I see words in articles that just continue to fan flames for me. Ooops, I used the word flames, and some persons might think I was discussing flaming, like in homosexual and because of that will figure that whatever happens to whomever I was talking about is just fine.
Well excuse me, but it's not fine.
As an example, there are words like:
Regardless of what you've been told, in America the vast majority of AIDS cases come from promiscuous sexual behaviour. Although there were cases of AIDS contracted through blood transfusions in the early years, the supply has been pretty well safguarded against such future incidents, at least on a widespread basis. And sorry, your Aunt Sally's advice notwithstanding, there are no proven incidents of HIV transmission through deep kissing.
Even if AIDS is strictly a disease that is prevalent among a community that is practicing abhorrent behavior, there is no excuse for ignoring it and the people that are suffering from it. There's no excuse (except outright bigotry and homophobia) to consider it a disease that anyone deserves to contract.
There are any number of diseases that afflict the population of the world, and as I said previously no one disease really deserves more attention than any other when it comes to finding a treatment or cure, or developing a vaccine or other preventive measures against such diseases.
Has there been a very vocal homosexual community pushing research into treatment for AIDS, and pushing for developing vaccines and such? Yes there has, but I don't begrudge them because of it. I don't wish AIDS upon members of that community or any other. I don't wish it upon people that have been promiscuous, and I most certainly don't wish it upon the people that they come into contact with over their history.
There are other problems that deserve attention, heart disease among them, cancer among them, and others that may only affect a very small portion of the population. I feel for all of the people affected by all of these diseases, but again, I don't want to see some priority system developed that says that we must work on this issue first, or that issue second, and so on.
I want cures and prevention for all of these things. I want to see ALS wiped out. I want to see Alzheimers become a distant memory in the history of humanity. I want cancer eradicated from our lives.
I want all of these things and more, while still wanting to see diseases like AIDS get attention too.
I hope in the future that the doctors and researchers that are working on AIDS are able to take the efforts to other areas and vice versa. There are more than enough issues to go around and more than enough issues to need attention from the medical community and society as a whole.
I also really hope that the future sees us clear of jealousy and bigotry. Jealousy of the attention that one group gets in trying to spur attention to their issues, and bigotry related to clustering victims of some diseases into a category of people that deserved what they got because they were deviants and couldn't or wouldn't help themselves avoid the behavior that helped them contract the diseases.