Pioneering University HIV/AIDS researcher sacked over accurate but politically incorrect court testimony
Dr. Brendan Bain, a pioneer in fighting HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean, lost his research position at University of West Indies after submitting expert report in landmark Belize case.
The attacks on a University of Virginia law professor for expressing legal views not in keeping with the views of some LGBT activists and much of the political establishment has created a stir in legal academia.
In Jamaica, a somewhat analogous case is developing regarding a recently retired professor who was fired from his continuing HIV/AIDS research position after filing an accurate, but politically incorrect, expert report in a highly contentious case in Belize (h/t Blazing Cat Fur). The case has received almost no attention outside the Caribbean press, and none in the U.S. as far as I can tell.
The background is that the Belize Supreme Court is considering a court case seeking to overturn Section 53 of the criminal code, which bans some forms of homosexual behavior, specifically male-on-male sodomy. Argument was held in May 2013 but there has been no decision as of this writing.
The highly charged nature of the case pits a coalition of international gay rights activists against some Christian churches and groups.
Enter Dr. Brendan Bain, who retired as a Professor in 2013 from the University of West Indies. While still a professor, in 2012 Dr. Bain submitted testimony in the form of an Expert Report in the case (embedded in full at the bottom of this post).
Dr. Bain is one of the pioneers in the fight against the spread of HIV/AIDS in the Caribbean, as detailed in the introduction to his Expert Report, and in the numerous news reports referenced later in this post.
(Dr. Brendan Bain,by Steve Shapiro for the 2011 Caribbean HIV Conference, used under an Attribution-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license.)
Among other things, even after his retirement as a professor Dr. Bain was director of the U.S.-funded Regional Coordinating Unit of the Caribbean HIV/AIDS Regional Training (CHART), which he helped create. Here is his bio from 2013 from the CHART website:
Dr. Brendan Bain is Professor of Community Health at the University of the West Indies (UWI), Coordinator of the UWI HIV/AIDS Response Programme (UWI HARP) and Director of the Regional Coordinating Unit of the Caribbean HIV/AIDS Regional Training Network (CHART). He is trained in internal medicine, clinical infectious diseases, and public health. He has worked as a Consultant Physician at the University Hospital of the West Indies for 25 years and has been a leader in AIDS care and treatment in Jamaica. He is an advisor on HIV/AIDS to the Jamaican Ministry of Health and the Association of Commonwealth Universities.Dr. Bain has been a pioneer Clinical Infectious Diseases Lecturer and Attending Physician at the University of the West Indies (UWI) and the University Hospital of the West Indies (UHWI), Mona, Jamaica since 1980. He is a former Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in Infectious Diseases and was part of a team of doctors who reported the first case of AIDS to be recognized in Jamaica in 1983. He is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of International Health of the Boston University School of Public Health.
Dr. Bain has served as an advisor on pharmaceuticals and infectious diseases to the Jamaican Ministry of Health since 1980. He is an active member of the Pan-Caribbean Partnership against AIDS (PANCAP) and sat on its first Board. He is an inaugural member of the Trans-Caribbean HIV/AIDS Research Initiative (TCHARI), established in 2006 with support from the US National Institutes of Health. In 1989-1990, Dr. Bain was appointed by the Jamaican Ministry of Health as the first National HIV/AIDS Staff Trainer for hospital and laboratory personnel. In that capacity, he designed and led a series of on-site workshops and seminars for all categories of staff in the 21 public hospitals of Jamaica and their associated microbiology and pathology laboratories.In the 1990s, he led the first national educational workshops on HIV/AIDS for healthcare personnel in Belize and the Cayman Islands. In August 1999, he started an out-patient clinic for persons living with HIV/AIDS at UHWI and has inspired the commencement of a similar clinic at the Kingston Public Hospital.
The Caribbean Health Leadership Institute describes the importance of Dr. Bain in fighing HIV/AIDS:
Brendan Bain is the Principal Investigator on the CDC grant to support the launch of the Caribbean Health Leadership Institute. He helped to start the UWI HIV/AIDS Response Programme (UWI HARP) in 2001 and serves as its Lead Coordinator. He also directs the Regional Coordinating Unit of the Caribbean HIV/AIDS Regional Training (CHART) Network, part of UWI HARP. He is one of the pioneers in Clinical Infectious Disease practice in the Caribbean and was responsible for launching the first medical clinic dedicated to the care and treatment of persons living with HIV/AIDS in Jamaica.
The general thesis of the Expert Report was as follows, in part:
This report shows that the relative risk of contracting HIV is significantly higher among men who have sex with other men (MSM) in Belize than in the general population. This is also true in several other countries for which data are available, including countries that have repealed the law that criminalizes anal sex and countries where the law still applies.
Dr. Bain did not take sides in the dispute, and his findings themselves are not the focus of controversy, as one observer who supports the repeal of the ban has noted:
If you haven’t read Prof Bain’s affidavit, I encourage you to do so. … It is difficult to find much objectionable in it. Most interestingly it doesn’t seem to take the militant stance that on one hand some Christians are celebrating, and on the other, HIV/AIDS workers are criticizing him for. For the most part the document simply makes the undisputable point that for both biological and social/cultural/behavioural reasons — the HIV virus is passed on to Men who have sex with Men with something that approaches efficiency. The figures are simply staggering…. Bain’s affidavit does not take or register a stance against gay communities or gay men. It earnestly steers clear from such opinions and tries to stick to the figures….
The Jamaican National AIDS Committee issued a statement that it had no problem with the content of Dr. Bain’s report:
The National AIDS Committee wishes to clarify that it takes no issue with the content of the Report of Professor Brendan Bain to the Court in Belize. There is nothing in that Report which is contrary to or offensive to the work of the National AIDS Committee.
In his report, Professor Bain highlighted for the court that homosexual men were at higher risk of contracting HIV and other sexual transmitted infections and that a supportive environment is needed at the community and governmental levels to enable high risk groups to access and practice safe sex.
This is the very position of the National AIDS Committee….
Rather, Dr. Bain’s mere participation in the case and seeming to render an opinion that arguably helps defenders of the Belize law upset a coalition of activists, who demanded Dr. Bain’s removal from his position as the head of CHART, as The Jamaica Gleaner reported:
Some 35 advocacy groups, under the banner of the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition, had written to the vice-chancellor of the UWI, Professor E. Nigel Harris, to indicate that they had lost confidence in Bain as the head of CHART, following his statement in the case, submitted in 2012, and called for him to be removed.
The Coalition’s full statement is here, and reads in part:
We thank retired Professor Brendan Bain, with whom many of us once worked productively and collegially, for his acknowledged contributions to fighting HIV in the region, and we reaffirm our respect for his freedom to express his personal views in academic and other settings.
It is not his right to have deeply held views that has been at issue, but the evident conflict of his action to rob some of justice and equality before the law with his capacity to represent UWI’s values in leading an HIV movement working for health and justice for all.
The university has been careful to note the hurt Professor Bain’s advocacy has done to gay and lesbian persons in the Caribbean….
And so it happened, Dr. Bain was removed from the position he helped create:
The UWI, in its statement announcing Bain’s dismissal, said that “Many authorities familiar with the brief presented believe that Professor Bain’s testimony supported arguments for retention of the law, thereby contributing to the continued criminalisation and stigmatisation of MSM. This opinion is shared by the lesbian, gay and other groups who are served by CHART”.
The university also said that while it recognises Bain’s right to provide expert testimony in the manner he did, “it has become increasingly evident that he has lost the confidence and support of a significant sector of the community which the CHART programme is expected to reach”.
The removal has created a great deal of controversy in Belize and Jamaica, much of which is religious in nature, but also revolving around freedom of speech and academic freedom:
The Jamaican Bar Association and the Medical Association of Jamaica came out strongly in defense of Dr. Bain:
OPPOSITION to the sacking of Professor Brendan Bain continued to mount Friday as the influential Jamaican Bar Association (Jambar) took the University of the West Indies (UWI) to task while expressing concern that the controversial decision could have an adverse impact on experts giving testimony in Jamaica…
The Bar Association also sided with the Medical Association of Jamaica (MAJ) on the issue of the veracity of scientific conclusion, saying that it “should only be challenged on the basis of science and not on emotion or sentiment its conclusions may evoke”.
The MAJ and Jambar concurred that statements of fact are never meant to be offensive. They insisted that as an expert witness, Bain’s “testimony to the Court is a duty to the Court, and is the opinion of the expert himself. He is therefore obliged to discharge his testimony truthfully and professionally”.
The Medical Association of Jamaica was disappointed by the firing, as reported by the Jamaica Gleaner:
The Medical Association of Jamaica (MAJ) has expressed disappointment over the termination of Professor Brendan Bain as the director of the Caribbean HIV/AIDS Regional Training (CHART) Network.
Dr Shane Alexis, president of the MAJ, said last night that the MAJ’s discontent over the fracas between the parties involved was based on the shifting of the focus from the prevention of HIV to differences in opinions and individual agendas.
“The MAJ is disappointed that one of the pioneers in the diagnosis and treatment of HIV/AIDS is no longer leading CHART. We want to encourage everyone, all stakeholders, to focus on HIV/AIDS and not against each other,” Alexis told The Gleaner.
An I Support Professor Brendan Bain Facebook page has been started as has a Change.org Petition which as of this writing has over 2800 signatures.
Carolyn Cooper, a professor of literary and cultural studies at the University of the West Indies, Mona, who supports repeal of the Belize law, protested the termination:
I do support repeal of the Belize law that criminalises “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any person or animal”. But I am appalled by the decision of the UWI administration to bow to belligerent gay-rights activists, bringing down disgrace on a distinguished academic who has done so much to protect the health of MSM [Men having Sex with Men].
Even within the gay rights community in the Caribbean, opinion is split over the firing.
The University of West Indies, however, disputes that it was forced to fire Dr. Bain or that it is a question of academic freedom, arguing instead that Dr. Bain’s submission of the report frayed his ability to work with constituent groups (full statement here):
UWI Vice Chancellor Professor E. Nigel Harris, told RJR News that the decision to relieve the Professor Bain of his duties, was not about the university caving in to pressure from influential and powerful gay rights lobby groups. He said, it is not an issue about Professor Bain’s academic freedom.
“But if he were a member of the academic community this would have no impact on his academic standing. This is not about his rights to give testimony, it is not about his rights as a Christian, it is not about the views that he might hold, this is about someone having a position in a programme which the university has been contracted to manage and really losing the confidence of the people in an important sector that the programme must reach.
There are wider implications, since CHART is funded under a grant from the U.S. government, as Jamaican attorney Gordon Robinson wrote in the Jamaica Gleaner:
Brendan Bain has been in charge of CHART from its inception in 2003 until now. The programme has recorded monumental successes. Bain led the team that wrote the grant application for the ongoing CHART project. As a result, the project was awarded a five-year grant for the period, April 2012-March 2017, valued in 2012 at US$ 9 million.
This grant is one of the largest UWI has received; is also the first grant awarded by the US Health Resources and Services Administration to a university outside the USA; and was awarded on the basis that Professor Bain was identified in the grant document as the principal investigator and project director.
There have been numerous protests so far, including one today at UWI, as posted on Facebook:
It will be interesting to see where this leads.
The press coverage in Jamaica has been fairly intense. The firing seems to transcend the prior framing of the dispute as churches versus gay rights.
Now it’s become about freedom of speech and academic freedom. Just like in the United States.
*******************************************
Prof Brendan Bain Expert Report in Belize Supreme Court
DONATE
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
They fear truth.
Rectal epithelium provides less defense against the transmission of pathogens than vaginal epithelium does. This has been the consensus since the existence of the HIV virus was recognized in the late eighties, early nineties. It makes absolute sense that nature would have done its utmost to make sure that sexual reproduction would be as problem free to ensure the survival of each individual species.
I’m sure Nature took the same care with the earthworm’s reproductive tract, no matter which method it chose.
The medical fact that anal sex facilitates HIV transmission must not be spoken lest those who engage in anal sex and contract HIV have their feelings hurt; lest homosexuals think their right to engage in unnatural acts, their assertion that the rectum and the vagina are the same, their demand that the law be silent their about unnatural behavior and its byproducts be infringed upon and dismissed.
Should Dr. Bain’s dismissal be upheld, the harm to the homosexual community in the Caribbean will indeed be great. They don’t care about that, though. All they care about is that there be no impediment to them burning with strange fire no matter how diseased they become. In furtherance of this, no one must have the right to speak freely.
Since they prefer disease and death to truth and medical care, let them have disease and death.
All the risk factors, except one, cited by Bain are equally applicable to promiscuous heterosexuals, which contributed to the progress of STDs (and other dysfunctional outcomes) in the same time period. The notable difference is, as Bitterlyclinging noticed, the difference between vaginal and rectal intercourse. Nature did not design for the latter. In fact, Nature’s design is conspicuously reproduction-oriented. It is human choice to lose itself in orgasmic bliss without accountability.
Something else to note is the methods and means by which natural and social feedback mechanisms which mitigate risk factors were circumvented. For heterosexuals, it was the introduction of convenient/effective contraceptives, the facilitation of abortion/murder, and the normalization (i.e. social acceptance and promotion) of casual sex. For homosexuals, especially males, it was progressive normalization of their behavior, which limited objective understanding, and certainly presentation, of their risk factors.
It doesn’t surprise me one bit that this came to LI’s attention through Blazing Catfur, a leading Canadian conservative blog. It was there that I first learned about the landmark Canada Supreme Court decision known as the Whatcott case, in which an anti-homosexuality preacher in Regina, Saskatchewan was found to be in violation of some provincial “hate crime laws” despite the fact the literature he was publishing was NOT created with the goal of stoking hatred.
The Whatcott decision said that, for all intents and purposes, you can make completely non-threatening and accurate remarks that still need to be restricted by the state on behalf of minority populations:
Anyone who follows my Twitter account knows I’ve been sounding the warning about creeping Canadianism for awhile, and since the DOMA/Prop 8 SCOTUS decisions, it’s been spreading across the United States like, well…like an STD.
The gaystapo has spent years pretending HIV was like the common cold, striking randomly without any preference for the victims. In truth it’s a lifestyle disease that spread first through the gay community specifically because of their behavioral choices. They’re not “victims”.
Shhhh! You don’t want to make them feel bad … even as they are giving each other HIV, hepatitis C, assorted stomach diseases, all of which will make sure they never feel good unto death.
A little levity:
Q. Why are scientists having such a difficult time in trying to cure HIV/AIDS?
A. They have so far been unsuccessful in teaching laboratory mice how to butt f@*k.
Not funny, crude even.
The problem is not the mice or the scientists but the homosexuals (even those calling them bisexuals) who insist on engaging in unnatural behavior. When scientists come up with drugs and people use them and continue in the behavior, the end result is new strains of viruses and bacteria which are drug resistant. Celibacy is a wonderful thing that never killed anybody.
This is how you kill lots of people with an agenda.
Never before in history has a disease been so politicized, which is a very big factor in why it is so big a plague around the world.
This planet is doomed. And not by glowbull climate weather change.
So, “confidence,” a new euphemism for giving a group the right of censorship.
One of David Horowitz’s books (Radical Son, I think) has a genuinely alarming account of the frantic efforts by gay activists in San Francisco to fight early attempts to understand the AIDS problem and identify its vectors. Apparently some gay physicians noticed some of their patients – persons they knew to be infected with this mysterious illness – carrying on as usual in the local “bath house culture”, merrily sharing their affliction far and wide. The physicians tried to spread the word that this behavior would cause the disease to spread uncontrollably. The public reaction was frantic hostility, and strident accusations of homophobia.
The things which struck me were
1. the gross illogic of trying to silence physicians who were themselves gay by banging the ol’ “homophia” drum,
2. a peculiar medieval idea – that strong enough belief can triumph over reality – is alive and well in some circles, and
3. that homosexuality, at least in the Bay area, was (and maybe still is) a death cult.
We saw much the same effect (though for different reasons) on the international scene, as some African nations tried to stifle (often via the UN, which has become particularly adept at stifling things) attempts to determine the origin of the virus, and investigations of its pervasiveness in those areas.
Of course this is all ancient history. But the fact that this foolishness is still going on is, well, not really surprising.
Notice that they have reduced the debate to personal rights in order to deflect scrutiny of their behavior. This is exactly what the feminists did in order to secure libertine rights and other opportunities which follow from a dissociation of risk and responsibility. The homosexual activists, and the libertine activists generally, believe that science will cure all of their ills. After all, it did cure the long-standing career, sex, money killer known as pregnancy.
As for the UN, it is fully aboard the population control protocol bandwagon. That includes planned abortion. It may also include permitting homosexual behavior to follow its natural course. Perhaps there is a positive goal, but their strategy is less than wholesome, and their motives are veiled.
It was Radical Son.
A few gay activists suggested shutting down the bath houses and the homosexual community had a complete hissy fit. They didn’t want AIDS characterized as a gay disease, even when it was pretty much limited to the gay community. I’m guessing at this point but I suspect there was a combination of extreme anger towards the heterosexual majority and a desire to see the disease “go national” so that they’d be able to agitate for funding to study it.
It’s likely not so much foolishness on their part, but the fact that homosexuality was until the last half century, considered a diagnosed mental disorder. I have read several articles about the politics involved in removing it from the list of disorders, but the fact that it was considered such may explain many of the physical and mental health issues that we see demonstrated by some of the more “militant” homosexuals in the public eye.
The most disturbing part of this is that the radical gay mafia has reached even the poor Caribbean nations.
They are a small minority of a small minority of citizens, but they make up for it in volume (of noise). Unless this trend is reversed, freedom of speech in the public forum is doomed.
After the 1979 seizure of our embassy by radical islamists in Iran, an Iranian-born friend told me solemnly, “Now we see why the Shah oppressed them in the first place.
This also happened here in Israel, a country 3/4 Jewish, in which Orthodoxy is the only significant denomination, and the religious population is about 25% of the Jewish population, greater among the young. And the position of Orthodox Judaism is that of the Bible.
A religious professor was having a class discussion and one of the female students made an argument against adoption by homosexual couples. For allowing that she had a point, he was fired.
On the other hand, professors routinely make remarks that are close to, if not actually, treasonous. Israeli professors are among the main motivators of the Academic boycott of Israel. I recall a case where a professor won in court on the basis of academic freedom; I am not sure if that was because he had tenure, or that there is actually a law.
(Source for both incidents – B’sheva, a weekly print publication from Atutz Sheva, a.k.a. IsraelNationalNews.)
I think academic freedom is a failed experiment and shouldn’t be taken seriously.
The $9 million UWI grant and potential loss of future funding must have been a contributing factor. Evil syndrome at work here — US govt bribes silencing perceived enemies of progressive causes. Currently operating in full force throughout US higher education.
Section 53: “Every person who has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any person … shall be liable to imprisonment for 10 years.”
Does Bain’s findings and the law differentiate gay couples who are in stable, monogamous relationships? Isn’t the spread of VD/HIV just as likely with promiscuous straight unprotected sex?
Is this a post about academic freedom or keeping a law that has nothing to do with public health but obliges sharia-like attitudes about gays?
Bain shouldn’t have been fired and the commenters here are entitled to their opinion. But declaring something is unnatural and a public health risk is very different than saying you have the right to lock a person away for 10 years…because an expert witness said you should.
No, the spread of HIV is not just as likely with promiscuous straight unprotected sex. In straight vanilla sex, between otherwise healthy people, it is extremely rare — almost unheard of — for the female to infect the male with HIV. And without two-way transmission it’s impossible to have an epidemic. That is why there has never been and will never be a heterosexual AIDS epidemic.
Is this a post about academic freedom or keeping a law that has nothing to do with public health but obliges sharia-like attitudes about gays?
This post has nothing to do with keeping any sort of law. What laws Belize chooses to have or to repeal is entirely a matter for Belize. It’s none of your business or ours.
saying you have the right to lock a person away for 10 years…because an expert witness said you should.
What expert witness said they should? Certainly not Prof Bain. He expressed no opinion whatsoever about the law in question. Nor should he have — expert witness has no place in deciding what laws a country should or shouldn’t have. That is entirely a matter for a country’s legislators.
This post has nothing to do with keeping any sort of law. What laws Belize chooses to have or to repeal is entirely a matter for Belize. It’s none of your business or ours.
Then I suppose its equally none of our business in the case of Meriam Yehya Ibrahim or our ability to critique the just and rationality of laws outside the US.
My issue isn’t with Bain’s independent findings. It’s with the Belize, Jamaican legislators and commenters here who are more thrilled at the opportunity to twist his work to support the injustice of Section 53 then they are outraged by the injustice of Bain’s firing or an individual who are currently imprisoned.
“Justice” is whatever a society determines it to be. There is a reason those laws are in place in that country, and it behooves EVERYONE to determine exactly WHY those laws were put in place to begin with, before they go meddling in that nation’s affairs.
Just because some people consider it “unjust” for those laws to be there doesn’t mean that they are wrong for that population. It’s very possible those laws are on the books to protect the innocent who unknowingly contract HIV/AIDS from someone who is unwilling to practice safe sex. If those laws aren’t on the books, those innocents HAVE no protection under the law.
Like it or not, the highest-risk transmitters are men who have sex with men. That is not – and has never been – in dispute.
I certainly would like to see people on the “injustice” side of the argument take their show on the road to a country ruled by Islamic law. By all accounts, much of their “law” would be considered unjust by the Injustice League, but I don’t see them jumping to make that argument in countries where they will get their heads lopped off for insisting on having things their way.
What is “unjust” in this situation is this Professor being taken to task by the very people who insist that the truth is politically incorrect, and that speaking it is an abomination of the law.
“Truth” may be inconvenient, but it still IS.
Ten years in prison is a small price to pay for the health care havoc homosexuals are creating throughout the Caribbean. The majority of Caribbean countries are not wealthy, and HIV costs are unsustainable for them, so it is better for them to discourage the behavior that leads to AIDS.
Homosexual men who are principals of boys’ schools (the Caribbean has lots of those, and girls’ schools, too; the exam results are far better in those than in the co-ed schools) engage in predatory behavior with students as prey. The result is some boys contract HIV and don’t even know they have it. Then, when they have sexual contact with women, the disease is transmitted.
Then there are the homosexuals who pay poor young men money so that the guys would tup the homosexuals. Some of these guys are thinking it’s a buck, and they are not the ones being ridden, and HIV gets passed along into the heterosexual community this way.
The USA has, or used to have, a huge tax base yielding revenues to fund a lot of things like HIV research. Many Caribbean countries, with small populations and lacking the technologized economy of more developed countries, don’t have the luxury of spending money on HIV research or buying expensive drugs when the exchange rate can be anywhere from $2:$1 or $40:$1. Therefore, the best choice is to criminalize the behavior as being harmful to the general welfare.
If homosexuals, wherever you find them, were not unfailingly promiscuous, one might be able to argue against the bill. Confronted with a noisy and demanding group of hedonists who care only about satisfying their lust, perhaps confinement is the best course.
BTW, Christianity is not an unnatural sex act. There is no comparison Between Meriam Wani and homosexuals in Belize.
Nope.
CDC finding is that women in the US who have HIV/AIDS are overwhelmingly involved with someone who also engages in homosexual (MM) sex.
The WOMEN are engaging in heterosexual sex; however, their male partners are engaging in both.
This link is for adolescents and young adults, but it carries across the other age groups as well – see the footnotes on pages 7 & 8 (and note the exceptionally HIGH rates of infection in the D.C. area on page 9 – overwhelmingly highest in the nation):
http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/pdf/statistics_surveillance_Adolescents.pdf
“If you haven’t read Prof Bain’s affidavit,”
How often do our public discussions spin completely off the subject at hand, and wind up yielding bad public policy?
The physiological facts result in a high rate of transmission to women, and a higher rate of transmission to receptive men. Experience also shows that couples in committed relationships with full disclosure and education of both parties, have an extremely low rate of transmission in the US. That commitment requires a sacrifice: the use of barrier methods during sex, every time.
This information is well known in the AIDS community. It is also well known that getting men to change their behavior is substantially more difficult that getting women to change their behavior. The result is that infected males transmit the disease, often to multiple partners.
Find a way to effectively inhibit the transmission of HIV by infected males, and you have the means to finally snuff out this horrible disease.
You mean to tell me that repeatedly ramming a blunt object up your anus until it bleeds isn’t healthy!?!
Stop discriminating! Why must you hate on people so much?
There’s a new AIDS epidemic out there as black men start going both ways. When they are in prison they do the gay sex thing and when they’re out apparently still love the anal sex thing.
That and multiple partners are creating another epidemic. But hey you didn’t hear if from me.
I’m a 42 year old openly homosexual and HIV- man who has spent more than 10 years now fighting the pervasive “Anal Sex Now, Anal Sex Forever!” mentality that exists in the gay male community, and is alarmingly prevalent among gay “safe-sex educators”.
So my ONLY complaint against Dr. Bain is that he failed to point out that HIV rates tend to be ultra-low among the admittedly small percentage of MSMs who totally abstain from anal sex.
Which is another way of saying that men who have sex with men need to be told again and again that the HIV risks of oral sex are dramatically lower than the HIV risks of anal sex, and therefore, MSMs can protect themselves even when condoms are unavailable by simply saying “I’m only into fellatio, I don’t do it in the butt.” (Obviously, oral sex is more risky than mutual masturbation or total celibacy, and fellatio can transmit HIV — but oral sex can’t spread HIV at “epidemic rates.”)
However, apart from the fact that Bain could’ve done a rather better job of reminding gay/bi Caribbean men as well as the heterosexual majority that male/male sex doesn’t have to be all about the rectum, everything he said was completely true.
But dainty gay princesses don’t like to be told that anal sex IS OBJECTIVELY MORE DANGEROUS other sex practices, and hence Bain got fired.