May 8, 2012

NYT: Castro's homophobia saved Cuban homosexuals' lives

At least, that's what "A Regime's Tight Grip on AIDS" seems to boil down to.

69 comments:

Anonymous said...

If any western nation dared to implement a similar policy the NYT would be the first and loudest to scream blue murder.

eah said...

Cuba now has one of the world’s smallest epidemics, a mere 14,038 cases.

Question: At what point of 'smallness' does it cease to be an "epidemic"?

I guess Cuban gays qualify for double asylum.

Anonymous said...

HAVANA — Yudelsy García O’Connor, the first baby known to have been born with H.I.V. in Cuba, is not merely still alive. She is vibrant, funny and, at age 25, recently divorced but hoping to remarry and have children.

Vibrancy alert!

BrokenSymmetry said...

"Tight grip" How did they sneak that one past the editors?

Anonymous said...

on a similar note:

public school teachers under-challenge minority students by providing them more positive feedback than they give to white students, for work of equal merit

Anonymous said...

Back in the 1980s, didn't the sodomites march and chant, "Reagan lied, people died" about the AIDS epidemic?

If so, then I can't find any record of it from googling.

Anonymous said...

Has Sulzberger's Rag ever written a discouraging word about the Stalinist dictatorship to our south. Duranty must be gloating in whatever backwater of hell he's reporting from now.

Anonymous said...

Some how,someway, the NYT will find a way to praise El Jeffe, even if it means trampling on the most Most Favored Group.

Anonymous said...

U.S. pushing circumcision for soldiers to fight HIV

Male circumcision is the best way to prevent new HIV infections in the military, U.S. official says.

(AFP) - Male circumcision is the best way to prevent new HIV infections in the military, the head of US anti-AIDS efforts told a gathering of top army brass from Africa, Eastern Europe and central Asia.

"We believe male circumcision is a highly significant, lifetime intervention. It is a gift that keeps on giving. It makes a lot of sense to put extraordinary resources into it," US global AIDS coordinator Eric Goosby told the 400 delegates.

The meeting on AIDS and the military gathered officials from 80 countries, including most of Africa but also countries from Surinam to Georgia and Estonia.

Studies show that circumcision can dramatically reduce HIV infections. One study in South Africa last year found new infections fell by 76 percent after a circumcision programme was launched in a township.

In 2006, trials in Kenya, Uganda and South Africa found foreskin removal more than halved men's risk of HIV infection. Longer-term analysis has found the benefit to be even greater than thought, with a risk reduction of around 60 percent.

The United States is sponsoring programmes in several African countries with a goal of circumcising four million men by 2013.

Results so far are patchy. Although Kenya is close to reaching its target of 80 percent of sexually active men, Uganda has achieved less than five percent of its target.

"We need the military to take up some of these circumcisions," said Caroline Ryan of the US Global AIDS Coordinator's Office.

One issue she said, is that the surgery requires soldiers to recuperate for two to four days, meaning time off from the army.

Another concern, raised by South Africa, was how to marry traditional coming-of-age rites with the need for circumcisions to be carried out under surgical conditions.

"Traditional circumcision is part of the path to manhood. For us it is critical to be given strategies to deal with their concerns," South African Brigadier General Snowy Moremi.

Little data exists on HIV rates among soldiers. Few countries are willing to divulge statistics, fearing they will be perceived as weak.

Harry Baldwin said...

That article provides support for my long-held suspicion about the psychology of leftists: they want to rebel and do naughty things, but they also demand a really strict daddy like Castro to keep them in line. Part of their frustration about the US government is that it is always caving in to their demands so they have to come up with ever-more incongruous ones, like gay marriage or complaining about the word "blacklist." They are are testing the limits, as psychologists say of over-indulged children.

This would explain their attraction to a series of Communist father figures from Stalin, to Mao, to Castro, to Ho Chi Minh, and recently to Hugo Chavez.

Anonymous said...

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/apologies-freud/201205/mad-mens-don-and-megan-draper-can-their-maydecember-relationship-work

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous said...

""One study in South Africa last year found new infections fell by 76 percent after a circumcision programme was launched in a township""

Alternatively, they might consider refraining from raping anything that moves.

Mr. Anon said...

"Studies show that circumcision can dramatically reduce HIV infections. One study in South Africa last year found new infections fell by 76 percent after a circumcision programme was launched in a township."

Alternatively, they might consider refraining from raping anything that moves.

Mr. Anon said...

"Anonymous Anonymous said...

Back in the 1980s, didn't the sodomites march and chant, "Reagan lied, people died" about the AIDS epidemic?"

I don't remember that "X lied, people died" formulation during the 80s (what is it about the mentality of leftists that requires them to mindlessly chant slogans - oh, that's right, they are intellectuals).

But they certainly did blame Reagan for AIDS. It was the Gipper who was somehow personally responsible for them falling gravely ill, you see - it was not the result of their nightly bathhouse recreations.

Toddy Cat said...

So according to the NYT, homophobia is ok, as long as it's commies doing it. Why am I not surprised?

Anonymous said...

Steve Sailer, you are laughable. ANYTHING and everything to justify your conservative views.

How about we start sewing up the vaginas of little girls to prevent out-of-wedlock births just like the Muslims in Africa do?

Government has no business telling people how they should live their sex lives. Locking up oor establishing cufews for gays or anybody else to stop the spread of AIDS is authoritarianism and goes against the traditions of the West. The only role the government has when it comes to curtailing the spread of disease is when it comes to diseases that infect others involuntarilly. This applies to airborne viruses as well as those that spread through contact. In this case, the government has the right to restrict the freedom of those infected because they jeopardize others.

AIDS is a preventable disease at the individual level. It is not airborne or spread through normal contact. If an individual wants to have unprotected sex with strangers even though he knows he can contract AIDS, he should be allowed to do so because he is only putting himself at risk and not others. If he contracts AIDS, it's his problem and the government also should not have to pay for his medication.

Anonymous said...

Steve Sailer, you are laughable. ANYTHING and everything to justify your conservative views.

How about we start sewing up the vaginas of little girls to prevent out-of-wedlock births just like the Muslims in Africa do?

Government has no business telling people how they should live their sex lives. Locking up oor establishing cufews for gays or anybody else to stop the spread of AIDS is authoritarianism and goes against the traditions of the West. The only role the government has when it comes to curtailing the spread of disease is when it comes to diseases that infect others involuntarilly. This applies to airborne viruses as well as those that spread through contact. In this case, the government has the right to restrict the freedom of those infected because they jeopardize others.

AIDS is a preventable disease at the individual level. It is not airborne or spread through normal contact. If an individual wants to have unprotected sex with strangers even though he knows he can contract AIDS, he should be allowed to do so because he is only putting himself at risk and not others. If he contracts AIDS, it's his problem and the government also should not have to pay for his medication.

Reg Cæsar said...

How is this possible? I thought Cuba was significantly blacker than America. Are we now allowing environment into the equation?

Next you'll be saying the fact that the white bastardy rate of today is twice the black rate of 1960 doesn't necessarily imply the total genetic degradation of the white race in the intervening years. Or that the lack of tattoos and visible bum cracks on my East African neighbors isn't proof of their hereditary superiority.

Once you admit any environmental influence at all to be considered, why, that could lead to Lysenkoism, Unitarianism, Utilitarianism, or worse!

(Gee, isn"t absolutism fun, and addictive?)

Reg Cæsar said...

"It makes a lot of sense to put extraordinary resources into it," US global AIDS coordinator Eric Goosby told the 400 delegates. AFP, re male circumcision

Actually, the answer isn't found in the foreskin, but[t] at the same latitude, opposite longitude... and keeping 'extraordinary resources' out of that! Oh, and marrying Catholic virgins and staying true to them helps as well.

BTW, doesn't the term 'male circumcision' imply a female counterpart? I thought that term was shot down years ago. Shame on AFP!


South African Brigadier General Snowy Moremi --AFP

They named their kid after Tintin's dog? Funny, she doesn't look the part.

Anonymous said...

HAVANA — Yudelsy García O’Connor, the first baby known to have been born with H.I.V. in Cuba, is not merely still alive. She is vibrant, funny and, at age 25, recently divorced but hoping to remarry and have children.

This is no surprise, as many distingished scientists have for years questioned whether HIV causes AIDS. See Peter Duesberg, et al.

Perhaps because the super-toxic AZT was not available to Cubans, many survived.

Many people today who die of "AIDS" actually die of liver failure - a side effect from all these wonderful pharamaceuticals.

Anonymous said...

In spite of the fact the HIV transmission in the US is alive and well, many gay activists still seek their "right" to give blood.

Anonymous said...

Same in the USSR. Policy of zero tolerance toward hard drugs + official homophobia = essentially no HIV in the country until its dissolution and liberal reforms in most of its parts. Nowadays, 1% of Ukraine's population had HIV/AIDS.

Anonymous said...

It looks like the Times is gradually moving on from choosing stories that it can force into the morality play genera.

Another un-PC Times story this week discusses the cultural problem of black women choosing to become and stay obese. The author says that she and her friends do this in order to keep "the sugar down below" for black men who often like big butts. She suggests as a possible origin of the preference among black women for fatness that they first started growing large to distinguish themselves from slaves and sharecroppers, whose leanness indicated their low-status. A more controversial possibility occurs to me, which the Times would probably not see fit to print. Maybe black women in America choose to be obese because their gene pool has not had time yet to adjust for sexual competition in a society in which most women naturally have greater amounts of sexy subcutaneous fat in healthy body types than black women have (healthy white, Asian, and I think also Latino women have more on average. Black women pack in extra fat to display female (if not exactly feminine) characteristics in a society in which black men disproportionately choose smooth and curvaceous women outside of their race. Or maybe the evolutionary situation in Africa has, in recent evolutionary history, favored physiological (e.g. metabolisms) and psychological (e.g. attractiveness to black men) factors that lead to their obesity because this signals wealth in subsistence economies.

Here is an interesting test: which of these women are most likely to be black? (Don't say, "All of them, because they are wearing fluorescent pink bikinis!")

Anonymous said...

If Reagan did this...a lot more homosexual males (and their wives) would still be alive, but he would be a disgrace for using his presidential powers to stop this disease through quarantine. Reagan couldnt win either way on this issue.

Svigor said...

"Tight grip" How did they sneak that one past the editors?

"The more you tighten your grip, Castro, the more bathhouses will slip through your fingers."

Anonymous said...

Um, it seems like big government/totalitarian methods and explicit sex education is what did it, not "homophobia." I don't know how you manage to see anything in there that supports the position of American conservatives.

Svigor said...

public school teachers under-challenge minority students by providing them more positive feedback than they give to white students, for work of equal merit

Soft/liberal White Supremacy.

That article provides support for my long-held suspicion about the psychology of leftists: they want to rebel and do naughty things

If that was true, they'd all be RACISTS!!! It's the only rebellion left. Everything else is both banal, and permitted.

Chicago said...

He managed to dump a bunch of them on us in the pre-AIDS year of 1980 during the Mariel boatlift, as well as other undesirable types, some of whom went on to murder their well-meaning sponsors, commit robberies and other swell diverse things. I'm surprised he hung on to any AIDS spreaders at all seeing as how the USA hungers for such emblems of diversity. Had he sent the whole kit-kaboodle here it would have been one of those rare win-win-win situations that's hardly ever encountered. He could have divested himself of a problematic group and thus be done with it; the Cuban AIDS-spreaders could have made a beeline for any number of American gay bathhouses and thus started enjoying themselves immensely almost immediately; the USA could then wave the banner of freedom worldwide, making us all feel noble and proud, smug in the knowledge that we are the good guys after all, a light unto the world.

sabril said...

Gosh what fawning coverage of a brutal dictatorship.

Anonymous said...

Circumscission is best done 8 days after birth. I personally don't remember the procedure.

Mike Eisenstadt

Anonymous said...

Re hacking off boys' foreskins, aren't condoms and abstinence infinitely more effective (and without the many costs of genital mutilation)?

Talk about giving people a false sense of security.

Anonymous said...

Gosh what fawning coverage of a brutal dictatorship.

Couldn't be any more brutal than the U.S. military and U.S. spy agencies.

Anonymous said...

"Maybe black women in America choose to be obese because their gene pool has not had time yet to adjust for sexual competition in a society in which most women naturally have greater amounts of sexy subcutaneous fat in healthy body types than black women have..."

I believe in a simpler explanation: black women have less self-control than white and Asian women. Why are all black celebrities bankrupt? They live in the moment, they do what they want to do right now. They indulge every whim. They're not as likely to delay current gratification for some future payoff.

Anonymous said...

"Um, it seems like big government/totalitarian methods and explicit sex education is what did it, not "homophobia." "

Steve means quarantines I assume.

Such a life-saving policy would certainly never gotten past the PC police in the US of A.

Anonymous said...

"It is not airborne or spread through normal contact."

It was quite a while before this was established, in case you don't recall. Even a friendly kiss was suspect for some time.

"If he contracts AIDS, it's his problem and the government also should not have to pay for his medication."

I'm glad you added this. However, gays don't feel this way. I think they have the ear of the politicians, don't you? They seem to have friends in high places--you know, Hollywood, the media, DC.

Anonymous said...

Albertosaurus,

Yeah, people aren't
fearful of gays, but gay kids are rather phobic around straight kids when they rough and tumble play. Further, gay men, while sexually desiring manly straight guys,
feel anxious around them, so I think it might be appropriate that we use different words.

From now on, let's say that gays are heterophobic. That's surely more accurate that claiming straight men are homophobic.

Anonymous said...

Or we could use a word I read Cochran use in place of "homophobic"--"homoaverse." I like that. It's more accurate.

Anonymous said...

We have a story in the news of a crowd of black youth in Norfolk Virginia pulling a white couple out of their car and beating them up.

Story please?

Anonymous said...

"We believe male circumcision is a highly significant, lifetime intervention. It makes a lot of sense to put extraordinary resources into it," US global AIDS coordinator Eric Goosby told the 400 delegates.

The United States is sponsoring programmes in several African countries with a goal of circumcising four million men by 2013.


Good lord. Doesn't Africa have a huge overpopulation problem? Why isn't the U.S. government heavily promoting condom use, instead, which would help address overpopulation and would anyway be a more effective approach to HIV than these dubious claims about circumcision.

Whiskey said...

Couldn't be any more brutal than the US and Spy Agencies? Come on!

Both the US military and spy agencies are over-run with leftists and lawyers (but I repeat myself) and have all sorts of restrictions, rules, and so on. Cuba is the personal fiefdom of Fidel Castro and whatever he decides as absolute and unquestioned Dictator is what happens. A place governed entirely by whim and personality.

Which is why only terrorists and criminals want to live there, everyone else with a bit of money chooses to live elsewhere. Since no one wants to tempt El Jefe too much with piles of cash lying around.

Anonymous said...

More repudiation of head start?

Davis said...

I thought the AIDs epidemic in Africa was caused by the dry sex that they seem to enjoy so much. Teach them foreplay "This is how you kiss" etc, etc.

The rape part is a little harder to solve. Haven't South African women started using some sort of contraption to repel unwelcome advances?

F. Mellish said...

"I got my job through the New York Times"

Anonymous said...

"how then did we get this term homophobic?

It was invented by a psychiatrist named Weinberg who thought that men hated homosexuals because they feared that they were themselves homosexuals."


I thought everyone knew that homophobes were people secretly fearful that they might be gay, just as anti-semites are secretly fearful that they might be Jewish, misogynists secretly fearful they might be female, and white racists secretly fearful that they might be black.

Anonymous said...

Communism is another form of conservatism...

Anonymous said...

I am a white guy. I make a point to avoid large concentrations of blacks. Does this make me blackphobic? And do I secretly fear that I am black?

Anonymous said...

Cuba is the personal fiefdom of Fidel Castro and whatever he decides as absolute and unquestioned Dictator is what happens. A place governed entirely by whim and personality.

No government that endures for any reasonably significant period of time is governed entirely by whim and personality.

And even if Cuba were so governed, it doesn't follow that its government is more brutal than the U.S. military and spy agencies. Which country has more kills and torture victims to its name? And no fair counting Guantanamo as "Cuba."

Anonymous said...

@Anonymous 6:09 AM

"U.S. pushing circumcision for soldiers to fight HIV

Male circumcision is the best way to prevent new HIV infections in the military, U.S. official says.

(AFP) - Male circumcision is the best way to prevent new HIV infections in the military, the head of US anti-AIDS efforts told a gathering of top army brass from Africa, Eastern Europe and central Asia.

"We believe male circumcision is a highly significant, lifetime intervention. It is a gift that keeps on giving. It makes a lot of sense to put extraordinary resources into it," US global AIDS coordinator Eric Goosby told the 400 delegates.

The meeting on AIDS and the military gathered officials from 80 countries, including most of Africa but also countries from Surinam to Georgia and Estonia.

Studies show that circumcision can dramatically reduce HIV infections. One study in South Africa last year found new infections fell by 76 percent after a circumcision programme was launched in a township.

In 2006, trials in Kenya, Uganda and South Africa found foreskin removal more than halved men's risk of HIV infection. Longer-term analysis has found the benefit to be even greater than thought, with a risk reduction of around 60 percent.

The United States is sponsoring programmes in several African countries with a goal of circumcising four million men by 2013.

Results so far are patchy. Although Kenya is close to reaching its target of 80 percent of sexually active men, Uganda has achieved less than five percent of its target.

"We need the military to take up some of these circumcisions," said Caroline Ryan of the US Global AIDS Coordinator's Office.

One issue she said, is that the surgery requires soldiers to recuperate for two to four days, meaning time off from the army.

Another concern, raised by South Africa, was how to marry traditional coming-of-age rites with the need for circumcisions to be carried out under surgical conditions.

"Traditional circumcision is part of the path to manhood. For us it is critical to be given strategies to deal with their concerns," South African Brigadier General Snowy Moremi.

Little data exists on HIV rates among soldiers. Few countries are willing to divulge statistics, fearing they will be perceived as weak."

Riiiiiiiight...that is why Dannish men, who are 98% uncircumcised, have much lower rates of STD infections than white American men, who are 95% circumcised.

This simple fact completely mitigates and nullifies everything you have written about the effectiveness of circumcision as a prophylactic measure against the spread of STDs. Not to mention the brutal violation of human rights, such as the right to physical integrity.

Anonymous said...

"The rape part is a little harder to solve. Haven't South African women started using some sort of contraption to repel unwelcome advances?"

Such as this?

http://www.google.com/patents/US5353811

Anonymous said...

'Homoaverse' is more apt than 'homophobic' which is really more of a camp in-joke.

There is a place for 'negro-phobic' too.

Gilbert Pinfold.

jody said...

holy shit they got "vibrant" into the very first paragraph. almost the first sentence!

maybe we should just change the US census so that there are two categories:

1) vibrant-american
2) other

as a former member of the reviled straight white male group, i relish my altered status to "other" or perhaps "non-vibrant american".

jody said...

apropos to this topic, the FDA is meeting this week to consider approving truvada for gay and bisexual men who do not have HIV, in an effort to prevent them from getting HIV when they are exposed to it. apparently truvada can reduce the rate of HIV transmission by almost 50% from a man with HIV to a man without HIV. from bloomberg:

http://tinyurl.com/7r6mzbb

the problem is that as a preventative medication, it costs $11,000 a year. who pays for all the gay and bi guys to get $11,000 a year in drugs? and to reduce the HIV transmission rate by only 50%, not stop it completely. note in the article about cuba, the doctors who treat the HIV patients themselves note that most HIV patients are poor - contrary to the anonymous pro gay trolls who occassionally appear on steve's site and argue that every homosexual is a top IRS bracket, net tax contributing intellectual.

a quick wikipedia shows truvada is actually just a combination two existing HIV drugs.

tenofir: developed by antonin holy of the czech republic.

emtricitabine: developed by dennis liotta of emory university in the US.

the evil, hated, unvibrant straight white males strike again.

Anonymous said...

@ Anon 12:38 PM,

We have a story in the news of a crowd of black youth in Norfolk Virginia pulling a white couple out of their car and beating them up.

Story please?


Google Norfolk Virginia pulling a white couple; 12,800,000 results to choose from.


PS: Please, let us know how you stumbled on iSteve.

Anonymous said...

If a man's risk of being gay is increased with every older male sibling he has, then shouldn't China have the straightest male population, presuming that the gay tendency is equal among races?

Groups with large families should have the most gays.

Isn't it ironic that the religious groups who take the first commandment, be fruitful and multiply, seriously, and who are the least supportive of the gay lifestyle, are producing the most gays.

NOTA said...

I wish there was a relatively well-run facist dictatorship that had done the same stuff, just to see if the NYT would cover it the same way. I doubt it, but don't know. What did Singapore do to limit the spread of HIV?

jody said...

"If a man's risk of being gay is increased with every older male sibling he has, then shouldn't China have the straightest male population, presuming that the gay tendency is equal among races?"

with the hypothesis of homosexuality to which i now subscribe, in which the mother's endocrine system responds to her son's testosterone production in utero, i'm thinking the rate of gayness is NOT equal among groups. the rate of gayness is cited as 4% by most serious sex researchers, but that's not an HBD'ed number. it's the lumped together, average out number. as with life expectancy and violent crime rate in jumbled nations, it might vary a good amount from group to group.

under the idea that a mother's body may respond to a sudden rise in testosterone in her bloodstream when her son's developing testicles begin to function, potentially throwing her hormones of out whack, and responding with increased estrogen production, west african men would be the most likely men to be gay, as their serum testosterone concentration is somewhat higher than everybody else's on average. this would make them the most likely to have mothers responding to the presence of an alien source of testosterone with a sustained increase of estrogen.

and so on and so forth down the average testosterone level line with respect to how likely it is that any particular boy's brain will be developed more like a girl's brain while he is in the womb due to the hormone response from his mother. i don't really know which group has the lowest androgen levels person for person. east asians, southeast asians, south asians? but that could be the group where you would find the lowest rate of gay guys. han chinese men probably have 50% lower concentrations of free testosterone in their bloodstream than black american men. (T levels do not explain everything, there are also androgen receptors to account for.)

this could be why the HIV transmission rate is so high for many diaspora african populations whatever nation they live in. a combination of being less careful about sex, and having more men having sex with other men. it wouldn't just be a single factor, but 2 or 3. variable rate of gayness according to average androgen levels in the womb could certainly be one of these factors, and is, i would think, a testable hypothesis.

note this still idea corroborates with the finding that more older brothers = more likely to be gay. the more sets of testicles that have gone through a woman's body, the more excess testosterone her endocrine system has been exposed to and the more likely it is to respond to yet another sudden, alien source of increased testosterone with increased estrogen production. this brings up the question: are twins more likely to be gay? that's four testicles at once and quite a bit more T production.

jody said...

i don't think all africans are alike. east africans are a lot less athletic, are a lot weaker and slower, are quite a bit different physiologically than west africans. european men blow them away in every sport, except distance running, where being a small, weak, 120 pound stick figure is the way to go.

south africans are somewhere in between those two groups, and north africans are different enough to be considered a completely seperate group.

you could investigate comparitive groups such as the mestizo and american indian populations of mexico, who are similar to black americans in whatever brain functions it is exactly which a pencil and paper IQ test measures, but who have a much lower average androgen level. they're small, weak, flabby, unathletic, and relatively not that aggressive, but they score about the same as black americans on IQ tests.

this would give you a control for "intelligence", allowing you to somewhat eliminate the confounding variable of one group being more careful about the gay sex they do have than the other group. then check mean androgen level versus mean androgen level between groups and compare that with HIV infection rate between groups and see if the data support the prediction that the higher androgen group has a higher HIV infection rate and, by deduction, a higher rate of gay guys.

Anonymous said...

So, truvada halves the rate of HIV transmission between men, per sex act, I suppose. But what if it doubles the number of dangerous sex acts by instilling a false sense of safety?

Cennbeorc

Anonymous said...

"But what if it doubles the number of dangerous sex acts by instilling a false sense of safety?"

Yep. I mean, impulse control concerning sex doesn't rate high as a gay characteristic, does it?

Anonymous said...

According to Jody's very clear explaination of what is the predominant theory of homosexuality in men, I assume very masculine men are more likely to have gay sons. How about the mothers? Are they more likely to be feminine or masculine?

Anonymous said...

The limits of technocratic solutions.

"Asked why a well-educated nurse would risk sex without a condom, he waved his hands in the air and replied, 'You know — because we all do crazy things sometimes.'"

Svigor said...

I am a white guy. I make a point to avoid large concentrations of blacks. Does this make me blackphobic? And do I secretly fear that I am black?

You've highlighted a new one (to me); another example of how the sociopathic left plays both sides of the fence:

Homos are born that way. Like blacks.

Yet, normals are secretly homos.

Leftist beliefs are like matter/anti-matter; if you connect them, they destroy each other.

Anonymous said...

The so-called immune hypothesis of male homosexuality, otherwise known as the older brother effect, only accounts for something like 1 in 7 homosexuals. Either it's a meaningful correlation, a not-so meaningful correlation, but either way, it's an hypothesis that can't account for the other 6 out of 7 gay males.

Anonymous said...

>Doesn't Africa have a huge overpopulation problem? Why isn't the U.S. government heavily promoting condom use, instead, which would help address overpopulation and would anyway be a more effective approach to HIV than these dubious claims about circumcision.<

If all you got is an izmail, every problem starts looking like an orlah.

NOTA said...

Svigor:

Clearly, the implication is that all of us are really secretly gay and were born that way. And to be fair, this does sound like what you'd want to believe, if you were a horny gay man living in a 95%+ straight world. No doubt, some of John Travolta's early contacts in show biz were simply trying to help him find his inner self.

Anonymous said...

If all you got is an izmail, every problem starts looking like an orlah.

What the heck does this mean??

Anonymous said...

izmail = circumcision knife
orlah = foreskin

theakinet said...

The commentators @ the NYT don't seem to understand that. They keep focusing on Single-payer health-care.

theakinet said...

Anonymous said: "Um, it seems like big government/totalitarian methods and explicit sex education is what did it, not "homophobia." I don't know how you manage to see anything in there that supports the position of American conservatives." 5/8/12 9:18 AM

I think Steve's conservatism is more cultural. If non-Conservatives have better ideas he'd use them.