If it feels good, do it

Was anything major left out of the Bill of Rights? I sometimes think that if it were rewritten, we'd wind up with an amendment that said "No law shall impact the right to have sex any time, any where, with any number of persons, beings and objects." There'd probably be another guaranteeing every woman from here to Alaska the means to have an abortion on her lunch hour within walking distance, but that's another rant.

Alright, what set this off? I read something that Dr. Paul Orwin wrote about AIDS in Africa. Dr. Charles Murtaugh had dared to suggest that promiscuity had something to do with the problem, and PO had noted immune suppression effects that might apply to make things worse.

OK so far. Then came something that probably was intended to be evenhanded but I still found remarkable:

This explanation, of course, is not great news for social conservatives, who would like to believe that promiscuity or other societal factors are to blame, and therefore the solution lies there. It's also not great news for liberal activists, who would like to cure AIDS by handing out condoms or by ending poverty (that last bit would certainly help, although I think clean water is much more important. In effect, though, the primary responsibility for curbing or curing HIV/AIDS must be in the scientific community, and the research, both primary and drug and vaccine development, is of paramount importance.

Before I start, do we agree that he has accurately characterized likely approaches of social conservatives and those of liberals?

OK, let's get down to basics - what spreads AIDS? In Africa health spending is minute, so you can forget about tainted blood products. That leaves needles and sex.

As for the needles, well, health spending in Africa is so low that they get reused. Thus what little medical care they get can be the source of AIDS itself. Michael Fumento writes about this in "The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS". So here's where a liberal approach could help, but no - political correctness says that they must ship condoms instead, with the inherent storage, distribution, education, shelf life and failure rate problems. I guess they want to save the needles for junkies rather than innocents with diseases. Never mind effectiveness, as long as it makes them feel good.

Then there's sex. Let's suppose we stipulate that despite the poverty and lack of alternative amusement, the Africans aren't getting any more than the rest of us. That still leaves a practice that the women might get sore about: "dry sex". Don't try this at home, you selfish bastard. And realize that this practice will result in even higher condom failure rates if they are used.

And if they like it dry, well...never mind.

Now for an even more sacred cow: gay sex. In case you haven't read Fumento's book linked above, you can look at this instead, where a Ugandan politician claimed that his country had no gays. Fumento notes that there are plenty of gays in Africa, and they don't appear to be any more sexually continent there than they are here. And if you want to read about real excess, try "And the Band Played On", by the late Randy Shilts (he died of AIDS).

Why can't the liberals admit that indiscriminate sex has something to do with these problems? Knock 'em up, clap 'em up, kill 'em off, but nothing shall so much as discourage that inalienable unwritten right to get laid.