By James M. Scutero
Once again the Catholic Church has stood firm on a Pro-Life issue only to be derided by those who would benefit most from its teachings. The Church has vigorously pleaded with those who are at risk of developing AIDS to abstain from premarital sex and illegal drugs. Along with these sound prevention messages, it has opened its doors and continues to be the largest private provider of support services to PWA’s (People with AIDS) in the United States.
Despite the Catholic Church’s efforts, however, self-promoting AIDS ‘activist’ groups such as ACT-UP are causing a commotion, not to help those like myself, but to use AIDS as a platform to promote its own political agenda. That agenda is the call for special rights for homosexuals. The Catholic Church is an AIDS charity with a difference: it helps PWA’s without supporting the homosexual deathstyle and that is the reason why ACT-UP hates the Church so much.
The Church gracefully helps those afflicted with AIDS quietly and without fanfare. It does not solicit funds from homosexuals and accomplishes its mission with volunteers. Conversely, the more than 18,000 gay-related AIDS organizations in this country spend tremendous amounts of money on gala events, staff and fund-raising activities. Because of the incestuous solicitation of funds between the various gay/AIDS organizations, many of them are crying poverty. Through financial mismanagement, PWA’s are usually the last to receive any benefit from these money-mills.
A good portion of the donated monies is allocated to the nebulous promotion of “AIDS awareness.” Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) is a multi-million dollar AIDS organization in New York City. In its subway advertising campaign, homosexuals are shown embracing, Saran-wrapped in latex and spermicidal creams, practicing “safe” sex. Other campaigns are geared toward people who shoot drugs into their veins. GMHC tells these addicted people that they should use a clean and shiny needle when they inject illicit drugs into their bodies. This gives the impression that homosexuals and drug addicts are unable to control their carnal lusts and will stop at nothing in order to get sex and drugs – even during a plague!
When the Church offers the rational approach of restraint through abstinence, it is attacked by the gay fundamentalists from ACT-UP, lending more support to the theory that saving people from the scourge of AIDS is not the primary agenda of the gay-centered AIDS organizations.
The founder of the “safe” sex campaign was a homosexual named Michael Callen. He authored a booklet entitled, “How To Have Sex in an Epidemic” which vigorously promoted the use of condoms. The late Mr. Callen also ironically authored a book entitled, Surviving AIDS. In it he recounts, “GMHC and other critics retorted by focusing attention on the incidence of the many sexually transmitted diseases common among promiscuous gay men, we were ‘shouting guilt from the rooftops.”‘
Instead of shouting guilt for promiscuous behavior, Edmund White, the co-author of The Joy of Gay Sex, proposed that, “gay men should wear their sexually transmitted diseases like red badges of courage in a war against a sex-negative society.” The wearing of red ribbons has become chic and is almost mandatory at many high society functions. Red ribbons are not worn to call awareness to AIDS but are a promotion of homosexual ideals. As a Catholic with AIDS, I find them quite offensive and prefer to wear a cross.
Any attempt to blame a lifestyle as a cause of AIDS, however, is vociferously attacked by the gay/AIDS terrorists. “You’re blaming the victim,” they cry. AIDS is their vehicle for gaining acceptance. “HIV=AIDS= DEATH” is their mantra and they will stop at nothing to enforce it. In their hysteria, they have broken into our churches and have defiled the Holy Eucharist. They have attacked medical researchers and have corrupted science with their politics. They lie to the public about sex and drugs. And, they take away hope from those who need it most by insisting that HIV is always fatal – which it is not.
I thank God, the Father Almighty for giving me life through His Son, Our Lord, Jesus Christ. And I thank His Church for standing like a rock amidst the swirling torrent of lies that emanates from the homosexual culture of death.
James M. Scutero is a Catholic AIDS activist.
