Subject: AIDS and False Innocence Date: Published: 8/6/92 (157 lines) Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. Board of Contributors: AIDS and False Innocence ---- By Irving Kristol Why is Magic Johnson regarded by our media as some kind of moral hero, even a role model for the young? Mr. Johnson, a basketball player of extraordinary talent, has tested HIV positive, as a result -- he tells us -- of having been sexually promiscuous with more than 200 women. One or some of these women were infected with the HIV virus. As a result, a brilliant career has been cut short, as has a life. It is a sad story, to which compassion and pity are appropriate responses. But it is also a sordid story of a man defeated by his unruly sexual appetite. So why are we being asked to see him as an innocent victim, courageously coping with adversity? There are such innocent victims, to be sure. There are people who have been infected with the AIDS virus as a result of receiving a tainted blood transfusion. There are some who have contracted the disease from their bisexual husbands or lovers and have then transmitted it to their children. And then there are all those drug addicts who have used tainted needles -- though, since they are also active purveyors of the virus to their sexual partners, there is some reason to question their innocence. In any case, Magic Johnson cannot claim the status of an innocent victim. He knew, or should have known, the risk he was running. Moreover, it is very probable that, in the course of his promiscuous pursuits, he has infected others, either directly or indirectly. He is a foolish, reckless man who does not merit any kind of character reference. So why is he being presented as such a glamorous person, worthy of respect -- even of adulation? This question is part of a larger question. Why are all victims of AIDS treated as innocent victims when so many are responsible for their condition by their own actions? It is this idea of innocence, associated with AIDS, that legitimates all those celebrity fund-raising parties to help the victims of the disease. It is, similarly, this idea of innocence that encourages the victims themselves to organize public demonstrations, exhibitions and protests -- all of which receive respectful attention from the media, our politicians, our educators. And, of course, it is this idea of innocence that stimulates the strident demands that government spend more and more money on AIDS research, even though research on AIDS is now more generously funded than research on cancer, which claims a far greater number of victims. What, it is time to ask, is so special about AIDS that its victims are automatically cocooned in innocence and endowed with indignant self-righteousness? After all, AIDS is not some kind of exotic disease striking at random. The AIDS epidemic has its roots in certain forms of human behavior, and it is this behavior that sustains and magnifies the epidemic. AIDS is a venereal disease that seems to have been born out of homosexual anal intercourse. Just why and how this happened remains a puzzle, since such a sexual practice has been with us forever while the disease is (or at least seems to be) new. But what is not a puzzle is why we have an AIDS epidemic -- why the disease has spread so fast and is claiming so many victims. The epidemic character of the disease was first established by reason of homosexual promiscuity, and has since been accelerated by sexual promiscuity in general, as victimized women became carriers in their turn. Absent such sexual promiscuity there would still be AIDS, but nothing like an AIDS epidemic. The arithmetical connection between AIDS and promiscuity -- what in the 19th century would have been called the "arithmetic of woe" -- is obvious. The more promiscuous you are, the greater the risk of finding yourself, one day, testing HIV positive. Couples who are monogamous -- and this holds true whether they are homosexual or heterosexual -- are at little risk. A few sexual encounters increase the risk noticeably, but still keep it at a modest level. A larger number of sexual encounters means a much larger risk. A very large number of sexual encounters is a near-certain prescription for AIDS. One of the reasons homosexuals are so much more vulnerable to the AIDS virus is that, for reasons that remain unclear, homosexuals tend to be significantly more promiscuous than heterosexuals. Or at least they used to be. Today, one has the impression that heterosexuals are trying to catch up. Nevertheless, any pointed reference to the relation of sexual promiscuity to AIDS is not to be found in the media or among our educators. It is repressed because it might seem to be "judgmental" -- i.e., having a moral connotation. When Newsweek recently had a cover story on AIDS among teen-agers, it recounted the sad tale of an 18-year-old girl, a high school graduate, who aimed at a career in the military. Tests, however, revealed that she was HIV positive. Further inquiries by the doctors revealed that, in the previous twelve months, she had had sexual encounters with 24 different men! This is a seemingly average, cheerful, ambitious girl. And what did Newsweek have to say about such promiscuity? Nothing, absolutely nothing. It reported the facts but strenuously avoided any suggestion that she had been wrong in her behavior. The tone of the story was such as to imply that her mistake was in not insisting that those men practice "safe sex." Is it any wonder that the HIV virus is spreading among teen-agers? In Washington, D. C., two-thirds of 10th-grade boys and one-fifth of 10th-grade girls report that they have recently had four or more sex partners. These youngsters are a recruiting pool for our AIDS population. Confronted with the grim shadow of AIDS, educators can think only of distributing condoms and appealing for "safe sex." But promiscuity, especially among the young though among adults as well, will always overwhelm "safe sex." Men and women who are casual about sex are not likely to be scrupulous about the details. In general, the notion that men and women, especially young men and women, in the midst of sexual arousal, will always remember to disengage and observe some moments of clinical detachment leading to precautionary action -- well, one suspects that propagandists for "safe sex" have lost touch with the real world of passionate behavior. Such a business-like attitude toward sex may prevail among some (though surely not all) adults. It has little to do with the majority of Americans, who practice "safe sex" by limiting the numbers of their sexual partners. Why is it, then, that in our sex education programs, and in our popular culture as well, the dangers of promiscuity are hardly ever mentioned? The argument against teaching chastity, that it is "unrealistic" in today's "liberated" cultural climate -- a debatable thesis, some would say -- does not hold for promiscuity, after all. One could have a tolerant, benign view of sex among the young -- as all teachers of sex education do -- while stressing the advantage of fidelity over promiscuity. But the idea of fidelity, like the idea of promiscuity, has no place in education for "safe sex." The words themselves are meticulously avoided, along with the ideas. What is at work here is not science, and not education properly understood, but ideology. For a century now, the liberal-progressive point of view has had, as one of its basic premises, a belief in the original innocence of human nature and a profound resentment against the "distortions" that society and its traditional values have imposed upon it. One such distortion is "sexual repression," which leads to all sorts of neuroses, all sorts of aberrant behavior, all sorts of social problems. Since it is society that causes this state of affairs, it is pointless to expect individuals to be capable of responsible behavior. We would then be "blaming the victim." Similarly, the well-established connection between homosexual promiscuity and AIDS must be ignored, lest a bias toward "traditional family values" filter into public discourse. Liberation from such values and a rediscovery of humanity's original innocence are necessary preconditions for achieving the liberal-progressive vision of a more decent and humane world. It is to secure this vision that otherwise sensible people are frantically handing out condoms to fourteen-year-old kids -- something that, only yesteryear, they would have regarded as absurd. But AIDS has imported a new, destructive element into this vision, one that could challenge one of the very foundations of progressive liberalism itself. And that is why AIDS has become a special object for compassionate, generous treatment in our culture and politics. The victims of AIDS are, in truth, the victims of the liberal-progressive ideology, which is now mobilizing opinion in its self-defense. It is fair to say that never has "liberal guilt" been so honestly earned. --- Mr. Kristol, an American Enterprise Institute fellow, co-edits The Public Interest and publishes The National Interest. [This article is made available here by Dow Jones Co. for the personal and non-commercial use of callers to this bbs, in the hope that it will be of some help to those who are suffering from the disease and others who are seeking to help them.]