Gay activists go to great lengths to distinguish homosexual love and gay sex from sex with children or animals. Gay love, they assert, is just like man-woman love, leading to the same kinds and qualities of sexual desire and commitment. Homosexuality and heterosexuality should thus be regarded and treated equally.

Our public health officials and many politicians have bought into this argument hook, line, and sinker. Former U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop sent a booklet to every American home assuring that vaginas and rectums were ‘the same’ in terms of HIV risk and that AIDS was equally a heterosexual and gay problem. Acceptance of the equality of gay love fed the politics leading to laws guaranteeing LBGT rights and homosexual-friendly court rulings. And since ‘God is love,’ the appeal to love by homosexuals has also tied the Church in knots. Pope Francis has made statements appearing to contradict the Church’s opposition to homosexuality, and a prominent Evangelical group compared the Church’s treatment of homosexuals to the Nazi’s treatment of Jews.

Historically, however, homosexual behavior was viewed very differently. Plato held that homosexual sex lacked altruism and, as such, did not benefit society — a necessary component of what is generally meant by ‘love.’ Indeed, he contended, gays simply use each others’ bodies ¹. A millennium later, John Chrysostom, Constantinople’s Bishop, rejected any claim that homosexual desire stemmed from love, calling homosexuality a “grievous and incurable disease,” so destructive it was “worse than murder.”

Today we have empirical evidence as to whether homosexual and heterosexual love are cut from the same cloth. During the past 35 years, tallies have been kept and compared of HIV infection rates among prostitutes, drug abusers, and homosexuals. All three groups have been well informed as to how to avoid infecting those with whom they interact. Female prostitutes, of course, do not claim to ‘love’ their customers — they provide a service. Likewise, IV drug users do not claim to love their fellow shooters, but usually want others around for camaraderie and safety.

But homosexuals do claim love (or at least the equivalent to heterosexual desire) as their motivation for sex. Is love demonstrated by the precautions they take in protecting themselves and their partners from disease? What if gays fail to take the same level of precautions that prostitutes or IV drug abusers do? What would that say about the nature of gay ‘love’? Instead of a par with heterosexual love, might it be more akin to the extreme self-gratification associated with sex with children or animals?

When it comes to dangerous germs, we automatically assume that individuals will try to avoid getting them and will also avoid infecting others. That rational people will ‘care for themselves and their neighbor,’ and certainly that they will avoid infecting someone they love. In the case of HIV, which is difficult to transmit, using condoms for sex and clean needles for drug use is usually sufficient protection, and only requires a few moments of time.

But unlike prostitutes and IV drug shooters, some gay-related HIV infections come from homosexuals seeking to get infected or deliberately infecting others. In the December 2016 issue of SFWeek, gay editor, Channing Joseph, recounted how he placed ads in gay publications seeking to get HIV infected. Of ‘over a hundred’ replies, five said ‘no way, this is wrong,’ but “over a hundred” took him up on his request to receive ‘the bug,’ offering times and locations for them to do the deed ². He recounted how a

“young man posts an ad online. Soon afterward, he is naked and face-down on the bed in a dimly lit hotel room. Throughout the night, nameless men enter through the unlocked door. Instead of saying hello, they unzip their pants. When they are finished, they leave. By sunup, the young man has lost track of how many sex partners have come and gone. If he has achieved his goal, his next test for the human immunodeficiency virus will come back positive.”

Were the above encounters ‘gay love’? The men who penetrated probably all had high levels of HIV in their bodies — they were ‘gift givers.’ Another young man wrote “Impregnate me with the AIDS virus,” yet another, “This is what I live for.” Others told of using toothbrushes to rough up their colon in order to assure their infection. Some said they would ‘go off Truvada’ so they could build up their HIV levels. Others wanted to be sure they were the one who did it.

The journalist noted it “is difficult to say exactly how many people are intentionally spreading HIV, but in any given week, in the San Francisco Bay Area personals section of Craigslist, it is not unusual to find at least a couple of personal ads by bug chasers or gift givers. On Bareback Real Time, there are often dozens.” There is no record of prostitutes or drug abusers doing this — none.

San Francisco often sets the stage for what other gay-friendly cities do. Ads for “Our Sexual Revolution” showing gays cavorting because they are (almost) fully protected from HIV are splashed everywhere on buses and posters. The implicit message? Gays can use condoms or not; they can be free of fear. But this program (serving ~12,500) has medical costs of around $2000/month or $25K/year per homosexual, solely for HIV prevention. Since HIV viral load, and infectiousness, goes up when another STD is acquired, no condoms and ‘freedom’ mean more STDs. If 65,000 were to sign up, the medical cost would be at least $100 million/year, not to mention the expense stemming from additional STDs due to this ‘sexual freedom.’

So not only do homosexuals not contribute children to our future, but it costs roughly $25K per year per individual to prevent acquiring or spreading this one germ! What would you do with an extra $25,000/year? What is so special about homosexuals that their behavior should be protected and supported in this way?
The SFWeek journalistic investigation was small. The number of HIV infections arising from ‘bug chasing’ or ‘gift giving’ is probably a tiny slice of the San Francisco AIDS scene. But other major cities have similar ‘gay communities’ and the same thing is going on there. More critical is what this activity says about the nature of ‘gay love,’ or lack thereof. Other, more extensive evidence reinforces the notion that heterosexual and homosexual ‘love’ are not at all the same, lending credence to both Plato and Chrysostom.

35 Years of Experience with HIV

Homosexuality was vigorously suppressed when China instituted its one-child policy in 1978–80. Given China’s culture and size, its one-child limit set the stage for a flood of men without women, perhaps 24 to 33 million in 2016 ³. China decriminalized homosexual acts in 1997, and delisted homosexuality as a ‘mental illness’ in 2001 — just as some of its ‘surplus males’ took up homosexuality. Confronted with growing HIV infections among gays, China partially suppressed homosexuality, forbidding its promotion and refusing to grant gay rights.

Through these changes, gays in China went from comprising 1% of new HIV sufferers in 1990–2001 under ‘hard suppression,’ where homosexual acts were illegal or a mental illness, to 27% under ‘soft suppression’ in 2015. The proportion of gay male infections accelerated in 2005, and surpassed IV drug abusers as the second-largest group of HIV carriers in 2011. By comparison, homosexual males comprised 29% of new U.S. HIV infections in 1998, and ~69% in 2014 ⁴. Both countries recorded about about 30,000 new HIV infections among gay males in 2015.

All countries have worked to suppress the spread of HIV. Their various containment strategies constitute a natural 35-year experiment involving dozens of governments, billions of people, and hundreds of prevention schemes. Unlike typical surveys that let us know what people said they felt, but not necessarily what they actually did, we know ‘what actually happened’ over these past 35 years. Three disesteemed groups — gay males, IV drug shooters, and prostitutes — were informed how to curb the spread of HIV. Only one failed.

1. Prostitutes (and heterosexuals) slowed their HIV transmission by using condoms;
2. IV drug abusers (IVDs) slowed their transmission, primarily by using clean needles; but
3. “No country in the world has discovered an effective way to curb the epidemic among gay men” — Dr. WuZunyou, director of China’s AIDS-Prevention Center ⁵.

Dr. Zunyou, aware of outcomes across the world, concluded that no matter the language, culture, or prevention scheme, refusal by gay males to protect themselves and their lovers from infection is a kind of ‘constant.’ The most recent HIV infection reports from the U.S. involving heterosexuals (including prostitutes), IVDs, and gay males underscore Dr. Zunyou’s assessment (see Table below).

New U.S. HIV Infections by Category, 2010–14 ⁶

Category \ Year	2010 (Share of Total)	2014 (Share of Total)	Relative Change
Heterosexuals	12,587 (28%)	10,113 (25%)	Down 12%
IV Drug Abusers	3,641 (8%)	2,363 (6%)	Down 28%
Gay Males	28,246 (63%)	28,139 (69%)	Up 9%
Total	44,805	40,873

Among the first two groups, there was apparently enough concern for both their own and their associates’ safety to drive a recent overall decline in numbers and proportions of new HIV infections. Nearly steady numbers of infections among gay males, however, led to a growing proportion of HIV.

These are hard tallies of actual infections, not surveys of feelings or opinions. These are the results of how actual motivations led to infection with a deadly disease. Even as a lover knows that saying ‘I love you’ is validated by acting like it, we know that rhetorical posturing means nothing if the profession of ‘love’ leads to carelessness indicating indifference, where ‘lovers’ are treated merely as sexual objects.

There is more than a slight mismatch between the pattern of HIV infection among gays and the ‘love’ they claim for their partners. In the early stages of the epidemic, some gay leaders threatened to ‘poison the blood supply.’ Indeed, whether deliberately or from carelessness, over 3,000 non-homosexuals in the U.S. died from gay-donated blood in the 1980s and 1990s. Even today, as noted above, some homosexuals intentionally seek to get infected, or to infect others, with HIV.

That prostitutes and IV drug abusers show more concern for themselves and their associates than do gay males puts the lie to the assertion that homosexual and heterosexual love are equivalent. It also demonstrates — in matters of life and death — just how shallow gay ‘love’ is. Though individuals obviously vary in their level of commitment to their partners, the statistical evidence is plain. Plato and Chrysostom spoke the truth: only foolishness would equate same-sex and man-woman love.