Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the spike in Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs):
We have an STD crisis on our hands, one that many elites continue to misunderstand.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports that syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia are at an all-time high. Nearly 2.5 million cases were reported in 2018. What makes this so disturbing is the fact that not too long ago these three diseases had been in decline; they have been increasing for the past five years.
Most alarming is the 40 percent increase in congenital syphilis, cases where newborns contract the disease from their mothers. This resulted in the deaths of 94 infants in 2018.
Gonorrhea and chlamydia increased by 5 and 3 percent, respectively, between 2017 and 2018. Since 2014, the former disease increased by 63 percent and the latter by 19 percent.
What’s driving the increase? The CDC says it can be explained by a decrease in condom use among young people and among homosexuals (or what they politely call MSM, which stands for “men having sex with men”), increased screening among some groups, and budget cuts to sexual health programs.
Political and medical elites can always be counted on to blame lack of money. They want more of it. The idea that money, education, and technology can solve what is at heart a behavioral issue is really more of a superstition at this stage. It is scientifically flawed.
In the 1950s, the birth control pill was not available, abortion was illegal, sex education hardly existed, and we spent almost nothing on sexual health programs. According to elite logic in 2019, STD rates should have been through the sky, yet they hardly existed.
What we didn’t have in the 1950s was the fallout of a sexual revolution.
For example, the CDC reports that gay and bisexual men, who are a small minority of the population, accounted for the majority (54 percent) of all syphilis cases in 2018. Earlier this year, it said that primary and secondary syphilis—the most infectious stages of the disease—were mostly attributable to homosexuals; they accounted for almost 90 percent of all cases.
How can this be? Is there anyone—gay or straight—who hasn’t heard about the consequences of promiscuity?
If we were serious about combating STDs, we would start asking the hard questions. Why is this largely a gay issue? And why is it that the District of Columbia leads all 50 states in all three STD diseases? But to ask such questions is to run the risk of being labeled homophobic or a racist. So what do the elites do? They say nothing. Meanwhile, innocent babies are dying.
The STD crisis is no mystery. But it takes guts to tell the truth.
