Reply #82: In a perfect world I would agree wth you........ [View All]

[Liberal Veteran]

Where people don't make snap value judgements without knowing the whole story.

Unfortunately, that is not the world we live in. The tendency to generalize and paint everyone with the same brush is epidemic in our society.

Example: You have AIDS? You must be gay or drug abuser. And that's how you are going to get treated.

That's the danger inherent in attaching a virus to morality.

The sad fact is that our society is extremely ugly on this issue. Inevitably when the issue of HIV comes up (even if you are talking about HIV in Africa or Asia, where the disease is primarily in heterosexuals), people start babbling about homosexuality and those "dirty queers".

That's why I am loathe to play the morality card on this issue. We live in a society where people use morality to indulge in superiority complexes and batter those who are seen as less "moral" than they are. Which brings us right back to the withdrawal of compassion.

We can't escape that reality.

Thus, it is far, far better to portray these issues in clinical/scientific/medical terms than appeal to religious values which in this country have been distilled into "you deserve what you get for your presumed sins".

In my world view, HIV is a public health issue. We can tackle the problem that way without feeding into the machine that wants to use their own religious beliefs as reason to be insensitive and avoid tackling the problem.