In the movie, “The Rainmaker,” about an unscrupulous insurance company refusing to pay a legitimate claim, the young lawyer fighting for justice for his sick client turns to the high-powered and well-paid corporate lawyer across the table and asks, “I’m just wondering, do you even remember when you first sold out?” It is a commentary on how and why people abandon the cause of what is right for financial and other reasons.

I remembered that comment when I was told that conservative columnist George Will had endorsed gays in the military on Sunday’s edition of the ABC show “This Week” and had smeared supporters of the Pentagon’s homosexual exclusion policy as unintelligent. I couldn’t believe it. But I checked the transcript. Indeed, George Will had said those curious things.

Although Will was referring to Republican members of Congress as dummies, it is a fact that the chiefs of all the military services also expressed their opposition to repeal of  “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” at this time. Are they stupid, too?

Sunday, May 30, marks the day when George Will sold out.

On this occasion, he decided to take a politically expedient viewpoint, which won him plaudits from the other panelists, but the policy position he took is demonstrably fraught with dangers for our troops. It is reckless and dangerous, primarily because Will and other panelists refused to come to grips with the health impact of gays in the military. Instead, they talked about gays they know, or the gays their kids knew, as if the only factor is whether you can interact with them at a cocktail party.

Socializing with gays is not the main issue, although it can be a problem in the close quarters and battlefield conditions that our soldiers are forced to endure.  The key problem is that the blood of male homosexuals is contaminated with HIV and other diseases that can cause death.

These infectious agents cannot be effectively screened out of the blood supply. That is why gay males are prohibited from donating blood.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with jurisdiction over the nation’s blood supply, explains that “MSM [men who have sex with men] have an increased incidence and prevalence of several currently recognized transfusion-transmitted diseases” – Hepatitis B virus, HIV, syphilis, and cytomegalovirus. The FDA also says, “There is a theoretical concern that MSM populations may also be at increased risk for other unrecognized transfusion-transmitted agents.”

That means another infectious agent could be lurking in the blood that they want to have the “right” to donate to the nation’s blood supply.

Whose Rights?

What George Will may not understand is that the gays are already moving beyond the issue of acceptance in the military to demanding that the federal government lift the ban on gay blood, putting all of our lives at risk and in jeopardy.

It was not always this way with Will. Back in 2007 he seemed aware of the authoritarian nature of the gay agenda, noting in a critical column that they were trying to label support for traditional values as homophobic and a hate crime. He wrote a 2009 column defending California’s vote in favor of traditional marriage and criticizing efforts to undo it.

But somewhere along the way, possibly in response to criticism of columns like that, Will decided to give up the fight. Perhaps he started moving this way after the election when he hosted a dinner party for then-president elect Obama. In any case, the drift reached a ridiculous extreme on the ABC “This Week” program, when he was asked why Republicans in Congress were fighting repeal of the homosexual exclusion policy and he replied with the rude comment, “They’re not being very intelligent.” The other panelists chuckled.

Will referred to accepting gays in the military as part of “the evolving standards of decency that mark a maturing society,” ignoring the dangerous “lifestyle” that threatens their own lives, not to mention our lives through contamination of the blood supply.

Will also ignored the wisdom of the founding fathers, who regarded homosexual sodomy as a crime against nature and believed it should be outlawed and punished severely. Indeed, General George Washington himself authorized the expulsion of a solder from the army for sodomy.

McCain Stands Firm

While Senator John McCain demonstrated real courage by demanding that Congress wait until the results of a comprehensive review of the proposed policy change, his colleague, Senator Joe Lieberman, led the charge for the homosexual lobby. Meanwhile, Rep. Ron Paul demonstrated his libertarian bent when he became one of only five Republicans to vote with the liberal bloc in the House to repeal the homosexual exclusion policy.

Lieberman, once considered one of the only Senate Democrats willing to recognize the security needs of the U.S., now stands exposed as just another politician willing to compromise national defense in order to benefit a special interest group. Lieberman must think that his role in this controversy refurbished his liberal credentials. But he cannot be taken seriously in the future when he claims to be concerned about threats to the United States. He went directly against the views of the chiefs of the military services, who had been promised a review of the proposed change in policy before legislative action.

Senator McCain noted, “This vote short circuits the ongoing Pentagon review of the policy and thereby denies our men and women in uniform a chance to have their voices heard on an important issue that affects them and their service. That is why all four Service Chiefs opposed legislative action at this time.  The vote today is a de facto repeal of the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law, and I am concerned that the men and women of our military will view this preemptive political action as a deep sign of disrespect and unwillingness to consider their views.”

He is correct. That is why the policy change – and the manner in which it was voted on – can only demoralize our troops, in addition to jeopardizing military readiness, order and discipline.

The Battle Ahead

The battle is not completely over, however. While some votes have taken place in the Senate Armed Services Committee and in the House of Representatives, repeal of the homosexual exclusion policy is NOT a done deal. A filibuster in the Senate is still possible and the House bill that includes the repeal is facing other difficulties.

Plus, the comprehensive review, which is underway and supposed to be completed by December, can complicate matters by making the accurate and truthful case that active homosexuals on the battlefield would threaten the lives of those now serving. An objective analysis of the gay blood problem could be used to argue against integration of the open and active homosexuals into the Armed Forces.

This is precisely where the homosexuals are now targeting their complaints of “homophobia” and “discrimination.” They are saying that the ban on gay males donating blood should be lifted as well. Congress has no direct role in this because the ban is under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However, liberals Senators John Kerry, Al Franken and others have already pressured the FDA to hold meetings on June 10 and June 11 to consider lifting the ban. The FDA commissioner, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, is a political appointee of the Obama Administration.

Selling Out is Trendy

George Will is just the latest example of a trend by some “conservatives” to surrender on the cultural issues and fight the battle on economic grounds.

When translated into political terms, this becomes the kind of “new” or “progressive” conservatism that we saw in the British Conservative Party, which failed to win a majority of the vote in the recent British elections and now has to exercise power in collaboration with a far-left party. We have called them the fake conservatives. British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader David Cameron is so much of a panderer to the militant homosexuals in Britain that he told them he wants to rid “homophobia” from the schools, give special funding to the transgendered, and provide tax breaks for homosexual couples.

Does George Will consider this an “intelligent” course for the Republicans that he now spends time insulting?

Editor’s Message

A former CIA officer active during the Cold War has given me his thoughts on how rapidly Obama is moving to transform the U.S. Government and American society. He says:

“Initially he has three obstacles to overcome (assuming he doesn’t want a violent or revolutionary transformation).  He has to dominate the executive branch and he does and one can see from his appointment of czars, some of whom are admitted Marxists, others with strong socialist tendencies compatible with the Marxists, so he is essentially in control here.  Then he has to transform the judiciary and the legislative branches.  He has already made an impact in the judiciary by appointing some judges with very liberal social views. He will soon have two appointees on the Supreme Court. So, in the judiciary, he is developing a cadre that is likely to find in his favor in cases that interest him.

“Another one is legislative. While Obama has the power to appoint in some areas, Congress does have some say about who the appointments are. With a democratic majority that seems largely to be unthinking about what Obama wants to do, or doesn’t care, we are moving in a direction that will be difficult to reverse.”

One key obstacle is the military. “It will be very interesting to see how he maneuvers in this area,” the veteran CIA officer told me. Well, we now see that he is moving quickly to transform the military through repealing the Pentagon’s homosexual exclusion policy. That is why our lead article about George Will is so important. George has sold out to the gay lobby. Dale O’Leary’s important article explains how this sell-out can lead to contamination of the blood supply and death for the rest of us.

Please take a stand with us for our soldiers and our nation.

The Dangers of Gay Blood

By Dale O’Leary*

Those who are lobbying to have the current ban on gay blood (from male homosexuals) changed have focused entirely on improved tests for HIV. They do not mention all the other infectious diseases epidemic among men who have sex with men (MSM), because the gay activists cannot argue that MSM are no more likely to be infected with a blood-borne disease than other populations.

The CDC recently announced a study which found that the rate of new HIV diagnoses among MSM is 44 times higher than among other men and the rate of primary and secondary syphilis 46 times that of other men. In addition, there have been outbreaks of various forms of hepatitis, herpes, drug resistant gonorrhea, cancer-causing human papilloma virus, cytomegalovirus, chlamydia, plus MRSA, and a host of other diseases.

The World Federation of Hemophilia points out that “By their very nature blood donor screening and deferral criteria are discriminatory… they are a method to reduce the risk of known, unknown, undetectable or emerging viruses and/or other disease causing agents being passed to recipients of blood or blood products.”

Randy Shilt’s And the Band Played On, a chronicle of the early days of the AIDS epidemic documents how long it took to protect the blood supply after there was solid evidence that AIDS was a blood-borne disease. The  gay community fought the current restrictions, using some of the same rhetoric they are using today.

In 1981, when the first cases were reported, there was already an epidemic of STDs among men who have sex with men. I quote from Randy Shilts:

“Dr. Selma Dritz, the infectious disease specialist for the San Francisco        Department of Public Health, was also concerned….she warned, ‘Too much is being transmitted… We’ve got all these diseases going unchecked. There are so many opportunities for transmission that, if something new gets loose here, we’re going to have hell to pay.’”

As Dr. Dritz spoke, HIV was already making its way through the gay community and soon thousands of gay men were dying of AIDS.

In  his 1997 book, Sexual Ecology, gay activist Gabriel Rotello predicted a dangerous future:

“Almost every researcher studying the epidemic is convinced of one overarching fact: that if gay men ever re-recreate the sexual conditions of the seventies, the same kind of thing will happen again with other microbes. There are already drug-resistant or incurable diseases circulating in the gay population–things like hepatitis C, antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea, various strains of herpes – and they all stand poised to sweep through the gay population the moment we provide them an opportunity to spread… And, say the experts there are probably many more microbes whose existence we know nothing about, just as we once knew nothing about HIV.”

Now, in 2010, we can see the future Rotello feared. Thousands of gay men attend circuit parties, where sex and drugs are on the program. Millions use the gay social networking site Manhunt to hook up. Crystal meth use among gay men is epidemic and associated with unsafe sex. Another disease could be hiding in their blood or tissues, one with a long incubation period. Or a well-known disease could mutate into a form not recognized by current testing, as happened recently in Sweden where a mutated form of chlamydia was missed in testing.

Although testing for known pathogens has improved dramatically, current methods are not perfect and an increase in donations by MSM would increase the risk of infected blood reaching recipients.

But it is the diseases we don’t know about — and for which we don’t have tests — that we must guard against, and the only way to do that is to “discriminate” against high-risk groups.

MSM are a high-risk group because from the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, gay activists rejected proven public health measures. When the gay activists can prove that the rate of STDs and HIV infection among MSM is no higher than the rate in the general public, then, and only then, should [the federal government] even consider changing the rules on blood donation.

* O’Leary is a writer who has followed the AIDS epidemic since the beginning and written extensively on the subject of sexually transmitted diseases.

Spotlight on the Media

Good Riddance

To Helen Thomas

In a February 2009 AIM Report, Wes Vernon wrote, “If one were to draw a cartoon-like character who embodies all the missteps and bias of the Washington media, he would have to invent Helen Thomas.” Finally, with her comments about how the Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and go home to “Poland, Germany … and America and everywhere else,” she was forced to retire.

For 57 years, Helen Thomas reported for United Press International and in her later years she was its Washington Bureau Chief. Only recently had she written a clearly-labeled opinion column for the Hearst newspapers.

Back in 2003, when she openly acted as an advocate for the Arab/Muslim cause in the Middle East, we suggested AIM Report subscribers send her a postcard that went as follows:

“You have become the poster girl of liberal media bias, serving to discredit the notion of a professional and objective press corps. We understand that you are being honored by the Arab American Institute, and there is nothing wrong with being proud of one’s heritage. But this is a political group that opposes U.S. policy… We suggest you quit journalism and become a full-time advocate for the Arab/Muslim cause.”

Last year, at the National Press Club, Thomas introduced socialist Rep. Barbara Lee during an event to release Lee’s book, Renegade for Peace & Justice. In the acknowledgements section of the book, Lee names Thomas as an inspiration behind the book itself.

Some defenders of Thomas tried to blame her comments on her old age, but she has been spouting off that way for many years. She should have quit years ago when we recommended it.

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