OT: [at-l] Hiker needs Help Doing Virginia

[cballs@mindspring.com (cballs@mindspring.com)]

I don't want to get into this on this list becasue it isn't appropriate but as you've taken up the gauntlet on the list I'll respond to it in an equal forum and then we can take this off list if you want to continue the discussion.


On Sun, 12 May 2002 23:59:32 -0400 Clark Wright <icw39@ncfreedom.net> wrote:

SNIP >- but, then the bit about he/she without sin casting the
first stone kicks in, along with the passing of the years, and I'm not
quite so quick to strike . . .


Perhaps your sermon about throwing stones ought more appropriately be directed at Jesse Helms.  Oh that he would practice such profoundly Christian sentiments!  He gives Christianity a bad name.  Throwing homophobic stones is all he's ever done because he knows his constituents.  He's a politician.  Stirring up groundless fears and riding the waves of human ignorance are two of the ways so many of them stay in power. Jesse Helms is a bigot.  We have them in New York too. 

Helms support for the funding of AIDS research and treatment overseas doesn't have anything to do with gay people.  AIDS is not a homosexaul disease.  The overwhelming degree of transmissions of the AIDS virus in human populations in the world is through heterosexual activity. (Africa, India, Malaysia, China, Southeast Asia, etc.)  In Europe and North America most instances are still through homosexual activity but certainly not exclusively.  There are several reasons for this and I would recommend Randy Shilts' "And The Band Played On' as a good introduction for why and how poorly the Public Health apparatus of the U.S. and the Reagan Administration initially responded, both of which contributed to a higher infection rate.  The French doctors, who first isolated the HIV virus, thought the American media's initial coverage of the epidemic "insane."  Also "My Own Country, A Doctor's Story" by Abraham Vergehese is still the best book ever written about AIDS in America, in my opi!
nion.  This infectious disease specialist, born to Indian and Egyptian parents in India, became by default the "ADIS doctor" in Johnson City, Tennessee in the 1980's.  His understanding and acceptance, even love, of the people of Johnson City and the surrounding area as he tells of their struggles with AIDS will break your heart, if you have one to break.  I think only two of the patients he writes about were gay.  Three of them were married, one was a married woman who discovered her husband's 18 year relationship with another trucker after he'd infected her with the virus.  The other man was infected from a blood transfusion at Duke University Hospital.  His story is a powerful testament to genuine Christianity.  Of the gay men Vergehese did write about, his awareness and sensitivity to their plight, their pilgrimmage to the big cities to find acceptance and their painful return home for so many of them caught in the awful crucible of AIDS is right on target.  He came to und!
erstand on a profound level the personal meaning and societal dynamic of homosexuality in America. It takes an outsider sometimes to see.  He is heterosexaul.  His wife had a child while they lived in Johnson City.  An amazingly senstive, aware doctor and human being.  The book is funny (his stories about the Veterans Hospital will have you ROTFL), enlightening and of course incredibly sad.  I think it won the National Book Award.

Curtis