Praise the lord, but don’t pass out the condoms.
8 April 2007 by Naomi
One blogger’s coda is another blogger’s headline…
From our pal Vast Left, at VastLeftWingConspiracy: The science of sheep
Your tax dollars at work — two national institutes funded a study to determine how valuable “faith” is in stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS:
The study, conducted by the California-based RAND Corporation, concludes that HIV-positive people who say religion is an important part of their lives are less likely to engage in risky sexual behavior than others with the virus that causes AIDS. One lead investigator for the study said moral beliefs and membership in a faith community might explain the survey’s results.
Moral beliefs may indicate an underlying altruism and a desire to make sure no one else is infected with HIV, said senior behavioral scientist David Kanouse. Promoting these feelings could then be used as a component of HIV prevention programs….
Being scientists and all, I’m sure they considered other possibilities. Like maybe religiosity is a turn-off to potential partners. Or perhaps sanctimonious people are dishonest about their sexual practices. No, those are just theories, while the underlying altruism of Christianists is hard fact; I’m sure the people who commissioned this study would stand for no less.
According to the study, Roman Catholics and evangelical Christians were less likely than other mainline Christians, non-Christians and non-religious people to report unprotected sex. Catholics and evangelicals also were less likely to report high-risk sex than other mainline Christians and reported fewer partners than non-Christians….
I guess that’s true. Some highly religious Catholics don’t report having a lot of partners.
Another factor influencing the high number of non-religious respondents is the fact that many religious groups consider homosexuality to be a morally unacceptable lifestyle. Gay and bisexual men made up more than half of the study participants.
That sounds like a fair test, comparing the canonically high-risk population, which is vilified by organized religion, to the highly religiose.
So, I guess that seals it: praise the lord, but don’t pass out the condoms.
(*sigh*) Where do you even start dissecting the wrong-headedness inherent in the RaptureRight?
8 April 2007, on 12:49 pm
Q: Where do you even start dissecting the wrong-headedness inherent in the RaptureRight?
A: Start with a trepanning brace and bit, drill a hole on either side of their skull, attach a high-pressure air-hose to one hole and blow their brains out the other!
Easy-peasy!
8 April 2007, on 12:55 pm
8 April 2007, on 1:20 pm
The Old Git:
You are assuming there is anything in there besides hot air…
8 April 2007, on 6:08 pm
Ol Git
Here in the US they perform that same procedure but the American version has only one hole and they suck out only half the brains. So that means English verion, is two holes and a blow. US version, one hole and suck
8 April 2007, on 6:14 pm
Wait, so they spent money to do a study that says people who don’t have casual sex with many anonymous partners are less likely to get an STD?
9 April 2007, on 3:10 am
I remember when they said that it was only women who had lots of casual sex with differing partners who got cervical cancer – until nuns started to show up with it!
9 April 2007, on 3:14 am
Jimmer,
With medical care being so expensive in the US, I’m not surprised you have to cut corners, but whichever procedure is followed disappointment is sure to ensue – Toni is correct, there is nothing between the ears of religious folks except hot air. Or as they say in my part of the world, “Their heids button up the back!”
9 April 2007, on 2:25 pm
Maybe a studies should be done to see who are more likely to get STD’s in the first place and just because some of the participants claimed not to be religious doesn’t mean they don’t believe in gawd. There are number of reasons why this study is just pure shit. What gets me is how they can get away with reporting it to the masses as scientific fact. GRRRRRRR!!!!
Naomi, you have got a sharp eye for things like this. I can see you being renamed by the early Native Americans(like so many of our foremothers of the womens and slaver abolishment movements) as one with hawk vision or one who sees through the bison shit or something like that.lol Nothing gets past you, good job
Amy
9 April 2007, on 3:17 pm
Thanks, Amy, but I have to give the credit to VastLeft, who sent me an email with his rage evident in every word! If it had been on paper, it wouldn’t have survived the journey from his pen to my mailbox… I was merely the messenger.
I don’t make up the news, I just report it. And I go well off-the-beaten-track to find what the mainstream-media is not telling us. This “citizen journalism” is a fast-growing underground phenomena — and it has scared the newspapers and broadcast newsbiz so much that they are trying to marginalize, smear and legislate us out of existence!
Well, we shall see. It feels more like Jefferson’s view of “the press” than “The Stenographers of Propaganda”, not to mention the dreadful “101st Keyboarders”!
9 April 2007, on 4:00 pm
Well, I still thank you for posting it for us. The atheist news spreader that you are. Still a good thing to be and our foremothers would be proud of you and would be happy to pass their titles on to you.
Amy
9 April 2007, on 5:45 pm
Amy, since you mentioned our foremothers, I’ll share something I spent many happy hours reading last night:
History for Kossacks: American Women’s History 1820-1860 (Special Guest Edition): Jesus is Coming–Look Busy! Or,The Second Great Awakening
Aphra Behn is amazing! This thing is so chock full of insights, snark and cultural relevance (she frequently ties historic incidents to current events)–and she’s a relentless “historioranter”; I can’t pronounce it yet but I know what it means! I actually followed up this post with one on Abigail Adams and another on Heroic Women in WWII (gruesome, including torture — American women were considered quite dangerous and devious by the Japanese; they cut them no slack). Also, PTSD and the Myth of WW II: Playing Politics with History.
You’ll thank me! I can guarantee it!
10 April 2007, on 4:07 am
[...] Praise the lord, but don’t pass out the condoms. [...]
10 April 2007, on 11:41 am
Naomi,
Lest anyone think I was holding out on them, I put all the rage on the blog page. The e-mail I sent was (like its sender) short and sweet, no?
10 April 2007, on 12:44 pm
VL, maybe I did hyperbolize some… And maybe it was my rage I was projecting on to you.
Short and sweet? Sir, we haven’t met in person yet, so I can only testify that the missive was S&S…
10 April 2007, on 3:41 pm
Fool that I am, I got in the way of the legend. I can’t help it — I’m irrationally rational.
10 April 2007, on 7:01 pm
And I’m intolerant of intolerance and I hate “hate speech”. Amusing — but is it humans that are funny or just our language?
10 April 2007, on 8:11 pm
And craziness makes me crazy (which I guess is why I blog about this topic). It’s a meta world after all.