Let's repeat that: there is NO "direct statistical correlation between HIV transmission and crystal meth use."

Kinda takes your breath away, doesn't it?

It does mine.

Because that means that for more than two years AIDS prevention specialists have been screaming and yelling about meth and rising HIV infection rates without having any scientific proof that there's a link between the two.

Here's what these specialists do have:

"We have anecdotal evidence that shows crystal meth increases the likelihood of sexual risk-taking, which increases the likelihood of HIV transmission," said Lynn Schulman, spokesperson for the Gay Men's Health Crisis. "The drug lessens inhibitions, makes men more sexual, elevates the mood and creates an illusion of power. Men have told us this."

Anecdotal evidence.

Say-so.

"Men have told us this."

Think about that guys.

Anecdotal evidence aka say-so is what folks had at the Salem witch trials.

Here's how it worked:

Goodman Weintraub to Judge: "I saw Goody Smith with a black cat, and the next day my cow died."

Judge: "Burn her!"

That's why we no longer rely on anecdotal evidence.

Because it proves nothing.

And because you end up burning a lot of people -- like Goody Smith -- to no good end.

So you've rid yourself of Goody Smith -- but the cows keep dying.

First researcher: "Joe told me he used meth, and next month he had HIV."

Second researcher: "It's the meth!"

Is it?

Actually we don't know.

Anymore than they knew in Salem that there was a relationship between Goody Smith's black cat and Goodman Weintraub's dead cow.

Consider this statistic from that inconclusive LA study:

"almost one third of men who tested positive for HIV had used the drug [meth]."

Which means that more than two-thirds who were poz had NOT used it.

Let's try this stat: "LAGLC's [the LA study] results also showed a threefold increase in crystal meth use over the past four years."

If there's a direct link, there should be a threefold increase in HIV infection rates over the past four years.

Has there been?

NO.

Rates have gone up, but not threefold.

A threefold increase would mean that instead of 60 MSM per day getting infected, 180 would be getting infected.

That's not happening.

Here's the article.

Please note the HUGE amount of peer pressure exerted upon the Toronto folks to toe the analist line.

And please note that there's no mention by anyone anywhere of the actual cause of MSM HIV transmission: anal penetration.

Toronto officials take heat on HIV-meth link

Larry Buhl, PlanetOut Network

Thursday, July 7, 2005 / 04:07 PM

Health officials and HIV/AIDS specialists in Toronto drew sharp criticism from U.S. counterparts for questioning the link between crystal methamphetamine use and HIV transmission among gay men, the Toronto Star reported Thursday.

Countering the generally held belief among U.S. HIV/AIDS experts that meth leads to riskier sexual behavior, Toronto Associate Medical Officer of Health Dr. Rita Shahin said it is still too early to make a connection.

"The jury is still out as to whether crystal meth is leading to riskier behavior than other drugs," Shahin said.

John Maxwell of the AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT), concurred, saying there has not been enough studies of crystal use among gay men to definitively link the drug's use to HIV transmission. "Maybe we're being overly cautious," he said, "but we want to make sure we know what's going on in our city."

As a result Toronto has not launched any major awareness campaigns about crystal meth use increasing the risk of HIV transmission, the Star reported. Toronto is Canada's largest city and reputed to have the third largest gay and lesbian population in North America.

Dr. Jeffrey Klausner, director of sexually transmitted disease prevention and control for San Francisco's Department of Public Health, said Toronto health officials who doubt the connection between crystal use and risky HIV transmission are "burying their heads in the sand."

"They need to look around at every major urban area in the U.S., from San Francisco to Atlanta to Miami to Los Angeles, and the direct effects crystal has had on continued transmission of HIV. I think it's extremely unlikely Toronto would be shielded from those effects," he told the Star.

Toronto officials' doubts about an HIV-crystal link fly in the face of a Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center study, which showed that almost one third of men who tested positive for HIV had used the drug. Presented at the National HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta last month, LAGLC's results also showed a threefold increase in crystal meth use over the past four years. While not conclusive, the study validated the concerns of many U.S. health officials.

"From a statistics point of view I can see their [Toronto officials'] point, because even our data doesn't show a direct statistical correlation between HIV transmission and crystal meth use," said Quentin O'Brien, director of health and mental health services at the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center.

However, splitting statistical hairs does not let Toronto off the hook, O'Brien told the PlanetOut Network. "From a logical point of view, their argument defies logic. If there is only an indicator of a correlation between crystal use and HIV you want to address it when it's on the upswing and not get into a debate about statistical analyses."

Nor does doubt that crystal leads to riskier behavior than other drugs support Toronto's decision not to sponsor an awareness campaign, Joel Ginsberg, a spokesman for the Gay and Lesbian Medical Association told PlanetOut.

"If recreational drug use is increasing risk, and crystal increases risk, you'd think there would be some value in doing intervention," he said. Ginsberg also pointed to a 2004 study by the San Francisco Health department that determined crystal users were more than twice as likely to have HIV and nearly five times as likely to have syphilis.

"It's always good to have more research, but at a certain point you need to take action," Ginsberg said.

"We have anecdotal evidence that shows crystal meth increases the likelihood of sexual risk-taking, which increases the likelihood of HIV transmission," said Lynn Schulman, spokesperson for the Gay Men's Health Crisis. "The drug lessens inhibitions, makes men more sexual, elevates the mood and creates an illusion of power. Men have told us this."

O'Brien added that prescription drugs such as Viagra and Cialis help men overcome impotence associated with meth use, creating a powerfully risky combination.

HIV/AIDS social services in major U.S. cities have been warning gay and bisexual men about the risks of crystal meth for years, though funds for extensive awareness and prevention programs are increasingly hard to come by, O'Brien said.

[emphases mine]

Bill Weintraub:

So: is it the meth?

NO.

And is there any reason to believe that more interventions aimed at meth use and users would work?

NO:

"HIV/AIDS social services in major U.S. cities have been warning gay and bisexual men about the risks of crystal meth for years..."

For years.

Yet infection rates keep going up.

Why then does the AIDS establishment keep returning to FAILED STRATEGIES?

Because it's the anal.

It's always been the anal.

And NO ONE in American MSM AIDS prevention is willing to say so.

It's forbidden, it's taboo, anal is a sacred cow, you can't criticize it, if you do you're a homophobe or worse and you're not part of our great LGBT community.

Yet the highly-regarded Buchbinder et al study [Buchbinder et al J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr Volume 39, Number 1, May 1 2005], which is also cited on this board, said it's the anal:

Many studies have demonstrated that receptive anal sex is most strongly associated with prevalent and incident HIV infection in MSM and carries the highest per-contact risk of acquiring HIV. ...

Having a large number of male sex partners ... and engaging in receptive anal sex explained the majority of infections in this cohort and should be targeted in prevention strategies for MSM.

"Receptive anal sex should be targeted in prevention strategies for MSM."

What's the US AIDS establishment targeting?

Everything But Anal.

Last year it was depression.

This year it's methamphetamines.

Next year it will be homophobia.

And infection rates will continue to rise.

The ONLY WAY to bring down those rates is to move MSM away from anal penetration and towards sex which is both hot and HIV safe:

Frot.

That would do it.

It would end the epidemic without ending sex.

Whereas there's not one shred of evidence that getting men off of meth would reduce infection rates -- even a tad.

Is it desireable to get men off of this and other drugs?

Sure.

But that doesn't mean doing so would impact HIV infection rates.

Bottom line:

The AIDS establishment continues to put protecting anal and promiscuity ahead of saving gay male lives.

And when we put forward Frot as a sure-fire way to save MSM lives -- which is what it is -- we're incessantly pilloried and attacked.

Do not support the AIDS establishment.

Do not give money to the AIDS Service Organizations.

Support us instead.

Donate.

We are fighting for you and for every other man who has sex with man.

No one else is.

Join us.

Fight back.

Save your life.

Greg Milliken

Re: HIV-meth link questioned

7-14-2005

Reading this post, Bill, I just couldn't help but think back to every time someone told me I was taking the HIV prevention thing too far by promoting frot.

And while I was excessively vehement for a while, it just doesn't compare to what the gay establishment is doing.

Because my solution, frot, vehement and absolutist as I was about it, would have worked.

Whereas the gay establishment continues to waste billions of dollars on chasing after theories that have no basis in fact.

No basis in fact.

Crystal meth doesn't give people HIV.

Yet the gay establishment is focusing on it.

That's like getting a headache, taking aspirin, and then when the aspirin wears off and your headache comes back you blame the aspirin for giving you the headache. Completely ridiculous.

Yet we're the ones who are supposed to have abandoned the gay community?

We're the ones who have decided to listen to reason. We have decided that the facts add up, and we have decided to face that sum with the full knowledge of how to defeat it.

And we have done so willingly, using no coercion, just the simple rationality of what is plainly obvious. Anal sex spreads HIV.

We're called a lot of names for what we believe.

Yet focus on the attack and it will always describe the nature of the attacker.

Is it honestly self-hating to discover a flaw -- anal -- and try to fix it? Or is it more self-hating to continue practicing this flaw in the full knowledge that it is what is destroying you?

And likewise, isn't it delusional to believe that everything, EXCEPT the one thing that is actually harming you, is the source of all your problems?

Is it not delusional to go on practicing and desiring this flaw, this anal penetration, because it's the only way you see yourself as able to live your life?

And is it not more reasonable to take your life into your own hands and make the right decisions that work for you?

And is it unreasonable to expect people to accept your choices about the way you want to live; or to be forced by others to live a way you don't want to?

Which sounds more like a cult: a group of men who willingly chose to participate in a set of beliefs and values that they have held all their lives, or a group of men who have to be acculturated into a life of promiscuity, anal penetration, and effeminacy? A group of men who have strong belief systems validated by their personal experiences, or one that openly disdains any type of belief because they "heard" that it condemns gay people, without even considering to look into the matter?

Is it a cultish trait that I would and could live my life without ever having anal again, or would that better describe a culture where I'm expected to have anal despite what I might want?

Make no mistake: anal penetration is their sacrificial altar, and you are the sacrificial cow placed upon it.

And what of real sex? They say, "Frot is simply foreplay, anal is real sex." But I look at it now, having experienced both, and have to take into account what I know to be true. Is it real sex when you have to put on a condom to practice it safely, thereby limiting the physical contact between your most sacred organ and your partner? Is it real sex when you have to stop and wait for your partner to go through an intense pain in order to satisfy your pleasure? Is it real sex when the thing you feel isn't pleasure and passion, but trepidation, fear and pain? Is it real sex when the one fluid which represents the culmination of pleasure must be trapped and removed from the situation as soon as it is introduced? Is it real sex when one partner has to put both his immunological and physical health at risk for the sake of maintaining the illusion that it is the only "true" form of sex?

And what about pleasure? Is it real sex when only one partner experiences genuine genital pleasure? How can a sexually fulfilling relationship be built upon such a fundamental incompatability?

I can't say any of these problems exist with frot. It is sex as sex was intended, by either God or evolution or whichever other system you believe, to be practiced.

When I come here to this website, which I haven't been able to do as often recently, I always feel like there is a difference between you guys and the gay community at large.

There is a difference. The people here have decided to stop living in shame and fear of loneliness and stand up for themselves and what they truly want.

Whereas the ones out there, both gay and straight, haven't.

Thank you all for doing that little part.

Bill Weintraub

Re: HIV-meth link questioned

7-14-2005

Thank you Greg.

Make no mistake: anal penetration is their sacrificial altar, and you are the sacrificial cow placed upon it.

That's the terrible truth:

Anal penetration is both analist god and analist altar, and you're the sacrifice.

Your body, and your one sweet precious life, are being served up to that voracious and irrational deity.

A bilious Baal.

A modern-day Moloch.

Consumer of men.

Faced with these murderous analists and their chthonic deity, can one be, as Greg says he was but as he was not, "too vehement?"

NO.

Anal penetration is responsible for the deaths of half a million gay and bi American men, and the infection of another half million with HIV and hep C and who knows what else.

Worldwide 40 million people are infected, many of them MSM made sick through anal penetration.

Those people face, at best, a lifetime of dependency on antivirals.

There's no cure, and no vaccine, in sight.

What's sickening in these internet and other media debates, is the way the analists consistently sabotage and block our efforts to introduce Frot to other gay and bi men.

As though Frot were some sort of poison, some social ill.

Yet what's the worst which will happen to a guy who chooses, on any occasion, Frot over anal?

He'll have a good time.

That's it.

That's the worst that can happen.

He's not going to have a bad time, cause Frot's genital-genital sex.

His body is hard-wired to enjoy it, it feels great the first time and every time.

And he's not going to get HIV.

Yet these disgusting analists throw themselves into these debates and clog them with virtual volumes of viporous, vomitous nonsense about why men can't give up anal.

And when that doesn't work, they resort to ad hom attacks, ad nauseum and ad infinitum.

Why?

Because the facts do not support them.

As Greg points out, their embrace of anal is cultish, based not on fact, but on faith in the anal fetish, a bigoted and biased belief in buttsex which brooks no discussion.

What we've put forward, by contrast --

and it is we, not I, but myself, Don Frazer, Ben Stockpeck, David McQuarrie, Chuck Tarver, Mart Finn, Robert Lorspir, Greg Milliken, Logan McClintock, Oscar Vallejo, Beagle Jones, and a host of other men --

what we've put forward, by contrast, are propositions based upon observation, life-experience, and reasoned consideration.

So the Frot Movement is not about matters of faith, but matters of fact:

1. FACT:

Frot is the only way men can make love which is both mutually and simultaneously genital and involves direct genital-genital contact.

It is the only male-male sex act therefore which is a true correlative to penile-vaginal sex.

And as a consequence it is intensely and simultaneously pleasurable for both partners.

In addition, Frot is HIV safe, and very low risk for other STIs.

Anal is highest risk for HIV, and very high risk for all other STIs.

2. FACT:

Fidelity is preferable to promiscuity both physically and psychologically.

Physically: The single most important indicator for STI risk is total number of lifetime partners.

The more partners you have, the greater the probability that you'll develop an STI or multiple STIs.

Psychologically: Numerous studies, including the Rutgers study cited in Why Be Faithful, have concluded that men do far better pyschologically living in relationships than they do living alone.

And monogamous marriage, whether heterosex or homosex, is the gold-standard for relationships.

That's why people want LTRs.

Again, these are both matters of fact.

3. FACT:

Men who have sex with men are men.

They are not women, and they are not a third sex.

There's no indication that homosex is other than a natural and normal male activity, pursued both by men who are exclusively homosexual and by those who are intensely heterosexual as well.

Those are the facts, indisputable and undeniable, and I encourage those of you who debate analists to stick with them.

And to DEMAND that your opponents either refute them, or publicly accept them.

Because if they cannot refute, they must accept.

There is, logically, no third course.

Can an analist prove that an anus is a vagina or in any other way a genital organ?

If not, then our assertion that "Frot is the only way men can make love which is both mutually and simultaneously genital and involves direct genital-genital contact," is correct.

And that's the end of the discussion.

Can an analist prove that promiscuity is healthier than Fidelity, that promiscuity does not increase risk of STI or that promiscuity is psychologically healthier than monogamy?

If not, then our assertion that "Fidelity is preferable to promiscuity both physically and psychologically," is correct.

And that's the end of that discussion.

And can an analist prove that men who have sex with men are NOT men?

Can he prove that men who have sex with men are women?

Or pseudo-women?

If not, that's the end of that discussion.

Because if not, if men who have sex with men are men, they have a right to act like men, not parodies of women, and we have a right to reject those effeminate parodies which do nothing but perpetuate a lie.

Guys, so long as you stick with these facts, it doesn't matter what the analists may say.

Is Frot not mutually genital?

NO.

Is anal not high risk?

NO.

Is promiscuity superior to Fidelity?

NO.

Are men who have sex with men women?

NO.

End of discussion.

In these public debates, the analists will want to talk about these issues forever.

Don't let them.

Insist that they put up or shut up.

Because actually there's very little to talk about.

These facts are not in dispute.

It's time the analists got their distended butts out of the road.

And gave men who love men the chance to lead happy, healthy, and decent lives.

They have a right to those lives.

They have a right to have sex which is every bit as mutually genital as heterosex.

They have a right to Fidelity in their relationships.

And they have a right to live their lives as men.

We will accept no less -- for ourselves -- and for every other man who loves men.