Silence = Death, Part 2

Rev. Paul M. Turner

A couple of weeks ago, a person in our community received the news at the age of 26 they were HIV positive. This young mans life has taken a turn that sadly was preventable.

As I write tonight I am worried…I am scared…I am deeply disturbed. For you see for the last 30 years or so I have seen this before and this is reality come home again, for there are no fairy tale endings.

Yes, there are miracles, yes there are new discoveries and yes there is hope…for with the unconditional love of God there is always hope, always miracles, and always-new discoveries.

So here we are half way through 2010 and I find myself once again climbing up on a soapbox. I want to sound a warning, ring an alarm, rise up and shout from the mountaintop to my brothers and sisters in the gay, bi and straight community…ENOUGH ALREADY…STOP IT…HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MINDS?

This is 2010 not 1994 nor 1982. We know for a fact how HIV keeps it’s bloody record of death going. We really know this is not a manageable disease, but rather a killer that does unbelievable harm to untold millions of people. We know that the medications used to fight off this virus have horrible side effects and in the long run lose their effectiveness. We know that whole generations of humanity will never see their 21st birthday.

Yet, many gay men, bi men and straight men still behave as if HIV is an after thought, as if the magic pill will arrive just in time for Christmas. While I dare say it is not a majority, it is significant enough to cause untold misery and destruction for millions of people.

This is 2010 and we know we have the weapons that can stop this disease in its tracks. The weapons are so simple. One is an object and the other a program.

The object is called a condom and the program is called “needle exchange” or harm reduction (needle exchange and harm reduction is another blog).

Yet when you talk to folks in the community you would think I was “Henny-Penny and crying the sky is falling…think I am kidding? Take a look at this: (not for the squeamish) Some samples from Craig’s list:

“I’m into a lot of different things such as public sex, fisting, bareback, bondage, w/s, group fun, Master/slave type “relationships”… and yes, that is meant to mean “strings”. I expect that anyone who wants to get to know me should at least be open minded and adventurous, even if they haven’t done it all. I live a polyamorous lifestyle. I hope this stuff here sums me up well.”

“I need to suck a **** and eat a large load of ***. I also get into rimming, body contact, J/O and whatever else you can think of. If you are negative I am bb friendly.”

“Yeah, bb btm loves to get plowed hard by raw ****
Into it? like seeding a hot, horny, furry hole?”

There are places in the fair city of Atlanta where one can go and have any number of sex partners in an evening and there are no condoms in sight or asked for. Before the straight folks reading this say ah hah it is you gays…let me be clear there are plenty of these clubs for straight folks as well and the men who are picking up women while out of town are not using condoms either. In fact go to any straight party club and well you get the idea.

I had a person in pastoral counseling who is now a recovering sexual addict tell me how he would go to a local hotel here in town…place an ad on Craig’s list giving his location and room number. He would invite anyone who wanted sex to his room to find the door unlocked and him blindfolded with his butt in the air waiting to receive all the bareback sex he could.

Or how about these websites that have thousands of subscribers for both gay and straight people:

Bare-back-central

Gay Bareback Sex and Hairy Masculine Men

Bareback Resources

The porn industry is a multi billion-dollar empire whose hottest films involve sex without condoms. If people are spending that kind of money you cannot convince me they are not doing what they see in film.

This is not a blog to sound a moral cry about how sexually loose society is, nor is it to start an ethics debate on adultery and or fornication.

Rather it is about admitting and recognizing people regardless of morals, ethics, or the churches teachings are going to have sex. They have been doing the “deed” since the beginning of time.

I will save the sexual ethics discussion for another time. Right now I am concerned about stopping the bleeding. For you see when a person is wounded, 9 times out of 10 before you do anything else you have got to stop the bleeding.

Stopping the bleeding in this case means if you are going to have sex be safe about it. Use a condom!

Believe me, I know they are easy to use, easy to dispose of and can save one from any number of life threatening or life ending diseases. My partner and I have been together 28 plus years and have never had sex without condom use.

My friends don’t we have a moral obligation to not put others at risk for our sexual enjoyment?

For those who call themselves Christian can you really in good conscience put your partner or yourself at risk of a shorten or messed up life for a night of taking care of a “sexual itch”?

Do not those who consider themselves tops have an obligation to say no to bare backing?

Do not those who consider themselves bottoms have an obligation to say no to letting someone inside them without a condom.

How about straight folks…unless you are making a child and you both have tested negative, don’t you have an obligation to keep each other safe? I know all about the marriage vows of fidelity, however it is what it is…I mean really…do you want to find out your partner cheated on you when you come up with a positive test?

If you are going to cheat on your partner or even if you have an open relationship do you really want to introduce HIV or God knows what other disease to the one you say you love?

Isn’t the whole relationship thing difficult enough without adding a premature death sentence to it?

The moral police will tell me the answer is abstinence and then only sex in wedlock.

Well that has really worked well hasn’t it? Read the court dockets and the reasons for divorce. Look at the record levels of teen pregnancy. HIV rates of infection are up not down. STD’s are on the rise rather then declining.

People committing adultery in the State of Georgia can go to jail…but that is of little good to the one they infect and I might add too little too late. People who do not disclose their status if positive can face jail time…of course this is a little late isn’t it. Kinda like closing the barn door after the horse is long gone.

Gay folk are denied marriage, so their only answer is no sex? Right-so now convince me that a healthy 20 something man is not going to have sex regardless of the marriage laws.

I was talking to a Pastor who works with folks who are HIV positive and he told me about an informal survey that was done for men in prison. People going into prison are given an HIV test. Of those who tested negative when they went into prison, 54% of them tested positive when they came out. Of course you don’t give prisoners condoms because that would be approving sex and the wrong kind of sex at that. What kind of screwed up thinking is that?

I want with all my heart to have conversations around long-term monogamous relationships.

I want to teach values, respect and commitment as a part of our sexual relations.

My faith walk encourages and even demands me to support and model that kind of sexual responsibility.

However, we are left with the reality people are going “sow their oats”, they are going to experiment, they are going to be wild, they are going to be stupid and do sexual things out of a lack of judgment.

Like it or not that is the condition of the human race, it is the way we live and learn.

Yet if I can convince folks who are going to have sex regardless of some moral authority, to use a condom they might live long enough to learn a sense of responsibility.

If I can convince folks that if you have sex without a condom you are either suicidal or are a totally self-absorbed selfish person they might live long enough to learn there is other peoples lives at stake.

So to those men in the gay, bi and straight community…I am begging you, pleading with you, save a life and use a condom.

For those who would blast me for writing this blog, thinking this is the wrong subject for a minister to write about or it was just too graphic please remember:

Silence=Death and my friends we have been silent far too long in the matters of safe sex and the use of the condom.

For those who think this blog reads familiar…well yea, I wrote it in 2008 and not much has changed, so I am sounding the alarm again.

7 thoughts on “Silence = Death, Part 2”

  1. I applaud you Pastor Paul for telling it like it is. I understand how life and love Kills, and that we need to get the word out to the younger generation. I am afraid that they just aren’t listening because they think this is a manageable disease. Problem is they dont realize the side effects & long term effects of managing this illness/and until they realize those things, they are gonna be irresponsible. I am saddened by this fact, but encouraged by your tenacity in shouting your message from the rooftops. Keep up the good work & know that I love you for it.

  2. The fact of the matter is, this is not a ‘homosexual’ issue…this is a sin issue, period. When people aren’t obeying God, bad things happen. Proverbs 14:12 says, “there is a way that seems right to a man but in the end, leads to death.”

    This is the problem. Man wants to go HIS (or her) way and ignore God’s commandments and what happens? Death, that’s what. Sad. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a homosexual relationship or if you’re fornicating in a heterosexual relationship. It’s all the same sin.

    Thankfully we have the cross the Christ to come when we’ve sinned to ask for forgiveness and repent. Unfortunately, most people never see that. “Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:14).

  3. Interesting…this is a virus issue, not a sin issue. I am more then sure God does not kill people because they don’t fit moral perceptions about how sex is practiced. In fact, if people would practice safe sex the virus could not spread. Your thought process went out with the OT when it was thought physical illness was God’s punishment. To see God as so petty as to kill people because of the particular sex they have makes a mockery of the cross and everything Jesus taught.

    If I were going to quote Matthew 7:14 I would put it beside Matthew 25:31-40. Thank you for reading my blog.

  4. If people had sex the way God intended it, between a man and a woman in the confines of marriage, there would be no virus that began called AIDS. It is the sexual sins of man that created and perpetuates AIDS. I didn’t say God created AIDS. I said man’s sin did.

  5. You said: “To see God as so petty as to kill people because of the particular sex they have makes a mockery of the cross and everything Jesus taught.”

    You try to minimize it as “just sex” but the fact is, it’s not “just sex.” God made provisions for sex and going outside of those provisions makes it sin. Sex can be sin and love can be sin. Heterosexual or homosexual…sin is sin.

    God is not the author of confusion…you’re confusing the truth with your perverse desires.

    If you call yourself a Christian and don’t do what God says….how can you be one? God says it’s sin. Adultery is sin. Fornication is sin. Sodomy is sin. Homosexuality is sin. Lying is sin. Theft is sin. Profanity is sin. Murder, jealousy…etc…etc…obviously I could go on forever.
    I’m sincerely asking. Not trying to be argumentative. How can you be a Christian and omit where God says homosexuality is sin?? How can you be a reverand and have profanity in your blog?

    I’m just trying to understand this witness.

  6. Actually, I know you personally are not trying to be argumentative…however this line of thought grows tiresome. I have published plenty on the issue of Homosexuality and why it is not a sin. I have published why my blog is named the way it is and finally if you had taken time to go to the website you would have seen the core beliefs of the church and what I teach…but here are the references one more time:

    1) title of the blog can be found at: “REVEREND BITCH, SIR IS BORN” July 4, 2007

    2) Homosexuality and the Bible:
    http://www.otkenyer.hu/truluck/index.html

    3) Core beliefs of the Gentle Spirit Christian Church:

    https://www.gentlespirit.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=46&Itemid=56

    4) Some added reading:
    “The Time Has Come…” December 11, 2009

    Agree or disagree, read or don’t read, Give serious thought to what I have offered or not…but the debate for this blog is done.

    Again, I know you are not trying to be argumentative, but in the future if you are going to disagree with what I write and make personal judgmental statements (“perverse desires”), at least have the courtesy of having done the work of seeing what I have wrote and getting a feel for where I am coming from.

    God bless you in your reading.

  7. I couldn’t find all of what you posted here, but I did see some excuses to sin and scripture taken out of context.

    Just sayin.

    I mean, I could insert any sin in some of the things you said and claim it’s okay. You just can’t ignore the scriptures that say homosexuality is wrong and twist them into what you want.

    I realize I can’t open your eyes and make you see…I understand I’m probably wasting my time. I just can’t help but call it as I see it sometimes. I realize you’re going to continue doing what you’re doing and calling it Christian and acceptable.

    I’m not angry or trying to be argumentative. I actually just find it really sad.

Comments are closed.

Scroll to Top