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NASA Astronaut Lisa Nowak Charged With Attempted Murder in Bizarre Love Triangle

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NASA Astronaut Lisa Nowak Charged With Attempted Murder in Bizarre Love Triangle

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NASA Astronaut Lisa Nowak Charged With Attempted Murder in Bizarre Love Triangle

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NASA Astronaut Lisa Nowak Charged With Attempted Murder in Bizarre Love Triangle

I'm immoral and bigoted AND intolerant. NOW what are you going to do?

Hark, I think you're being stalked by a FOXY NASA astronaut!

I'm trying not to be difficult... I really am, but I just don't think you can frame the debate that way.

All of us are paying the price of HIV/AIDS. Some of us have been to way too many funerals, and all of us are, at the very least, footing the bill for the research money and medical costs to combat it.

Folks didn't get HIV by sitting on a soiled toilet seat or by not spraying lysol on the hotel door handle.

Here's what is more (equally?) depressing to me: ALL STDs are on the increase. We're now talking about vaccinations to prevent the spread of HPV, with 20 million women currently infected, 6.2 million new cases at year. At that rate of infection, in 20 years, 80% of women by the age of 50 will have HPV.

That doesn't include Chlamydia or Herpes. That doesn't include unplanned pregnancy. it doesn't include the increase in lawlessness, mental illnesses, and hopelessness that burdens society with children being raised by single mothers, and paying for their upbringing with welfare.

What some folks have failed to grasp is that there is no such thing as "safe sex" except with ONE partner for your entire life, and that's making sure that one partner didn't inherit an STD from their mother.

Whatever we have been doing, whatever trend we've been heading to, this is NOT working. The data is showing that whatever things we decided to alter that allowed these epidemic rises in the cost of "free love" to occur, are not working, because these are NOT private matters. They become very public matters when the health and well being of the general society is forced to pick up the bill for all of it. The bill of emotional loss AND the financial burdens.

People keep saying "what people do behind closed doors is not the business of others." OK. I can go for that. I can go for that 100%.

As long as ALL of it remains behind the closed doors of those who engage in risky behaviors, including the costs for finding the cures, distributing the vaccines, and paying for the medical care of those who choose not to heed the warning, the costs of raising the children, and the increase costs in law enforcement, mental health professionals, and prisons.

I agree that we don't lay the problems for this more heavily on folks who are in a one life partner monogamous relationships. It doesn't matter if they are hetero- or homo-sexual. What matters is remaining chaste until you find a permanent partner. It applies EQUALLY to everyone.

When I hear the activists championing that they accept the full burden of the costs, along with placards suggesting people should "do whatever you want" then I'll believe they're serious about it. Until then, they aren't serious. They want license, not freedom. They want to be able to pass on the costs of their risky behaviors to folks who do not take those risks.

That's not right.

If someone wants to drive down the highway at 150 miles an hour, have a great ride, but when he crashes that car and leaves his family strapped, have HIM pay for his funeral, the costs to repair the road, the ambulance who picked up the body parts left by the side of the road. Make the surviving family's estate compensate the others who were driving the speed limit and got caught in the accident, by no fault of their own, and don't burden the folks who do follow the speed limit with higher auto insurance for those that don't. Can't afford it all? That joyrider doesn't want to burden HIS family with all those costs or doesn't have the money set aside in a bank account? Then do NOT take that ride.

That is the commensurate amount of responsibility that comes with EXERCISING that much freedom.

Why should people who get that, who don't take that ride, foot the bill for those who do?

I see lots of talk of freedom, in all sorts of places, under different guises. I see very little talk of accepting the consequences for exercising it.

OK, so we had 50 years of thinking that it was all antiquated religious bias, that man had overcome the risks of STDs, that the outcome of half-orphaned children would be the same as their married-parent counterparts, and that we could defeat that bitch mother nature, so... 10,000 years of relationship rules were tossed aside as being oh, so cute and quaint, but not applying to us anymore.

We were wrong. HIV/AIDS was the wake up call. Some people are refusing to heed the warning. Are they stupid? Ignorant? Or just incredibly fucking selfish?

THAT is the culture war. People really don't give two hoots about what other people do, as long as none of what they do negatively affects anyone else. "It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg" was Jefferson's litmus test for government involvement. How is my pocket not being picked here? How is my leg not being broken when children are left to fend for themselves in the streets, and attack the innocent in gang wars, shooting sprees, and gang rapes?

Those on the other side of that war have seen that "accepting full responsibility for exercising freedom" hasn't been the case. The other side hasn't been willing to foot the bill for a damn thing, and keeps suggesting that a few more dollars, a few more years, and a few more million condoms distributed, and it will all go away. It isn't going away. It is not working.

Somewhere in there is the definition of insanity.

Connie, thanks for the very thoughtful comment. I agree with much of what you say, except I do think death is the ultimate form of accountability. (Although, there was a time when most people who had AIDS contracted it before they knew the disease existed.) What bothers me is that I should be held accountable for the actions of others. If I think freedom includes the right to take drugs, own guns, or have sex with whatever adults might consent, how does that make me responsible for the behavior of those who are harmed by their own actions or the actions of others? Whether someone is accountable for diseases is a complicated issue, and while I am against socialized medicine, and the taxpayers footing the bill, where is the line to be drawn? If smokers get cancer, and the promiscuous get AIDS, should that involve me? They should have bought insurance, I guess.

I don't think it is reasonable to hold responsible people for the conduct of irresponsible people. People tell me that the free availability of guns means that people like me who support the Second Amendment are morally responsible for driveby shootings, and I tend to roll my eyes. Ditto for AIDS. I'd let fools screw without condoms, but that neither makes me a hedonist, nor does it make me responsible in any way for the irresponsible conduct of those who screw. Same with smokers.

Is freedom responsible for the fact that some people abuse it? No more than a bar is responsible for an alcoholic patron. I blame the drinker, not society, and not Seagram -- and I blame individual hedonists, not a philosophy allowing them to be hedonists.

Unfortunately (and this should be the subject of a long and painful essay) the ugly fact is that some adults are like children who can't wait to misbehave as soon as Big Brother's back is turned. There are more and more of them. For moral guidance, they look to external authority (like fundamentalist Islam), and this is not in the best interest of civilization.

Freedom is fine if you don't abuse it. Like you, I just don't want to be accountable for those who do. Where we differ seems to involve how to hold unaccountable people accountable. I have an awful feeling that there is sometimes no way to do it, because there is no way to make irresponsible people responsible. Hence, there's always a tendency to make the responsible pay in one way or another.

It's expensive, and it sucks. Depressing as it sounds, I often feel live moving to Mexico, where freedom can at least be bought.

Barring the Draconian approach of a Scarlet H, I think HIV/AIDS and other STDs have been given special treatment.

If you have Hepatitis, for example, a doctor has to report that to the CDC. You are forbidden (under penalty of jail time) to work in food service.

There was a time when anyone who contracted a venereal disease had to report all their sexual contacts.

I understand that part of the reason giving HIV/AIDS a pass was to encourage those infected to come forward, but given the spread, was that a good idea?

I think that is just ONE of a thousand related issues that need to be discussed (and rethought) from a public policy perspective.

You have some form of right to privacy, but where are the limits of that? Does it begin and end with your person, up to the point where your person touches or enters another person? We all know the meme, "your right to swing your fist stops at my nose" but does that include a penis? If someone gives consent to sex, are they giving consent to the person to knowingly transfer an STD?

Are/should people obligated to disclose? If they do not, what is the penalty? Or, are we in a "Buyer Beware" situation?

Anyone who tricks or deceives a healthy person into allowing deadly fluids deserves prison in much the same way I would be liable if I spiked your drink with strychnine. However, if I tell you there's poison in the drink and you drink it anyway, I don't see how criminal liability can attach.

That said, I think that with AIDS, especially among gay men today, very few people would accept a statement of HIV negativity from a casual acquaintance. There's an assumption that all fluids might contain the virus. Were I interested in having sex with strangers (which I am not), I would assume they were all sources of potential infection. Not just for AIDS, but for syphilis, gonnorhea, chlamydia, HPV, HSV, CMV, Hepatitis, and diseases yet to be discovered (as AIDS was for years).

As to mandatory reporting and contact tracing, I don't see what would give anyone the right to inquire into the sex life of a private person, but if someone becomes a public health burden, it is perfectly legitimate to make these demands of him.

For some reason, this begins to remind me of the motorcycle helmet debate. I can see both sides, but I worry how far we should go as a society in pre-emptive risk prevention.

Beyond that, it shocks me to think that there are people alive today who would deliberately allow themselves to be infected with AIDS. I like to think they are few in number, because people like that would not be deterred by a scarlet H tattoo; they'd be attracted to it!

Bear in mind that what I was writing about originally was J. Matt Barber's view (mistaken IMO) that there is no distinction between monogamous and promiscuous homosexuals (or types of sexual intercourse) -- simply because all homosexuality is evil and intrinsically causes (or is responsible for) AIDS. I think that violates common sense -- even if we assume homosexuality is evil -- which I don't.