Harm in Homosexuality?

I agree with you on this point. OTOH I also agree with the point made that 'marriage' is regarded by many people as being, by definition, between a male and a female. Actually my dictionary even says that. Although it isn't technically accurate (because we have had civil marriages for a fair while) marriage also has religious and cultural overtones for many people. Actually I've known a few straight couples over the years who lived together but didn't want to get married because of all the "baggage" that comes with it.My preferred solution would be a civil union or contract or whatever you want to call it that is the basis for all legal parternships. Entering into this contract would be the sole basis on which all legal rights relating to "couples" (property, inheritance, health and other work benefits and the doubtless hundreds of others you can think of) are established.If this is done marriage would become an optional religous layer that individual churches can offer to whoever they choose (and withold it from whoever they chose). Obviously you would have to make sure the legislation made it illegal to differentiate against people who only had the civil union.I'm not a lawyer (even I have standards ) so I don't know if an approach like this would be possible in either of our countries. Assuming it would be possible, would this work for you ? It seems to me it provides equality between straight and gay couples while allowing religious organisations to make their own choice as to what categories of people they marry.Of course, the Christian right would never accept it, but that's because they tend to be homophobic bigots.

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Confused ? You will be...

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Again, the US throws a loop in everything when you are trying to compare homosexuality and heterosexuality. It's pretty much the last place on earth where HIV is transmitted primarily by homosexual sex. Even Europe flipped over to primarily heterosexual vectors back in 1999.

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In other words, Africa is not atypical. It is the norm. It is the US that is the bizarre outlier.

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Although this is true it is mostly because - in the UK at least - of the impact of immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa. This article from the Daily Telegraph in December 2000 quotes some figures from the British government. A few key numbers :

• 1,277 people contracted HIV through heterosexual contact (45% of the total cases)
• 42% of new cases were through homosexual contact
• In the remainder of cases the disease was passed on by injecting drugs with infected needles, blood transfers or from mother to child
• Only 114 cases of HIV diagnosed among heterosexuals were "probably" acquired in Britain, according to the Public Health Laboratory Service
• Of these, 81 cases involved exposure to a partner who was infected outside Britain; only 33 contracted the infection in Britain from heterosexual contact with a partner who was infected within Europe and who was not also in a high-risk category
• The vast majority of new cases in heterosexuals were contracted in Africa
  • 908 in Africa
  • 63 in Asia
  • 61 in Latin America
  • 43 in Europe
  • 7 in North America
  • 6 in Australasia
• About 50 new cases were due to injecting drug use

So at the time the UK (and I believe the rest of Western Europe) flipped over to primarily heterosexual vectors it was largely because of the combination of the influx of people from sub-Saharan Africa and Brits who had sex in sub-Saharan Africa. IIRC that was still true in the latest set of figures issued earlier this year. In other words Africa is actually skewing the UK figures quite dramatically.Having said all that I think your point still stands - heterosexual sex is the dominant form of transmission. Even if we somehow removed the African component from new cases in Western Europe it would only cause a temporary drop. The alarming rise in heterosexual transmission in Eastern Europe coupled with the significant involvement of the former Soviet/Warsaw Pact countries in the Western European sex trade almost certainly means we are going to see a large rise in cases either originating in the East or from Western Europeans having sex with someone from there.

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Confused ? You will be...