cases in metro Detroit, attributable to men-who-have-sex-with-men, is 61 percent if one includes combination MSM-drug abusers.”
You also wrote that you “focused on the report’s assessment of new cases since that is what the Agape Press/Gary Glenn press release focused on: new cases.”
Intentionally or not, this statement is a half-truth at best. Agape Press’s imprecise paraphrasing aside, our news release — and my posts on this page — clearly refer to all existing AIDS cases in the Detroit area.
The original news release follows below in full. If you can find the word “new” in it, please let me know:
AMERICAN FAMILY ASSOCIATION OF MICHIGAN
—-
N E W S R E L E A S E
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Sat., Sept. 18, 2004
CONTACT: Gary Glenn
Family group to fly Christian
message over AIDS Walk Detroit
ROYAL OAK, Mi. — Over 2,500 men, women, and children set to walk the streets of Royal Oak Sunday morning during 2004 AIDS Walk Detroit will witness a statewide pro-family group’s message of hope that homosexual behavior — far and away the leading cause of AIDS transmission in metropolitan Detroit — can be abandoned and overcome.
The American Family Association of Michigan has hired a commercial pilot to fly a banner over the three-mile walk along Main, Catalpa, and Woodward from approximately 10:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, Sept. 19th. The banner will read as follows:
HOPE FOR HOMOSEXUALS.COM
The banner points to the web site http://www.HopeforHomosexuals.com, which offers testimonials and other information about “thousands of ex-gays…(who) have now ‘come out’ of homosexuality to lead healthy, fulfilling lives.”
The web site includes links to Christian ministries, including a metro Detroit office located in Sterling Heights, which are staffed by individuals formerly but no longer involved in homosexual relationships and which offer counseling services to individuals who wish to abandon such behavior:
* Reconciliation Ministries, Detroit, http://www.recmin.org. Executive Director: Dan Hitz, Sterling Heights. 586-739-5114.
* Land Office Ministries, Grand Rapids. Director: Dann Youle, 616-550-0601.
* In His Image, Saginaw. http://www.inhisimagesaginaw.com Director: Ellen Wainwright, 989-482-1312.
* Corduroy Stone, Lansing. Mike Jones. 517-371-2773 or cstone@msu.edu.
* Deliver Ministries, Jackson. Michelle Weber. 517-787-6763.
AFA-Michigan President Gary Glenn said the banner’s purpose “is to offer hope and help to families and individuals who are involved in behavior that puts them at the highest risk of being infected with the deadly AIDS virus.”
–
“Since male homosexual behavior is by 3-to-1 the single largest means of AIDS transmission in metro Detroit, it’s a fact that helping men escape the homosexual lifestyle altogether is unquestionably the single most effective way to prevent the spread of this deadly disease,” Glenn said.
“Professional AIDS activists browbeat society to be ‘politically correct’ and ignore the fact that this deadly disease is overwhelmingly a result of homosexual behavior,” he said. “To save lives, society must instead have the moral courage to be scientifically correct and rational about homosexual behavior and AIDS, just as we are about the fact that smoking tobacco causes cancer.”
According to the Michigan Department of Public Health:
* Over 61 percent of AIDS cases in the metro Detroit area are the result of male homosexual behavior: 55.5 percent involving men who were infected by the disease through sexual contact with other men, and another 5.7 percent who were engaged in both homosexual behavior and injecting drugs.
https://www.michigan.gov/documents/detroit_69466_7.pdf
* Twenty percent of AIDS cases in metro Detroit are the result of injecting drugs without involvement in homosexual activity.
* Only 16 percent of AIDS cases in metro Detroit are the result of transmission through heterosexual activity, only 1.6 percent involve babies who acquired the disease from their mothers at birth, and only one percent involve exposure to infected blood.
“True compassion does not mean enabling, encouraging, or legitimizing behavior that puts other people’s lives and health at risk,” Glenn said. “The only truly compassionate response, if we truly care for others’ health and well-being, is to discourage homosexual behavior and offer individuals hope and help in finding a way out.”
AFA-Michigan is the state’s leading public policy voice against the promotion or legitimization of homosexual behavior, which research indicates is associated with a dramatically higher incidence of domestic violence, mental illness, substance abuse, eating disorders, serial promiscuity, life-threatening diseases such as AIDS, cancer, and hepatits, and premature death by up to 20 years.
A Canadian study published in 1997 by Oxford University’s International Journal of Epidemiology reported that “life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality were to continue, we estimate that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years will not reach their 65th birthday.”
* “Modelling the impact of HIV disease on mortality in gay and bisexual men,” International Journal of Epidemiology, Oxford University, 1997 at: https://ije.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/26/3/657?maxtoshow=&HITS=10&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&searchid=QID_NOT_SET&FIRSTINDEX=&volume=26&firstpage=657&journalcode=intjepid
* Also cited by Canadian Medical Association Journal, Jan. 2000, at: https://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/162/1/21#SEC3
Of course the big question that is begged is what kind of homosexual behavior is transmitting AIDS: Promiscuous unprotected sex. One doesn’t have to be a homosexual and have promiscuous unprotected sex. I don’t.
The smoking analogy is valid: One should be concerned about smoking and its health effects as one should be concerned about promiscuous unprotected homosexual sex and its health effects. Being gay is about loving someone of the same gender. And that doesn’t need to be repressed in order to lower the AIDS transmission rates. Neither does responsible homosexual sex.
And the IJE study no longer had valid numbers, as the authors of the study freely admit. So why are you still citing it as if it were?
And the study was never meant to be applicable to the general gay population, just one group of subculture oriented gays from one major Canadian city during the worst periods of AIDS, before the advent of new breakthrough treatments.
Well, to your credit, at least you aren’t still citing the phony Paul Cameron lifespan numbers.
Here is what the authors of the IJE study have to say on the current status of the figure. And note how they utterly disapprove of the way folks like Mr. Glenn have been abusing this figure to spread bias against gays:
https://ije.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/full/30/6/1499
Gay life expectancy revisited
Robert S Hogg, Steffanie A Strathdee, Kevin JP Craib, Michael V O’shaughnessy, Julio Montaner and Martin T Schechter
British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, St Paul’s Hospital, University of British Columbia, Vancouver Canada. E-mail: bobhogg@hivnet.ubc.ca
Over the past few months we have learnt of a number of reports regarding a paper we published in the International Journal of Epidemiology on the gay and bisexual life expectancy in Vancouver in the late 1980s and early 1990s.1 From these reports it appears that our research is being used by select groups in US2 and Finland3 to suggest that gay and bisexual men live an unhealthy lifestyle that is destructive to themselves and to others. These homophobic groups appear more interested in restricting the human rights of gay and bisexuals rather than promoting their health and well being.
The aim of our research was never to spread more homophobia, but to demonstrate to an international audience how the life expectancy of gay and bisexual men can be estimated from limited vital statistics data. In our paper, we demonstrated that in a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 21 years less than for all men. If the same pattern of mortality continued, we estimated that nearly half of gay and bisexual men currently aged 20 years would not reach their 65th birthday. Under even the most liberal assumptions, gay and bisexual men in this urban centre were experiencing a life expectancy similar to that experienced by men in Canada in the year 1871. In contrast, if we were to repeat this analysis today the life expectancy of gay and bisexual men would be greatly improved. Deaths from HIV infection have declined dramatically in this population since 1996. As we have previously reported there has been a threefold decrease in mortality in Vancouver as well as in other parts of British Columbia.4
It is essential to note that the life expectancy of any population is a descriptive and not a prescriptive mesaure.5 Death is a product of the way a person lives and what physical and environmental hazards he or she faces everyday. It cannot be attributed solely to their sexual orientation or any other ethnic or social factor. If estimates of an individual gay and bisexual man’s risk of death is truly needed for legal or other purposes, then people making these estimates should use the same actuarial tables that are used for all other males in that population. Gay and bisexual men are included in the construction of official population-based tables and therefore these tables for all males are the appropriate ones to be used.
In summary, the aim of our work was to assist health planners with the means of estimating the impact of HIV infection on groups, like gay and bisexual men, not necessarily captured by vital statistics data and not to hinder the rights of these groups worldwide. Overall, we do not condone the use of our research in a manner that restricts the political or human rights of gay and bisexual men or any other group.
References
1 Hogg RS, Strathdee SA, Craib KJP, O’Shaughnessy MV, Montaner JSG, Schechter MT. Modelling the impact of HIV disease on mortality in gay men. International Journal of Epidemiology 1997;26(3):657–61.[Abstract]
2 Based on information obtained from the following three websites: https://www.frc.org/ie/important/important0400b.html, https://www.geocities.com/liberalwatch/showtime.htm, and https://www.tcyes.org/page2.html
3 Based on correspondence with Olli Stålström regarding use of our paper by some Finnish citizens to oppose a proposed to legalize civil unions between members of the same gender (website: https://www.finnqueer.net/juttu.cgi?s=80_10_1).
4 Hogg RS, O’Shaughnessy MV, Gataric N et al. Decline in deaths from AIDS due to new antiretrovirals (letter). Lancet 1997;349:1294.[Medline]
5 Gray A, Hogg RS. Mortality of Aboriginal Australians in Western New South Wales 1984–1987. Sydney: New South Wales Department of Health, 1989, p.61.
Gotta love those conservative christians
>The November Vanity Fair presents a long article on how Bush’s supporters did McCain dirty in the South Carolina primary 41/2 years ago….
>After McCain’s surprise victory in the 2000 New Hampshire primary threatened to derail Bush’s march to the nomination, the Bushies made phone calls and sent out leaflets in South Carolina spreading rumors that McCain had fathered a black child, that wife Cindy was a drug addict and other slanders.
>Bush ended up winning the state and securing his political future….
>Francis Marion University political scientist Neal Thigpen recounted that shortly before the primary election, he received a phone call from a man who said “he was on leave from Gov. Tom Ridge’s staff in Pennsylvania and down here working on the Bush campaign.”
>”The man said, ‘I understand you’re for McCain,’ and I said, ‘Yes,’ ” Thigpen recounted, “and he proceeded to tell me that Cindy was a drug addict and this kind of stuff.”
>Christian Coalition official Roberta Combs admitted to [VF reporter] Gooding: “I make a lot of things happen behinds the scenes and under the radar … It doesn’t matter who gets the credit, the main thing is just winning. But, yeah, we had some fun during that primary …”
https://www.nydailynews.com/news/gossip/story/238283p-204463c.html
They lie like hell.
Mr. Glenn:
I am always fascinated by the use of science by those whose “religions” reject scientific methods and inquiry in favor of myth and superstition. They rarely get the science right.
You are correct that HIV has had a devastating effect on the gay male population of America and Western Europe, but a true analysis of the disease requires a global perspective. Of the more than 60 million known HIV cases (both deceased and currently living with the disease), fewer than 1 in 20 can be traced to male/male sexual contact (and exactly 1 case in the entire world has been traced to female/female sexual contact).
HIV has found its way into every single country, every culture, every continent (except Antartica) on the planet, and has used a variety of human behaviors to make its inroads. Those behaviors include sex, sharing of needles by drug users, poor medical practice (which normally also means shared needles) and heterosexual procreation (mother to child transmission). If you really believe that the US and Western Europe would somehow have been spared HIV if it had not exploited the promiscuous gay sub-culture of the 70s, you are simply fooling yourself.
To put it simply, the gay male population was the canary in the coal mine for the Western world, and had we read the warning signs appropriately in the 80s, we could have largely stopped the epidemic. Instead, pseudo-Christian Jesus-cult-of-personality people like yourself used the disease to spread the evil of bigotry and hate. Now we see the consenquences, as male/male sexual activity accounts for a smaller and smaller percentage of new HIV cases.
But even that statistic hides the amazing public health story of the 80s and 90s. Largely without federal government assistance, the gay and lesbian community rallied together and dramatically reduced the rate of HIV infection in this country, through the teaching of safer-sex practices.
I have worked in health care since the late 80s and remember the initial estimates of the scope of the epidemic – the predicted estimates for new cases in the late 90s were astronomically higher than the actual number of cases turned out to be, because epidemiologists in the late 80s could not foresee the amazing effect of safer sex practices on the course of the disease. Even before the rise of protease inhibitors, which nearly eliminated mortality from HIV infections, the number of new cases was dramatically below predictions in the early 90s, because of the work of the non-bigoted in this country.
Once we got an administration that believed in science, not “religious” ideology, in the Clinton years, the public health campaign really got moving, and the effect was clear by the end of the Clinton years.
Now we see HIV rising again, and it is NOT in the openly gay population. In fact, at its worst HIV’s prevalence was lower than 10% in the openly gay male population, and new infections of those over 30 in that population today are very low. The two groups of men who are currently most likely to acquire HIV through male/male sexual contact are 1) those on the down low (and Mike, it is wrong to paint that phenomenon only as an African-American one, although the high level of anti-gay bigotry in the African-American community does not help) and 2) young gay men who both did not experience the plague years and are graduates of “abstinence education” programs, which lie to young people.
Couple those phenomena with the Bush administration’s abandonment of proven HIV prevention methods, and you see the crisis we have today. Interestingly, those kids who are not raised in your perverted sub-culture still receive some of the safe sex methods – basically you are killing your own children, a sin for which you will pay dearly when your time comes.
Finally, please remember, there is hope for those who are trapped in the Jesus-cult lifestyle. You have the choice to leave that immoral, unChristian and unethical world and join the human race. You can change your religious behavior, and work to better your society. Perhaps one day you will lose your current moral arrogance, stop believing you know the mind of God, and find your humanity again. If not, I fear you will find a special place in Hell reserved for you.