If the preference for absolute freedom over the free person is a fact of the sexual revolution, the present time is as much at the height of this phenomenon as the 1960s was. However, today, we can’t argue that there is any ambiguity to the preference.
It just looks different since sexual deviance is on the defensive rather than the extreme offensive. The Wall Street Journal first reported that President Donald Trump is considering cuts to “domestic HIV prevention” programs. Proponents of the funding say the epidemic will surge and that the idea represents more rash decision-making from the administration and neglects poor and at-risk groups. “Poor and at-risk” is a euphemism for gay or bisexual young men who are often black, identify as women, and are likely prostitutes.
It’s easy to brighten with hope upon reading statistics from 2023 that “fewer people in the U.S. are getting HIV, federal officials said, as more young people at risk take steps to prevent infection.” The social conservative’s first-assumed solution is abstinence, but no: These steps rather indicate condom use, a medication called pre-exposure prophylaxis, and special caution not to share drug-injection needles.
The actual sources of HIV are still rampant, which is why the parameters of “domestic” and “prevention” in the administration’s plans are important. America is not Africa, where HIV rates soar and are largely multifactorial — our standard of living means the domestic HIV epidemic is, in most cases, the result of a deliberate lifestyle. An emphasis on preventing HIV, rather than putting everything into treating it, means that the primary humanitarian motive is to maintain these lifestyles of promiscuity and drug use and defend the sexually liberated social order.
From the administration’s end, specifying “domestic” is a recognition of these circumstances, and targeting “prevention” funds is an answer. One option, according to the New York Times, is to shift funding away from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and into programs at the Health Resources and Services Administration. This move, however, is one point of contention for HIV prevention advocates.
Why is it a bad deal? One leader explained to the outlet that HRSA and its programs “are terrific but focus on HIV care and treatment.” More candidly: “They do not engage in HIV prevention as a priority, which is why CDC’s prevention focus is so critical.”
The above spokesman is Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, which uses the slogan “Advocacy. Access. Equity.” Formerly, he directed programs at the Female Health Company, or “the manufacturer of the female condom.”
Warren shared his concerns with the Wall Street Journal: “Without prevention, we are going to be fighting the virus with one hand behind our back.” There is truth here — and yet, to protest against an organization because it focuses on treatment comes off as pure mal-intention. Die-hard prevention advocates, especially ones with the resources and influence that Warren has, have no good in mind for AIDS sufferers beyond their freedom to contract the disease without consequence.
Real freedom for “at-risk” groups would embrace their choices and all the consequences. It might look something like pouring resources into treating the suffering that comes from it, even if they choose to return to it repeatedly. To prevent HIV domestically, without acknowledging the radical paths that lead to it, mutes free choice.
MAYBE DEMOCRATS SHOULD TRY LISTENING TO MEN
Of course, this lens requires some semblance of traditional morality. The fact that Trump may change course from his resolve in 2019 to “eliminate the HIV epidemic in the United States” shows the early influence of social conservatism on his second term. Catholic social teaching, especially, surrounds him, from Vice President JD Vance to numerous Cabinet members and intellectual partners.
For now, resistance to the reform of HIV programs shows the Left only reaches out to men when they refuse to act like men. It’s digging the Democratic Party a deeper trench.