Robert, I suspect that the lack of a response on OLO to your article by 11.15 am is indicative of the general complacency of the community about this important subject.

One would have thought this problem was more urgent than putting chaps in schools.
Particularly those whose stone age belief also includes, there is an element of choice in gender bias!
A stone age bias that also includes some so-called health professionals, who perpetuate and or prolong the problem, by refusing to treat HIV, on the grounds that it is a self induced problem, much like say sunburn, which they will by the way, treat!
Incidentally, it is not just the gay or needle sharing community at risk, but virtually every health professional, but particularly, paramedics, who are often exposed to blood spatter, and other body fluids, or drug affected drug crazed patients, who react to having their heroin overdoses managed, with screaming, kicking and clawing spiting fits.
And rubber gloves hardly ever provide adequate protection against needle stick infection.
Easy enough if your hands are trembling with the usual end of shift exhaustion of the nursing fraternity, or that of Ambos, who might confront personal danger on a virtual daily basis; and no, you never ever do get used to it!
Just prior to 1986 there were 142 registered hemophiliacs in Australia.
Since then each and everyone has died of medically acquired aids. Moreover, anyone needing a blood transfusion prior to 1987 was playing virtual Russian roulette with their lives, and at odds as high as 9 to 1, at the height of the epidemic.
Moreover, HIV regularly mutates, with some of the mutations being virtually untreatable and often lethal within months.
So, no complacency please!
Indubitably, we should be pouring much more money into this area, and indeed, put some sort of criminal sanction on so called doctors/health professionals, who knowingly withhold proper or effective treatment on quite spurious religious conviction or imbecilic privacy grounds!?
Hard to believe I know, but ask any Ambo and they will likely tell you, when properly pressed, they know or have heard of one or two.
So, its not just the immature, irresponsible hedonistic gay community that needs educating!
Rhrosty.

The concern is that the diseases are jumping across to the heterosexual population and to children. Bisexuals transmit the diseases to women.

Such are the risks that it should be a legal requirement for any man who has ever had sex with another man to declare that to a woman before sex in order that she can make an informed decision. Consent goes beyond the simple agreement to have sex, it also implies on both sides that the unwitting partner is not placed at risk of a life threatening disease.

The gay 'rights' lobby will challenge to neuter any sex education or public health advertising other than that which promotes homosexual sex.

FFS - In Australia, regardless of sexual preference, practice or your gender, age, race, religion or culture you will have been living under a rock if you know nothing about sexually transmitted disease and recommended methods of avoiding infection.

Throw billions of $$$ into "Education" and guess what? It will hardly make a dent in the number of IDIOTS who will still take stupid risks with their health and more disturbing, have no regard for that of others.

I recall the "scary" Grim Reaper HIV/AIDS campaign of the late 80s was highly successful in educating the public and scaring many people into modifying their behaviour.
However this ad was deemed 'offensive' by a section of the gay male community because it supposedly 'demonised' gay men, despite the dangers being depicted across the entire demographic.

An early example of 'political correctness' being used to blanket truth. The truth, of course, that behaviour of a sizable number of homosexual males had brought HIV to Australia and spread it predominately among themselves. Hetero infection was uncommon and rarely linked to sexual activity. Therefore despite the campaign mostly benefitting the male gay demographic it was pulled after only a matter of weeks. It remains however, highly memorable to those who did see it.

So maybe resurrect the Grim Reaper with amended footage to include the incurable Heps B,C & more and increasingly difficult to treat STIs like Syphilis where antibiotic resistance is growing.
If education isn't working perhaps stark reality scare tactics may once again have some impact.

As for cost comparison, a great proportion of over 1.5 million kids can access a School Chaplain for comfort and advice in times of personal need. It's not a vehicle for 'conversion' but a Christian outreach responsible for reducing destructive behaviour and self-harm among our teens. Compare this with the number of stupid, irresponsible, morally deficient gay/bi men at whom Robert Smith suggests more than $25.4 million should be flung and decide which represents better value.

instead of finding ways to avoiding reaping what you sow, the issue of promiscurity being promoted and encouraged by secularist and the gay lobby should be addressed. Without that any money spent usually just feeds the propaganda industry. How is it that the godless continue to create havoc in society and then blame everyone else for not paying to clean up their mess.

It's not a public health problem. In fact it would be harder to find a better example of a private health problem. Why should some people, who practise safe sex, have their income stolen before they even receive it so as to force them to pay for other people who choose to have unsafe sex?

Dear Jardine,

<<Why should some people, who practise safe sex, have their income stolen before they even receive it so as to force them to pay for other people who choose to have unsafe sex?>>

Well, this question is metaphysical in nature, not an economic one, hence it deserves a metaphysical answer.

Earlier on this thread someone related about:

<<Particularly those whose stone age belief also includes, there is an element of choice in gender bias!>>

The common element is the belief that we have no choice, that we are at the mercy of our nervous system and cannot do anything about it.

If indeed that were so, then we have no say about whom we are attracted to, nor about acting on that attraction, nor even about limiting the desired pleasure by using a condom or the like. In turn, such an outlook could also justify the financial transaction you mentioned.

If we deny the fact that we can direct our attention, indeed that attention even exists other than perhaps as an objective neurological phenomena, that we are capable of directing our attention to this or that brain-centre or even withdraw it altogether from our brain, then the rest follows and 'proves' that we are helpless victims of our sensual desires.

Simple experiments can show us that we CAN direct our attention - and that with practice we can get better and better at that. True, science will never accept those experiments as valid because they are subjective, but anyone who is willing to conduct such simple experiments can find the proof for themselves in a matter of minutes.

If there is any of value in education, then it is this - to teach our children to control their attention. All the rest will come easy for them.

The problem is gays bare-backing because they enjoy the thrill. It is their stupidity and recklessness.

'Educating' children on homosexual sex doesn't affect that and more likely gay activists will succeed in turning the 'education' into promoting and legitimising the gay lifestyle.

It is impossible that gays are not aware of the risks.

The best society can hope for is to reduce dreadful diseases like AIDS spreading to young women who might want to have children, or are already caring for a family. To do that these young women must be helped to avoid the risks of sex with a bisexual.

There should be a severe penalty for engaging in sex with a woman without declaring up-front any previous history of gay sex. Honestly, if the women remained keen she could demand that he provide evidence of a clean bill of health from a doctor. At least that way the risk-taking bi- who would put her and her possible children at risk was Ok at the time of the doctor's check.

While those wyho engage in gay sex -and some have many partners, it is the lifestyle- are on the front foot claiming they have rights, what about the rights of their often unknowing and very vulnerable targets as sex partners?

It's a little disturbing when someone says it should be a 'legal requirement' to profess any past same-sex activity to a woman before engaging in sex.

Truth is if you have sex, regardless of gender or orientation, it's always a risk. Everybody should know that, including women. We live in a pretty liberated society - not Communist Russia.

Should we lock up alcohol, junk food and even automobiles because they pose a threat to human life? No, we take the risk and indulge - it's the same with sex.

And even with ritualistic condom usage, syphilis, Hep C and/or B, Hep Delta and HPV can (and are) transmitted via penetrative sex and oral sex. So even if men are being as responsible as they can with condoms or dental dams, there's still a risk of infection - hence the need for a stronger educational awareness program for testing and symptom-awareness.

We already imprison people who knowingly transmit HIV! I would add compulsory castration!
The heterosexual community is not safe, given we also sleep with every partner our partner has already had!
Let he or she who has never ever had a one night stand or an affair, or unprotected casual sex, be the one to deny all others public health outcomes.
Particularly, given the thousands of entirely innocent hemophiliacs who have already paid the ultimate price; and or, the team sports players and the health professionals, who although entirely innocent of any immoral behavior, remain at very real risk!
Therefore, it is simply not good enough to deny some effective treatment, on the grounds they are currently too poor to pay for their own treatment, which were HIV is concerned, may set the infected back as much as $50,000.00 PA.
$50,000.00PA is more than many currently earn for goodness sake.
Moreover, one day it could be your too trusting and unsophisticated kid or grand-kid, who is the one infected, and would you also deny them, particularly, if the infection was gained through no fault of theirs, but at the hands of a dishonest bisexual partner/spouse?
We see in some examples in Canada, that this virus can and does mutate, with often lethal terminal consequences in just months; given the new strains are far more virulent and immune to the usual salad of antivirals.
There is a cure, using a cocktail of currently prescribed already approved medicine?
But it is withheld, I believe, due to the annual billions big Pharma is reaping from the affected, not all of who are gay hedonists, or needle sharing junkies!
And who amongst us can say with any surety, we can distinguish between the entirely innocent and the guilty?
Rhrosty.

STD's are nothing new, as they have been amongst the populace for many many centuries.
Ignorance today on this issue is no excuse, if you are going to have casual sex, then the onus is on the individuals to take necessary precautions.
No group in society is responsible for STD's, and to blame any; is a sign of social ignorance.

Kipp is right.
All sexually active people must already be aware of sexually transmitted diseases.

If they didn't hear about it at school, on TV, online or even on the radio , then they certainly would have noticed the multitude of condom vending machines in public toilets!

The problem is that most people think it won't happen to them.
Gay men are notorious for taking risks sexually, and I think that will continue.
The only thing to be done is to ensure a good supply of condoms.

We do need to continue sex education for ALL children at school, just as we need to warn them about smoking, drug and alcohol abuse.

If, as some posters suggest, these Gay men bring it upon themselves by that lifestyle and thus they reap what they sow, then we can also say the same about smokers or heavy drinkers.

The vast majority of Hep C sufferers contracted it from IV drug use, so there is another bad health choice.

There's already plenty of STI education out there, but I can see where the author is coming from when lamenting the ridiculous numbers of chaplains out there in Public schools.
It is really just a cost saving measure for Governments who don't want to pay for trained counsellors..

I presume that most gays, if not all, are literate. There is a heap of information in many sources wherein they can find information which will save them from their own stupidity. They should show some adult responsibilty and not expect Nanny to hold their hand when they are in bed.

This is not just a problem in this area. More and more we are expecting the state to take responsibility for the behaviour of people who, supposedly, have a reasonable degree of free will. And more and more, politicians are assuming they are the default moral, health and other behavioural regulators of the lives of an apparently infantile populatiion.

Tonyo