Subject: Philpott on anal sex ad nauseam. 
Date: Fri, 6 Dec 1996 13:45:53 -0500 (86 lines of text)
From: Facpat at aol.com

Paul Philpott wrote: 
For the 10,000th time I will point out why this logic fails. Do you think
that
cigarette smoking causes lung cancer, Greg? That alcohol causes liver
cirrhosis? Do you realize that (1) most smokers/dringkers never get lung
cancer
/ liver cirrhosis; and that (2) many people with lung cancer / liver
cirrhosis
have never smoked/drank? Yet none of these observations falsifies the
theories
that smoking/drinking causes lung cancer / liver cirrhosis.
 You, at least, are consistent on this point. You don't think that drug
use causes "AIDS" either. So you apply the same logic to the drug-AIDS
hypothesis. Since many "AIDS" people have never consumed drugs, and the vast
majority of drug users never get "AIDS", and since drug use is old and AIDS
is
(supposedly) old, you dismiss drugs as a cause. Why someone would (correctly)
dismiss this logic to accomidate the drug-AIDS hypothesis and yet envoke it
to
refute the anal sex-AIDS hypothesis, is beyond me. Duesberg is guilty of it.

Dear Paul, 
Perhaps Duesberg is more intelligent than you are.  I suggest you talk to him
about it.  

In the first place please produce any data showing that gay men had MORE ANAL
SEX AFTER AIDS THAN BEFORE.  All of the evidence is largely anecdotal from
people like Michael Callen who did not take care of himself even after he got
AIDS.  He had a lousy diet and lifestyle which he never changed (at least the
diet).  

Everybody admits that semen may be moderately immuno-suppressive, but, as
Lanka says, we only understand about 1% of the immune system, so that the
lasting or cumulative effect cannot be understood or proven.   You would just
like to think that it is cumulative as with drugs.   So how can you speak
about this with such conviction, and why dwell on it so?  For the 10,000th
time I will tell you to get off the subject.  

You are trying to be the leader of the dissident AIDS movement and to court
gays, but you do not seem to take into consideration the gay position on this
and only try to convince us that we are killing ourselves by the sex that we
have.  And even this is based on a distorted view of what we do between the
sheets. (Please see my article).  This is the root of my opposition to you
and why I do not acknowledge you as a leader of the AIDS dissident movement
and why I will continue to harass you in this forum.  

Frankly, I am really getting very, very tired of your ranting on this
subject.  You have only convinced most of us how irrational you are about it,
so that I can only turn to your own psychological makeup for an explanation.

You also totally ignore the political implications of your stand.  
The right wing view of us is as "sodomites."  This implies largely anal sex,
although the term has come to be used in a broader sense also.  As I have
explained before, and you continue to ignore, there are people waiting to
pass laws against anal sex again after we struggled so hard to get most of
these laws repealed.  And the sad fact is that this is not what we primarily
do as a group.  You are, therefore, with your arguments, only providing
ammunition for the bigots on the right who would love to outlaw us again.
 This is NOT paranoia on my part but realistic.  

I have also, for the 10,000th time, told you that I do not believe that ANY
kind of love making is deleterious to our health.  I believe that those who
would say that semen causes cervical cancer are equally guilty of this.
 Peter, in his wisdom has rejected all this nonsense, but you, for some
inexplicable reason, have chosen this obscure aspect the the so-called AIDS
syndrome to dwell on and have run it into the ground, alienating most gays
(they are almost unanimous in supporting me on this in the UK).  

Some people have even gone so far as to see you as an agent provocateur.  You
have certainly wasted much of our time on this really peripheral subject.
 That some unwitting and unthinking gays have listened to you means nothing
to me and to other thinking gay men in the AIDS dissident movement.    

You are doing a tremendous disservice to the unity of the AIDS dissident
movement by continuing this dialogue.  Please, pleaae let it die and let us
go on.  If you persist, then I will persist.  I cannot abandon myself to such
a diabolical idea (THERE, I said it again). 

Take away the drugs, particularly the prescribed drugs, and we will not have
an epidemic.  

Since my article is already out, I am going to post it here for you to read. 

Best regards, 
Fred Cline, San Francisco