Back in the 1970s, the scourge of AIDS was hardly known and even then it was confined to the male gay community. Some quite nasty slurs came about such as G.A.Y (Got AIDS Yet) and A.I.D.S (Arse Injected Death Sentence) were born out of it. The response in some (largely, but not exclusively religious) quarters was, broadly, this:

But then it moved into IV drug users - so that rallying cry moved on:

and then it moved to the heterosexual community:

So far, the traditional Biblical morality is doing pretty well. They are anti-gay, against druggies abusing their temple (body) and against promiscuity. But it all comes apart when HIV jumps from person to person by blood transfusion... so you won't hear them saying this, for example:

Haemophiliacs cannot produce an essential blood clotting agent and rely heavily on blood transfusions to keep them alive - in the early days of the AIDS/HIV outbreak blood was not well screened for HIV - until it started to infect the vulnerable; and haemophiliacs were among the first. The same problem also affected transplant patients and many major operations in the early days, but is now much less of a problem. More information here: http://www.haemophilia.org.uk/

So why am I ranting about this? Well the illustration is that the mighty ranks of the faithful readily jump upon anything that seems to support their hypothesis without even a thought. When the tides turn against them as they always do they retreat faster than you can shout, "Bullshit!". Why is this a problem? It's because the damage they leave in their wake takes years or even decades to repair. It also serves to remind us that these people, who claim to hold the moral high-ground, are nothing more than sanctimonious bigots. Nigel McQuoid is an idealist with an extreme agenda that kids, far from agreeing with en-masse, are likely to rebel against; and that's very dangerous indeed.

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