Clarence Thomas’s decision has nothing whatsoever to do with this of course. Medico-political mumbo jumbo written to deceive. What we have grown to expect from rags like the NYT.
I would appreciate, if not a verbatim quote of Thomas' decision, at least a link to it or a capsule summary. The oblique reference without explanation leaves an impression that I suspect is not honest or accurate.
Why don’t you research it yourself? In the aftermath of the Dobbs decision there was hysteria about how Thomas had written something about how other prior SCOTUS decisions were poorly reasoned as was Roe. But in the Dobbs decision it was stated that the decision didn’t extrapolate.
So the MSM of course claimed, They’re coming for gay marriage next!!
NCMaureen why do you think it’s illogical to extrapolate, “They’re coming for gay marriage next!” When Justice Thomas says: “in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [contraception], Lawrence [sexual acts], and Obergefell [same-sex marriage].”
Interracial marriage is based on “…the theory substantive due process,…”.
In the wake of Griswold, the Court expanded substantive due process jurisprudence to protect a panoply of liberties, including the right of interracial couples to marry (1967),
But it no longer requires substantive due process to justify its existence.
In the alternative, assuming no laws preventing racial discrimination exist (which of course they do) Thomas would argue that the Privileges and Immunities clause of the 14th would still support a prohibition on anti-miscegenation laws.
@Just me: Just like abortion was not made illegal by Dobbs; it was simply sent back to the states to decide, Thomas opines that same-sex marriage should also be decided by the states. It is existentially important for liberty and the Constitution that powers that do not belong to the federal government should be wrested away from Washington and restored to the states.
Jan, by taking away a right that was guaranteed by the federal government, essentially makes it illegal in other jurisdictions. You can play the silly word game if you like, but essentially it is taking a right away: for the first time in America’s history!
Two things: 1. Rights are not gifts from government. Rights precede it and can neither be granted nor taken away by government. Even the late RBG admitted that the Roe v Wade decision was not properly derived from the Constitution. By contrast, the Bill of Rights was not just dreamed up by some justices. Those rights were established by amending the Constitution. 2. The Constitution is not a silly word game. The 10th Amendment reinforces that the federal government is supposed to have limited powers: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." Consequently, California, New York, or any other state whose legislature so decides, can codify abortion rights in any way it wants. New York codified abortion rights three years before Roe v Wade and will continue to allow it after it has been struck down, https://www.ny.gov/programs/abortion-new-york-state-know-your-rights
just Me it sucks so bad here I will buy you a first class ticket to any workers paradise you choose . What say you? You want Russia , China or North Korea , you would be so happy there no complaints
Jerry, I’m confident that our forefathers who penned the Constitution of the United States decided that when they were writing it, the First Amendment meant: no badmouthing the government, particularly the Supreme Court. I mean, what other explanation could there be for your comment?
no what i'm saying if things are so bad for you here I'm giving you a ticket out to some workers paradise where you will be happy , no Thomas no Trump just dicktaters , your kind of people . No one to blame for your failures there
By the time we get to the cowardly tarring of Thomas’s decision without a link we are already feeling so serially abused as readers by having taken any of his fear mongering seriously we just shrug and note the source.
I read the decision on the link below. As I read it (disclaimer: I’m an engineer, not a lawyer), Justice Thomas does argue that any court decisions, like gat marriage, substantively based on the 14th Amendment) could (I read “should”) be revisited.
I think that's a fair reading of Thomas' opinion. However, it should be noted that there are probably eight justices opposed to that, four said so in their Dobbs opinions, I assume the three Dobbs dissenters would also be opposed and the chief justice wouldn't want to deal with such a controversial issue. Much of the media has tried to stir up panic over this, both to get clicks and to promote pro-abortion activism. I think the chance of gay rights, gay marriage or interracial marriage being banned is negligible.
I don't think that's what Thomas meant. I think he was pointing out that many of these "rights" we now take for granted are based on some of the same flimsy legal reasoning that Roe was, and that it would be better not to assume that those "rights" are on solid ground.
Exactly. And Obergfell is one of those decisions. Like Roe, if overturned, state legislatures could easily permit same-sex marriage via statute. Thomas is trying to make the Constitution and constitutional jurisprudence make sense. That's all. He's not anti-gay.
Yes, from what I read Thomas wasn't arguing that gay marriage should be revisited to be made illegal again, he was pointing out that Obergefell's reliance on the Fourteenth Amendment and the made-up judicial doctrine of "substantive due process" is flimsy Constitutional grounding, whereas a stronger argument might be made from elsewhere, like from the "privileges and immunities clause."
Leah, Thomas did indeed state that same-sex marriage should be revisited.
“in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [contraception], Lawrence [sexual acts], and Obergefell [same-sex marriage].”
And I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume Thomas is a homophobe!
“has been a reliable vote against LGBTQ rights. He dissented from its pro-LGBTQ rulings in 1996’s Romer v. Evans, which struck down an antigay state constitutional amendment in Colorado; 2013’s Windsor v. U.S., which struck down the main part of the Defense of Marriage Act, and Hollingsworth v. Perry, which let stand a lower court ruling invalidating California’s Proposition 8, an anti-marriage equality ballot measure; and 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. In his dissent in Obergefell, he wrote, “In the American legal tradition, liberty has long been understood as individual freedom from governmental action, not as a right to a particular governmental entitlement” — marriage being that “entitlement.”
He joined in the court’s 2018 decision vacating the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s finding that a baker illegally discriminated against a gay couple by refusing to create a wedding cake for them. However, he wanted the decision to go further and expressed concern about whether marriage equality could be used to stamp out freedom of speech and religion.”
Dobbs was about the baby, there are no innocent victims in gay marriage or any of the other issues Thomas refers to. It is the human being killed in utero that makes abortion a unique problem of conflict between right to choose, privacy and another right to life.
But we have stated unequivocally that “[n]othing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” Supra, at 66. We have also explained why that is so: rights regarding contraception and same-sex relationships are inherently different from the right to abortion because the latter (as we have stressed) uniquely involves what Roe and Casey termed “potential life.” Roe
“in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [contraception], Lawrence [sexual acts], and Obergefell [same-sex marriage].”
Yes, Thomas rejects substantive due process and has for pretty much his entire career. Don't confuse that with the notion that he supports prohibiting contraception et al.
Sure. I'm a big fan of Justice Brandeis, who said that it is sometimes more important that a thing be DECIDED than it be decided RIGHT. Having said that, though, for certain Roe v. Wade should have been revisited because its effects reached far into the future and tainted the Court. It wasn't just a decided case, then over. A terrible precedent.
I understand Justice Thomas' desire to get things right all down the line, but am not sure whether revisiting other decisions is the best thing. As Johnny 5 said, "Need input."
“in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [contraception], Lawrence [sexual acts], and Obergefell [same-sex marriage].”
McNeil's single line about the Dobbs concurrence is an unfortunate distraction in an otherwise well-written and informative piece. It was completely unnecessary, didn't even make the point it was trying to make, and showed that McNeil did not understand what Thomas was saying in his concurrence (or that Thomas has been making those points in solo concurrences or dissents for about 20 years now).
Thanks for calling it what it was. Maybe it’s just splitting hairs but it annoys me that MSM keeps calling it “Thomas’s decision”. Alito wrote the majority opinion and Thomas just wrote a concurrence.
Apologies but I cannot regard this as an informative piece. Well-written, yes, the writer is skillful, but.... These lines earlier are a dead giveaway among others: "I blame several factors: shortages of vaccines and tests". Really, after Covid, and the real abiding concerns about vaccines and tests? There are other more complete and accurate pieces on Monkey Pox free of the amateur and fear mongering aspects of this.
Good catch, particularly the "shortage of tests." Really? How would you test for Monkeypox BEFORE there is any physical evidence? Test the entire population? Set up road blocks?
Once the postules erupt why test? The physical evidence would be conclusive.
As far as vaccines go, if there is no immediate need to vaccinate for a particular disease why would any sane government go to the expense to stockpile massive doses of vaccine?
McNeil probably harbors hopes of his cocktail parties returning. It's a shame but he is overall a credible science reporter, and this is really the first monkeypox article I've taken remotely seriously. I have just assumed the MSM ones are basically pharma-funded psyops.
That wasn't the impression I got from his article. He had to throw in his bonafide liberal card by slurring Justice Thomas. It if hadn't been Thomas it would have been Trump. It's a mindset.
I call it out when I see it but I also realize where it comes from. It is so intrinsically wired into his being that he can't help himself. If Bari is editing she won't notice it either because her inclination goes that way too.
We have to call it out but we also have to be gentle about it.
Mr. McNeil is nearly a man without a country. He lost his prestigious position at the NYT. We need to overlook some of his innate prejudices.
I would say it's more about hoping some lefties will take the rest of his piece seriously as long as he meets his Orange Man Bad quota (or in this case, Clarence Thomas).
It's political in-group signaling to try to avoid being written off as a "right wing post" by people who like their echo chambers good and airtight.
Ah yes, those halcyon days when it was perfectly acceptable at all levels of society and media to relentlessly call a sitting President a complete idiot, the new Hitler, and a chimpanzee.
Naomi, when Donald wrote, “One need only read Clarence Thomas’s decision in Dobbs…” Justice Thomas was basically saying the court should consider looking into same-sex marriage!
“in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [contraception], Lawrence [sexual acts], and Obergefell [same-sex marriage].”
It's amusing how these liberal/Lefties manage to always inject a sling/slur/hit against their favorite righty trope. It's either Donald Trump or Clarence Thomas.
I am a lawyer and although it's clear from Justice Thomas's Opinion that he firmly rejects any legal basis for the use of "substantive due process" in deciding cases (he thinks the concept is imaginary), he only mentions Obergefell along with other cases that did rely on substantive due process as one of many cases that may need to be re-examined in the future. I don't see how it's a fair call to state that Thomas is therefore showing animus towards homosexuals.
Substantive due process has been a way for SCOTUS to enforce contentious social issues in an attempt to settle them. It hasn't worked with Roe obviously but I think gays right to marry is constitutional regardless. Our rights are as individuals not as members of a group. If individuals have a right to marry then likewise gays - they're 2 individuals each with that right.
OK, I will write this only once and hope you get it:
The issue is not whether you as an individual have any particular “right” but whether the US Constitution protects such right from being interfered with.
Pretty easy to understand though an amazing number of folks just don’t get it.
I am "saying" that the US Constitution protects as a US Constitutional right only those things - rights - that are stated in the Constitution. First Amendment rights - freedom from the government interfering with speech, religious affiliation and expression, press. Second Amendment - freedom from government interference with citizens bearing arms. 3rd Amendment - government may not quarter soldiers in citizens' homes. 4th - freedom from the government conducting searches and seizures. Etc. Etc. Etc.
In other words, unless a "right" is "enumerated" in the US Constitution, such right, while it may still exist, is not a US Constitutional right. Maybe a state statute or constitution protects such rights, but not the US Constitution. The US Constitution did not purport to determine all rights or to exclude "rights" in fact it specifically stated in the 9th Amendment that things not enumerated in US Constitution may still exist, but they are for the People (not Supreme Court Justices) to decide.
The way to understand this is to get your mind wrapped around the circumstances of the Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence -- you know, breaking away the lord and master known as the King of England, aristocracy and all that European crap. Tyranny of the King, not decision of the people.
So the US Constitution is written in a manner of providing negative rights, not, with a few exceptions, positive rights. The Constitution lays out the form of government the colonies will have once united, the powers and authorities the parts of government will have. That is the powers of the legislature, the courts, the executive - in each case of the federal government. That is the basis for each of the colonies accepting this form of government and Constitution and ratifying it.
Unless the US Constitution explicitly protects something, it is not a US Constitutionally protected right. You might still have such a right, but you need to look elsewhere for protection - state law, etc.
Is it conceivable that a gay couple could be authorized to marry under a state constitution? Of course. Under state law? Of course. Under the US Constitution? That was what Thomas was writing about. That the idea of "substantive due process" was invented (in the 1930s and really came into force in the 1950s and thereafter) and is not part of the US Constitution when written and not - other than by consulting a Ouija board - part of our form of republican government seems lost on folks.
And on your question of gay marriage, it is pretty much beyond dispute that homosexuality was a crime and homosexuals could not be married in any state in a sanctioned fashion at the time of the US Constitution. That was the frame of reference when the US Constitution was ratified. If you think that was the result merely of religious bigotry you need to do lots of reading on the history of human society. That we may think it acceptable today is beside the point of the US Constitution. That many do accept it is simply a basis for states to legalize it - as many have.
Get it? "Substantive Due Process" is a theory that is not found in the US Constitution itself (other than using a Ouija board to mush together the due process clause of the 4th and the equal protection clause of the 14th amendments) but indeed was used by many Supreme Court decisions - ones that strayed from the text of the Constitution but that fed the "feelings" of fairness of the then sitting Justices - it is not in the Constitution itself.
You may not like this; you may disagree with it. If so you are simply part of the debate on interpretation. If you think that Supreme Court Justices should sit as an ultimate decider of conflicting social theories and pressures, you have given that Court way too much power. You have divested the People of their right to decide what sort of society that will have. You will not like where it might lead to.
I really appreciate your lengthy and lucid explanation. I didn’t fully understand it before, and the majority of the public definitely doesn’t get it. This should be an educational oped every newspaper in the country. Sadly it won’t be.
KJMAC: No, it hasn't. Substantive due process enforces NON-contentious social issues. It applies to non-enumerated rights deeply embedded in our history and traditions which are necessary for ordered liberty.
Abortion cannot pass that test because it fails both prongs. Contraception, same-sex marriage, and sodomy also fail. None is a traditional, recognized, historical norm. This does not mean they should be prohibited. Thomas simply suggests that the privileges and immunities clause is the better authority for supporting them.
Interesting comment. Would you care to provide some examples of these "non-enumerated rights deeply embedded" but that are protected by "substantive DP"??
Probably the most controversial is privacy. Not privacy itself because several Bill of Rights protections implicate such a right (search and seizure for example). The controversy is when it is expanded. Justice William O. Douglas, who once found a tree had standing to sue in a court of law, argued that the Bill of Rights casts penumbras (shadows). Emanating from those shadows are non-enumerated rights such a right to contraception, right to an abortion, etc.
Other rights that pass the substantive due process test mentioned above include things like the right to marry, right to have children (which is also argued negatively, the right not to have children).
Thomas objects to this doctrine of substantive due process for two reasons. First, he objects to the court creating non-enumerated rights that legislatures or the amendment process can achieve. He believes in the machinery of the democratic process, he recognizes sometimes the process will fail or produce bad results. He simply believes, imo correctly, that the Court is just as fallible but those decisions are much more likely to linger and fester.... see for example... Roe. Second, he thinks that the original intent of the privileges and immunities clause is the more appropriate foundation to support these rights currently based on substantive due process. P&I basically stand for equal protection. Originally, in Art. 4 of the constitution it worked the prohibit states from discriminating against citizens of other states. (Hmmm... CA bans state travel to MT?) The 14th created national citizenship. Art. 4 protected against "intra-state" discrimination but not "inter-state" discrimination. The 14th wiped out that distinction. It's been a long time since I studied this so I've probably erred in some of the above but the broad strokes I think are reasonably accurate. If not I'm sure I'll be corrected 😉
I agree that there are other legal ways to approach a right to gay marriage besides substantive due process. But it's like abortion in that there is still no easy way to craft a "solution" that fits completely.
I see marriage as an organic human institution based on family formation through procreation, that doesn't translate perfectly to the general idea that any two people can be married. I do want to see all 50 states support gay marriage even if not based on the Federal Constitution.
I think the ban on gay marriage was a blue law based on religious discrimination common in the past but not compatible with the concept of equal rights. It treats a person differently based on others’ opinion of that person. I see it as analogous to racial discrimination.
I can make a pretty strong case based on Plato or Aristotle opposing gay marriage. The idea that the only reason is religious animus is pretty absurd.
Here's a shot: The first goal of any society is to produce, raise, and acculturate the next generation to be capable of doing the same. Does treating same sex relationships the same as hetero-sexual relationships help achieve that goal? In an Aristotelean sense, does it promote the common good?
While I can see many ways that legally recognizing and subsidizing gay "marriages" promotes individual happiness (which is a good), I think it's very hard to make the claim that it is in the common good. And considering that we now have 25% of college girls self-identifying as LGBT, it should be pretty clear that such policies have had very nasty side affects that directly harm that "produce the next generation" goal.
I’d say yes, same sex couples can produce and raise the next generation. I think I saw on this very blog that Bari and Nellie are due to be parents soon.
You can see analogies all you want. Anyone can do that 4th grader analysis. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were adopted after the Civil Way - which was about slavery (notwithstanding that the slave states thought it was "states' rights - yeah, rights to have slaves). The purpose of those amendments was to bar slavery (though it could still be OK for prisoners - read the 13th!), citizenship of born and naturalized persons (but no Indians until 1924), and the right to vote - for people of color or former slaves - no mention of homosexuality here). Those Civil War Amendment have little to do with all the expansion of "rights' the Supreme Court came up with under the Equal Protection banner. It is inventing rights out of whole cloth.
Sheryl, Thomas stated that same-sex marriage should be revisited.
“in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [contraception], Lawrence [sexual acts], and Obergefell [same-sex marriage].”
And I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume Thomas is a homophobe!
“has been a reliable vote against LGBTQ rights. He dissented from its pro-LGBTQ rulings in 1996’s Romer v. Evans, which struck down an antigay state constitutional amendment in Colorado; 2013’s Windsor v. U.S., which struck down the main part of the Defense of Marriage Act, and Hollingsworth v. Perry, which let stand a lower court ruling invalidating California’s Proposition 8, an anti-marriage equality ballot measure; and 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. In his dissent in Obergefell, he wrote, “In the American legal tradition, liberty has long been understood as individual freedom from governmental action, not as a right to a particular governmental entitlement” — marriage being that “entitlement.”
He joined in the court’s 2018 decision vacating the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s finding that a baker illegally discriminated against a gay couple by refusing to create a wedding cake for them. However, he wanted the decision to go further and expressed concern about whether marriage equality could be used to stamp out freedom of speech and religion.”
You missed Thomas's and Sheryl's point. Thomas said nothing about contraception, gay marriage, or sodomy. He said substantive due process is not an appropriate foundation to sustain those rights.
Getting to the answer the right way matters a great deal to Thomas. Some find it tedious. Those people tend to be much more tolerant of judicial overreach and fiat. Those people want their preferred result and don't much care how they get there.
DemonHunter, You say: “Getting to the answer the right way matters a great deal to Thomas. Clarence said: “…we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents…” Clarence Thomas mentions multiple “substantive due process.” decisions except this one: interracial marriage. I understand he is married to a white woman, is he not? Is this not a glaring inconsistency? How does one explain him bringing up gay marriage, but not his interracial marriage? So much for his integrity!
Not inconsistent. Interracial marriage has already been addressed through a variety of other methods and does not rely on substantive due process (sodomy, contraception, and same sex marriage rely on substantive due process). That's why he does not include it on his list.
edit: But it, interracial marriage, no longer requires substantive due process to justify its existence.
In the alternative, assuming no laws preventing racial discrimination exist (which of course they do) Thomas would argue that the Privileges and Immunities clause of the 14th would still support a prohibition on anti-miscegenation laws.
Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) was the case in which the Court held that the Virginia anti-miscegenation laws violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. After assessing the case facts with “strict scrutiny”, the Court also held the laws violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. On July 11, 1958, Mildred and Richard Loving were apprehended in their homes in violation of Section 20-58 and 59, which were the anti-miscegenation laws that prohibited leaving the state to interracially marry and returning to the forum state as well as labeling this activity a felony. Mildred, a woman of color, and Richard, a Caucasian, both plead guilty, received one year in prison, but had their sentences mitigated on the condition that they not return to Virginia together for 25 years. Unaccepting of this cruel reprimand, the Lovings’ sought legal relief, an endeavor that lead their fate to be overturned by the SCOTUS. Relying on the federal and state obligations to honor each citizen their due process rights and equal protection under the 14th and 5th amendments and guiding public policy to recognize the sanctity of protecting the private life, the SCOTUS unanimously ruled the anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional, a monumental decision that restored another political and social right for minorities (specifically blacks).
Wow, I'm a pretty online person but I didn't see this take coming. I even scrolled back up to make sure I hadn't accidently entered the comment section to a different article. Oh well, just came to say thanks for the info Mr. McNeil. As for KW Norton...wow...
Agreed. I was willing to listen to this writer until this "after 50 years of progress, a serious backlash against gay rights is growing in this country: One need only read Clarence Thomas’s decision in Dobbs to get a sense."
The LGBT lobby just got finished with a 1 month celebration of their pride (historically a vice, not a virtue) in screwing their own sex. This bizarre festival was trumpeted by every media outlet. Corporate logos were festooned with rainbows to show solidarity. Most major cities in the world bedecked their major thoroughfares with the LGBTQIAXYZ flag. American embassies flew gay pride flags. For the month of June, sexual deviance and oddity of all kinds was heralded and celebrated by the entire edifice of Western culture. And whoa to he who questions the wisdom of this sacrament, for he shall be cast into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (with all the bigots in Alabama or Kentucky or some other red state.)
Based on the last month (heck, based on the last 30 years), , where, exactly, is this "growing gay rights backlash"?
I'm not seeing a backlash, but I live a pretty cloistered life in a small town.
While I have a close friend, a devout Catholic, who takes the "screwing their own sex" point of view, I have known more than a few gay men - and, delight of delights - lesbian women too, and my POV has softened quite a bit.
One queer friend and I discuss the matter pretty frankly, and he told me, "Do you think I LIKED getting hell beat out of me at school? Getting laughed at? I got to where even I hated myself for being who I was, but the fact is, it WAS who I was. People say, 'Just stop being queer.' I know you're (Jim) not a believer - if you decided tomorrow to become one, would you genuinely believe? Of course not. It's not a decision under your control." Made me think.
I really dislike the "trans" stuff because I see it as truly a mental disorder, and you don't treat those with surgery - even if it will make you a champion "female" swimmer. Homosexuality, OTOH to my eye is a different beast. It has been with humanity since the dawn of time; as a non-reproductive persuasion, you'd think it would have been eliminated from the gene pool by now. That it has not gives me great pause; nature does not do things without a reason.
And now the bullied gay kid and his friends have taken power and is bullying anyone who refuses to celebrate his lifestyle.
If this was about respect and tolerance, I would be completely on board. But at the point that you're forcing florists to work your wedding, harassing bakers who don't want to bake cakes, getting people fired for contributing to Prop 8 in California, and sending people to re-education if they use the wrong pronouns... that's not about tolerance.
I want a liberal society. I want a society where Jewish families can go to synagogue without fear, Catholics don't have to worry about their churches being vandalized, and where 2 gay men can walk down the street holding hands without being harassed. I want a liberal society and am willing to "live and let live" a great deal to obtain it. But it doesn't appear that the Left wants this at all. They want a society where ideological non-conformity is punished severely. Forced to choose between an illiberal Left society that hates me and an illiberal Right society that doesn't hate me, I know which I would have to pick.
I think that's the point. Things were stable; now people who don't wish this nation well are using every weapon they have to cause dissention and hatred among groups who had been tolerating each other's peculiarities just fine. Division, disorder, and chaos are their weapons of choice. Oh yes, and violence. Lots of violence, tolerated and even encouraged by one political party.
I can assure you that my friend, the height of whose aggression was, upon helping my wife erect an electric dog fence, put his hands on his hips and proclaimed, "God, I feel SO butch!" is not in that group and does not want to be.
The writer’s take on Thomas was a throw away to show his bona fides, KW. I agree with you that it was not necessary. Having said that, I do think Thomas wants gay marriage and contraception settled via legislation and leave the Constitution out of it.
Looking back on the recent history of the United States through the twentieth century - contraceptive and gay rights were certainly not afforded by either states’ or the federal gov’t - hence activists looking for constitutional relief.
If Clarence had his way (and not necessarily the rest of the conservative wing of the Court), in my opinion he would throw it all back to where governments failed to act.
I've an old friend who constantly reminds me that "evil always overplays its hand." I don't want to get into the "evil" meme, but I can tell you this: everyone I know is well and truly exhausted by the Alphabet People, as they call them. Just exhausted.
And yet they have been brilliant and seizing levers of influence in society, infiltrating the schools and universities and driving out any opposition. It's going to be a long slog to get rid of them.
That's my experience, too. I have - I wouldn't say a lot, but certainly several - gay friends. We're in a conservative small southern town; everyone who knows them knows their persuasion and they don't care. We're all friends and nobody rubs anybody else's nose in his own personal orientation. It just doesn't come up. It's live and let live. But the aggressiveness, the haranguing, the attempts to secretly propagandize children - THAT is a deal breaker.
That's the difference. Most conservatives can get along with gays, even gay liberals. It comes down to our belief that we want to be left alone, so we're willing to grant the same to other people.
However, progressives have a much harder time getting along with conservatives, especially Christians. They believe that their policies are universally good, so the only reason to oppose them is evil, which must be crushed on general principle.
In this fight, the conservatives will keep losing until we start (rhetorically and legally) punching back.
It may go deeper than that. Christians, who believe in God and believe there is an ultimate moral standard direct from and answerable to God, stand as a rebuke to those who want no constraints, no rules, and no guilt on any actions they choose to take.
However the Trans group is so loud and intimidating that many gay people are just hesitant to speak out against their nonsense. Plenty of gay people do not agree with that agenda. I even know a trans woman that doesn’t agree with it! I just wish they would rally and speak out, as a group, because they’d have a lot of credibility if they did. It’s kind of like the doctors who are afraid to speak up about the ineffective covid management.
This is what I wrote. Not sure why someone had enough of a problem with it to demand it be deleted.
I think McNeil is trying very hard to pretend that the backlash against gay people is somehow a result of the overturning of Roe, rather than a result of trans activists taking over and attempting to act as the voice of the entire LGBT+ community.
As far as I can tell, the LBG community is beginning to make efforts to divorce themselves from the T+ community. When the T+ community is demanding that lesbians allow transwomen with penises to rape them, promoting drag shows to children, and encouraging young children to want to mutilate their bodies, the LGB community has everything to lose by allowing trans activists to speak for them and very little to gain.
Thank you for writing this. I have appreciated your work for quite some time, and I am still astonished at how your Times career was ended. It scares me for my own self, as it is probably intended to
Just to be clear- we've just gone through three years where we were asked / told to modify our behaviors to stop the spread. No weddings, no funerals, no Christmas dinners, no church, no gatherings of any sort. Normal life stopped for all of us because the behavior was hazardous to ourselves and to others.
And yet in this new pandemic, "stop having copious amounts of anonymous gay sex" does not appear on your list of remedies. Is it more outrageous to ask gay men to stop promiscuous sex than to tell him that he can't go to a family wedding or funeral (as we have the last two years)?
None of your recommendations address the actual behavior that is known to spread this disease. Why is that?
It isn't allowed. It was frowned upon 40 years ago when AIDS came on the scene, even though the Woke had far less power. Now, with the Woke in control of every institution, no one will dare to even whisper it.
Some Gays take the risks and suffer the consequences. Once I understood how Monkeypox is transmitted, I knew my family and friends, including gay friends were safe. None of us engage in the risky activities. If you enjoy extreme sports, then go for it.
My outrage is the author putting all the responsibility on taxpayers/government. (And the insanity that the government can still be competent under Dem leadership.) My other outrage is that someone I love gets this disease innocently/non-sexually and has to suffer because there are gay men who will not interrupt their indulgences for themselves or anyone else's health.
I can't stop laughing at this comment. Do you not have sex? None of your friends have sex? Do you believe that no one in your chain of friends might have sex outside a "monogamous" relationship? Never kissed someone who might have kissed someone who might have had sex with ... ?
If you think this is just a result of gay sex, or anal sex, or fetish sex, or whatever you might believe is at the core, you are possibly in for a rude awakening.
Rude Awakening? - are you really trying to frighten me? You want to scare all of us who are not part of the small subsets of gay men: the BDSM/leather/fetish/rough subset and the party-n-play/chemsex subset. I do not have friends who play these "extreme sports." To conflate these folks with my circle is to compare the purple-haired, screaming, violent trans folk with my circle. Sorry, culture matters and some cultures are far more dangerous than others. If monkeypox spreads to a larger circle, I will deal with it just as I did with AIDS in the 80s. Except then I was single and now I have been married for 25 years. And I later learned that the fears for heterosexuals were totally overblown by the nascent woke crowd back then. So it appears the risk will be de minimis.
Most of my friends are in monogamous relationships, and those that are single are very careful. This is what my culture encourages. Culture matters unless you are woke. If you are woke, then enjoy your sex parties.
BTW, at 74 I am having the best sex of a very long sex life.
But the risk here is that sexual transmission may not be the only risk. Some might say that we - males - got lucky with HIV. Sounds like you did. It has stayed pretty much limited to a small segment of the populace. But women are at risk of spread from infected males. That is the African experience and among sex workers in the US.
That may not hold for this new pox. Time will tell. You can continue to believe that this pox is just skin bumps and not a risk to you and your fellow believers. But you may be disappointed.
I'd prefer to deal with the realities of a variety of humans, not just those I might think of as "woke" or unawake or whatever. I don't think IV drug users are "woke" but they sure are at risk.
I'd prefer we look at the world the way it is (consevative thought) not the way I think it should be (Prog thought).
We simply have different priorities for particular health risks. No big deal. My complaint is that personal responsibility is thrown out the window by the woke crowd, and tax payers have to pay thru increased health risk, and to fund the increased harm done by irresponsible people.
He addressed that several times. Do you suggest that the government lock up every gay man in the nation so they won’t have copious sex? Or what? Providing vaccines to all gay men seemed, to me, more effective. Also providing a thirty day isolation period for anyone who tests positive to it, even though it would be expensive, seems to be a good thing.
I think people are reacting to the fact that kids weren't allowed to go to school, everyone on a plane had to wear a mask and no one could go to a funeral or wedding but no one is expecting this verified at risk group to change their behavior even temporarily.
If they can lockdown literally everyone whether spreading it or not, I see no reason why they can't put gay men who can't control their genitals into lockdown. In fact, let's put all gay men into lockdown until the danger is over! For their safety!
So he did repeatedly say for large sex parties to stop, or whatever else they would be called. I’m not sure how you missed that or aren’t able to infer that that is a warning against casual sex with strangers.
The way I read it, he wants the government to step in and MAKE those parties stop. He wants to government to provide vaccinations, so people can go back to having those parties without any concerns. He wants the government to provide quarantine areas.
He did not, as far I could tell, recommend any PERSONAL responsibility.
I agree with you, Celia. Someone has to pay for the treatments and housing and it's not going to just be the special group affected by it. It's all of us. All of us were told how selfish we were for wanting life to go back to normal the last two years, but heaven FORBID a smaller group refrain from anonymous sex whenever the urge strikes.
Without re-reading the article I think he did lament the fact that the hosts of the parties are going ahead with them rather than postpone until the vax is widely available.
But those who attend have to be aware of their risk so if they want to play the odds there's not not much anyone else can do.
For the last year ++ we've had proggies screaming about how anyone not vaccinated should be rounded up and put in a camp "for the greater good", along with heaping scorn and wishing death on those same people.
Why aren't proggies screaming about how any male that has butt sex be rounded up and put in a camp "for the greater good", along with heaping scorn and wishing death on those same people.
DMDM, below you’ll find the CDC’s recommendation. I suppose the recommendations won’t satisfy you because it doesn’t say: gay men stop banging each other so much. After all, that’s what homophobes want to hear.
Take the following steps to prevent getting monkeypox:
• Avoid close, skin-to-skin contact with people who have a rash that looks like monkeypox.
o Do not touch the rash or scabs of a person with monkeypox.
o Do not kiss, hug, cuddle or have sex with someone with monkeypox.
o Do not share eating utensils or cups with a person with monkeypox.
• Do not handle or touch the bedding, towels, or clothing of a person with monkeypox.
• Wash your hands often with soap and water or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
• In Central and West Africa, avoid contact with animals that can spread monkeypox virus, usually rodents and primates. Also, avoid sick or dead animals, as well as bedding or other materials they have touched.
If you are sick with monkeypox:
• Isolate at home
• If you have an active rash or other symptoms, stay in a separate room or area away from people or pets you live with, when possible.
Calling people names isn't generally good argumentation either. Got anything better?
My point in the original comment was that Mr. McNiel dared not call on people to take responsibility for their behaviors or life outcomes, the fact that the CDC DOES makes my question that much more pressing. Why is he afraid to ask gay men to stop banging each other so much? Why does he conceal this part of the CDC guidance from his readers?
If you want to be trusted as a science writer, facts are facts and evidence is evidence. You can't be fighting on one side of the culture war and deserve to be trusted.
OMG, gay sex - fetish or otherwise - is part of the Culture War????
FWIW, I think the import of McNeil's piece was fairly obvious. Any gay guy will understand it. That it does not satisfy the Jerry Fallwells of American is irrelevant.
The problem is that the CDC has not written that monkeypox is currently spreading in the MSM community.
They should state something like "MSM are at higher risk of contracting monkeypox in the U.S. due to community spread in the MSM community". This would be responsible & help MSM to at least be aware of risks in the community.
Sally, the CDC says: "Do not kiss, hug, cuddle or have sex with someone with monkeypox." Why do you feel the MSM community should be singled out? Don’t heterosexuals have sex too!
Wait, what .... ? The MSM? You mean Monkey Pox is rampant in the main stream media? Or did you mean the Bondage Discipline Sado-Masochism - BDSM - crowd and your autocorrect just couldn't take that acronym?
This actually represents a welcome return to a more evidence-based approach to human behaviour in public health.
The reason the focus here is not on behaviour modifiction, is that we know, and have known for a long time, that it simply doesn't work. See: abstinence-only education and teen pregnancy rates; how shaming can hinder disclosure of HIV (or STD) status; the misguided war on drugs; and on and on.
We ought to focus on wondering why we went full throttle for it on Covid, despite all evidence against it, rather than asking why we won't try that same doomed strategy again with monkeypox.
If people can't even be /asked/ to refrain from risky behaviors, if they cannot restrain their appetites to contain communicable diseases that they are uniquely susceptible because of their particular chosen behaviors, then they are not candidates for adulthood, nor citizens in a self-governing republic.
Abstinence-only education and telling people to stop self-destructive behaviors does people the respect of treating people as /agents/ rather than helpless people to whom things happen.
Several years ago, I would have totally agreed with you, (and I still largely like what you're saying). Then COVID came, and we witnessed massive, widespread behavior modification before our very eyes--parents diligently masking toddlers, families canceling Christmas, and millions rolling up their sleeves for experimental injections. Either out of fear or the desire to stay within cultural norms, there's no question that Americans changed their behavior during COVID.
If the gay community sounded the alert and made anonymous sex parties socially unacceptable and a cause for shame by their own, even just temporarily as suggested, I think we'd see decreased transmission.
"The reason the focus here is not on behaviour modifiction, is that we know, and have known for a long time, that it simply doesn't work."
Utter horseshit. I, and millions of others, have quit smoking. That is just one of countless examples that could be used. You have no idea what you're talking about.
I don’t get your point. Are gay men supposed to stop having sex? Fauci tried that and was excoriated for it. I’d say ask Larry Kramer about it but he is dead.
Best advice is to learn from the mistakes of the early days of the AIDS epidemic.
An adult that is not capable of putting the good of those around him ahead of his own appetites is a poor excuse for an adult.
This may be news to you, but in living memory most people abstained from sex before marriage. Crazy as it may seem, some people do that yet today. Not because they hate sex, but because they have a high view of sex and a high view of humanity. We can, and should, subjugate our desires to higher purposes.
I would hope to aspire to that behavior myself, but am way too old and too human to conform to such lofty goals.
As to reality, not behavioral fascism, we are trying to deal with a medical infection risk, a possible pandemic, we need approaches that account for a variety of views on things like sex.
Fauci had that notion decades ago - "just don't have sex". It did not work. What worked is figuring out how to deal with reality (you know, the same failing he had with Covid???) of folks actually engaging in sexual behaviors.
The drive to copulate is powerful. One of the most powerful our species has. Acting like they are not "adults" or that they don't give a shit about others is just silly. And childish. You know, folks who are poor excuses for adults.
In the days before dating sites, in the days before the automobile, in the days before the bicycle, it was much harder than it is now to have sex before or outside of marriage.
But I think you greatly overrate avoidance of nonmarital sex. Sex is an immensely powerful urge, and often, even outside of marriage, a great joy.
People also have many ways of expressing it, some which work for some, and don't for others. A lot of bad marriages have happened between partners who didn't get to sample enough sex prior to marriage to figure out what they liked, and what they didn't like. Ann Landers used to say that out of 20 marriages there was one great one, 9 good ones, five that were not good, and five that were sheer hell. She also came to recognize that sex without marriage is OK.
Your view is outdated by nearly a century. My parents began living together in the summer of 1946. They didn't get married until mid-December, a few days after my mother's divorce papers arrived in the mail.
Oh, for fucks sake. I can as many others can "conceive [funny word in this context"] of monogamous relationships.
The really "appalling" thing is that you seem to see the world only through your eyes, your "morality".Really, you have the mentality of Jerry Falwell. Shame on you.
The world does not mirror your views. In fact yours are a tiny fraction of human interests.
You seem to have a clear morality in mind, where some things are celebrated and others rejected.What makes yours right and those that disagree with you deserving of shame?
I understand you agree with "the world", but you surely understand this: by your own standard of "popular makes right" the activities you hold up as right would have been wrong (being as at that time only a tiny fraction of humans would have agreed with you).
Do you have another standard you'd like to suggest instead?
Let me get this straight... The CDC made us shutdown schools for 6 months to protect kids & teachers from a virus that wasn’t dangerous to 99% of them. They then insisted that our children & their teachers wear a mask and “socially distance” themselves when they went back to school- both of which made learning incredibly difficult. They inflicted serious, lasting harm on an entire generation of children... yet when it comes to shutting down orgies and prohibiting sex fetish “parties” they’ve decided to take a more cautious, less abrasive approach, lest they cause harm or stigmatization of gay men? GTFOH. These public health experts make me sick. They deserve nothing but scorn for their actions in the last 2.5 years.
One slight error here. The number is more like 99.99%. There are only a couple dozen cases of young children dying from Wuhan/C19 virus. (Underlying conditions is a different story.)
Once I was an alarmist about diseases spreading from the tropics. When a man from Africa came to see his girlfriend in Texas and was discovered to have Ebola, I was sure--based on the transmission and fatality rates seen in Africa--that we had a major and highly serious pandemic looming over us.
It turned out (fortunately) that I was wrong. Neither transmission nor fatality of the disease was as serious in the West as it was in Africa.
So I am not as willing to become alarmed as I used to be. My reaction to this article--which definitely seeks to be alarming--is consequently very skeptical.
Nor am I convinced that McNeil is yelling at the correct audience. As he himself points out, those most at risk are gay men, particularly those who have sexual contact with strangers. And ALSO as he himself points out, that population is as unwilling to follow health-protective cautions now as they were when the AIDS epidemic began. I'm not convinced that any amount of lectures or warnings will change their minds. I don't see how lecturing the Common Sense audience will have any effect.
From the outset this article impressed me as being wreck-less fear mongering. We have been subjected to so much drivel of this sort I don’t see the point in lending any credibility to it by taking it seriously. The media have only themselves to blame. Picking it apart piece by boring piece is simply a waste of time.
"Useless" information still informs. First it must be identified as useless. I suppose we should be grateful to those supplying useless information for being willing to stand up and be so identified. Discussion in a free society should be revered.
It's circulating among sex workers. Many more people than we may be aware avail themselves of sex workers (prostitutes). We also have a tragic human trafficking operation going on across the nation thanks to the Biden administration and the importation of millions of illegals. Many of those women and children are being forced into prostitution.
A man goes to a prostitute, picks up the disease, then takes it home to his wife/girlfriend/lover.
This disease may end up circulating primarily the way HIV did and not affect the majority of Americans. It is still troubling.
Skeptical indeed. Gay men are the target once again. The Marxists claim to embrace them but, as AZT demonstrated, they actually want them dead. And more vaccines for them-perfect! Why not throw in some remdesivir for treatment while they are at it? Bari’s choices for medical pieces show you can take someone out of NYT but you can’t fully take NYT out of that someone!
Yes, that NYT angle always seems to find a way to crop up in any article, doesn't it?
However, it is important to be aware of what is out there. It's curious and curiouser to discover Monkeypox was being discussed a few years ago by the usual suspects. I watched a video or two on it.
The video should make it clear to anyone their game plan, yet too many are under the zombie spell of Gates and Xi and Klaus. Gates pontificating about his concern for minorities - unless you happen to be one of his lab rats in Africa. Gates and China are the ones buying up our land as well - how long before people realize that their tentacles intend to choke every aspect of your life. Thanks for sharing❤️
Perhaps those outliers in society need feel validated as now they want us all dead. The deception, harms, and intent to divide and conquer are very personal and very real.
Ebola is Scurvy and Monkey pox is a adverse reaction to the covid vaccine that is now being mislabeled as something else to be concerned about. Vaccines cause adverse reactions immediately or 10, 20, 30 years later.
All this information is available to the public, (The Poison Needle by Eleanora McBean and Vaccine Epidemic by various authors, to name a few) but it's not a fun or entertaining topic so people continue to be woefully mislead. Until people start thinking critically about this topic most will continue to be harmed.
We are in an abusive relationship with our medical establishment, governments, and the psychopaths (philanthropaths) that continue to push this BS on the human population.
Connections are being made between ebola and scurvy. Vitamin C deficiency, also known as scurvy, is characteristic of hemorrhaging, and immune dysfunction. Unexplained hemorrhaging, bleeding or bruising is a symptom of ebola.
Read the link I shared above. Ebola in the early stages can be treated like scurvy and never get to the unexplained hemorrhaging. If there is one thing we learned from Covid, which we may not have been privy to before, is they will suppress treatments to promote a vaccine as the save all and they will let people die as a result. The vaccine is the objective and anything that gets in that way will be maligned. So allowing people to suffer with Ebola to the point of unexplained hemorrhaging and bleeding saying that there is nothing they can do but vaccinate is a LIE! Treat it like scurvy and never get to that point. Additionally, some would argue the contagious point. I will see what else I can find on that note. Again, I am listening to videos on the topic and they are long. I will post what I find with time stamps.
Yes Lori the preferred treatment is the one that makes the most money. Injury or death is part of the business. Damages paid out by pharma are nothing compared to the billions they make. The next moneymaker will be monkeypox.
I do agree with your last sentence. However with scurvy the slightest touch will cause bruising. Internal bleeding will cause your skin to look splotchy.
No sarcasm. Many naturopathic doctors have spoken about this. I am trying to find some other references to share other than long videos. Here is one article talking about how Ebola is a scurvy like illness. Very similar symptoms in both diseases. Instead of a vaccine for Ebola, perhaps vitamin c would help since it helps with scurvy.
At first heterosexuals were all relieved we weren’t at risk for AIDS, until…..
I don’t like to dwell in alarmism either, but I do remember AIDS vividly. And the stories of how it inevitably jumped to heterosexuals. Whether this is actually likely with monkey pox won’t matter if the story gets out it can.
Being a “reader” I have to put a plug in for “and the band played on” an exhaustive, well researched book on the AIDS epidemic. The press tried to characterize it as an indictment of the Reagan administration (big surprise!! Some things never change!!). But it was really an indictment of almost everyone/and every group involved.
If you go back and read some of the articles from the 80s discussing HIV, you'll see Tony getting skewered by the Gay folks, but back then, they didn't have the voice they do today, so nobody paid attention to the comments criticizing the grandstanding narcissist back then.
It astonishes me that the LGB community won't loudly recall who did what back then. I guess supporting the Dem agenda is more important than reminding everyone how harmful Fauci was to their community at that time. He shouldn't get a pass.
I recall the predictions for HIV/AIDS in the 1980's. NIH and CDC were predicting it would spread through the population the way Herpes had with millions infected.
We know they were wrong because HIV is primarily spread through blood and semen. It was particularly infectious for homosexual men because of their practice of anal sex.
HIV was confined to gay men in the U.S. because that was the population where it was introduced, not because it infects only that population. In Africa it has been a terrible plague for both sexes, and heterosexuals as well as homosexuals. For a while it looked like it might largely depopulate the continent.
But heterosexuals weren’t really at risk, not like gay men. It’s especially difficult for a man to get hiv from a woman. The threat was really overblown.
It’s only a matter of time until it crosses over to non-gay members of society. There are, among the gay community, bi-sexuals that bonk women. And there are women that bonk strangers and are married or have children. We need to get a handle on this so when it hits the non-gay community, we don’t have thousands of cases hit all at once and overwhelm the system.
We don’t know how transmissible it is. We don’t know the risk to children and pregnant women. Since we don’t know much about it, it is best to forewarn people.
The primary warning necessary at this point--if it would be heeded--is to stop having sex with random strangers, to stop having sex if you have sores on your body, to stop having sex with people who have sores on their bodies.
How do you work around a known problem of independent people ignoring a warning given in their own best interest? A human is a human regardless of sex, not a snake or a bird. No one is asking anyone to change species - they're just being asked to abstain for a bit to protect themselves and possibly others.
I understand what you are saying, but young people like to bonk. It’s in their nature.
A work around would be educating them on the dangers but also making vaccines and tests available to them before they go to the party. Perhaps having health care providers right there at their parties, like the scheduled one this article talked about, to set up appointments to be tested after the party or to maybe health care providers could be on site to do quick exams for the pustules before they can enter the party. There are any number of ways to make their unsafe behavior a little safer for others.
I disagree. Recent history has given us all a very expensive lesson in passing out "scary info" to a population that is largely poorly educated, scientifically illiterate, innumerate, and highly vulnerable to manipulation by a corrupt, untrustworthy media (see current article). NOTHING about Monkeypox justifies taking the extreme risks you are proposing
I agree, Naomi. Their clumsy coordination on these stories is laughably obvious. My subjective observations are that they are already finding it harder going--at least I hope so. My personal strategy is just to keep calling attention to the MSM's perfidy whenever I can. What would be enormously helpful would be YOUNG influencers really getting interested in calling attention to all this deception, and reclaiming sanity for the world they are inheriting
Yes, I agree--they were very often the most easily deceived and confused, primarily because their acculturation and value system blinded them to their own ignorance and gullibility. They are also the group most HIGHLY invested in believing anything fed to them by the MSM.
This may be a way to scare parents into vaccinating their children against monkeypox. It seems many parents are resisting having their young children and babies vaccinated against COVID.
The timing is amazingly convenient.
You are correct about it crossing into the general population. However, I don't think the crossover will become an epidemic into the general population because it should follow the same course HIV took and we know it didn't decimate the general population as the NIH originally projected.
This isn’t transmitted by sex, though, or blood or semen. HIV was actually limited by the difficulty of transmission. Monkeypox can be transmitted by something as simple as using a towel that someone wiped their infected hands on or laying on a bedspread that a hotel didn’t wash after one guest left. Those aren’t sex acts. They are just common acts that no one thinks about. Children aren’t immune from hugging a relative that has it or sitting in a relative’s lap and reading a story. Close contact helps it spread.
It’s entirely different. Parents, when the smallpox vaccine came out, made sure their children got the vaccine. Mostly. This doesn’t have anything to do with the Covid vaccine. Parents should research both. They will see that Covid was never a risk for most children, so the vaccine was unnecessary, but that monkeypox is a risk so a vaccine would be good. Even though, at this point, I don’t see the CDC pushing to get children vaccinated against monkeypox.
Not yet but it's coming. Wait...they will find one child who gets it, (remember Ryan White during the AIDS episode)?, and then the media will hype parents into a state of terror.
Well. I got the smallpox vaccine. It protects me from monkeypox and I didn’t die from it. Some vaccines are good. Some aren’t necessary. If the parent doesn’t care enough to research them or the potential risks cf infection for their children, what can I say.
My daughter was a nurse at Baylor University Hospital in Dallas when that Ebola patient came in. He was, I think, at Presbyterian close by. She knew a nurse who got infected but her case was mild. It's a scary virus, as are all the hemorrhagic viruses. There have been warnings recently about Marburg being on the loose, another hemorrhagic virus.
Hemorrhagic viruses are exactly what Dr. Li Meng Yan, a virologist who escaped from China, urgently warned would be the next bio attack due to the joint research between US and China of which she knew firsthand from Wuhan.
As COVID was waning or the new variants were not as lethal there were reports of a hemorrhagic virus beginning to circulate. I suspected this was going to be the new source of fear porn. It may still be but looks like Monkeypox virus is the current one.
I was alarmed when my daughter came home with a letter saying one of her classmates (2nd grade iirc) had been exposed to one of the ebola cases here in DFW. But that virus kills most people it infects. Monkey pox kills, so far, no one in the US. The first seems more reasonable to cause alarm than the second.
Children and pregnant women are the risk groups for monkeypox. Those are the groups most likely to die once they have an infection. Weighing risks, such as how transmissible a disease is, what groups have the most severe outcomes, long term health problems, etc, is the most important thing. A cautious approach and personal research is much better than alarm in any case. But, yes. I would hit google and the library if I received a letter like you did.
Ah, yes, it only took three or four years for the kind and understanding Pres. Ronald Reagan to mention the word AIDS, true courage; I guess he didn’t think they were his constituents!
It sure is. But it was generally isolated at the time. To be sure the crisis escalated and became an extremely serious public health issue by the late '80s but 1985 was not late to the party.
The most challenging part of this article is that trust in public (and private) health officials was so badly eroded during covid. It’s difficult to know who to trust and what to believe when the last ‘outbreak’ saw so many health professionals in hot water (to put it mildly) for having any difference of opinion.
Public health squandered 100 years of trust on COVID. Lying to citizens. Getting caught. Lying more. Insisting that gatherings must be avoided. Then insisting that BLM gatherings must be attended. Shutting down schools for over a year. But refusing to shut down gay bath houses now.
My kids (teens) will never trust public health people again. Neither will I. It will take at least 2 generations to rebuild that trust. Monkeypox is minor and will, in all probability, remain confined to the promiscuous gay subculture. But God help us if we get a real pandemic (something on the level of smallpox) in those 2 generations.
We are all over saturated with all the Covid lies, state of “emergency” extended again and again so they can approve and force on us shitty emergency vaccines and drugs that get you sick again and again (LOL Fauci), and of course pharma propaganda and fear mongering. Testing, asymptomatic transmission, vaccine, isolation, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Our health authorities became a joke and it is their doing. Our patience with them is running VERY thin.
Safe to say our patience has completely run whatever course it may have possessed. Of course there are those still infected with CFS - Covid Fear Syndrome. This syndrome may be incurable.
And in case anyone in major cities, such as NYC, may be recovering from CFS, there is a new public service announcement (PSA) about nuclear attack. Charming. There are links on the Internet.
Yes this came down last week. More use of nonsensical fear mongering to divide and deceive. Upon reading this PSA we discover the logical fallacies imparted here impart no useful knowledge as to how perhaps to survive nuclear attack. More epic senselessness.
I had them too. That was for a nuclear bomb attack. All larger apartment buildings had designated bomb shelters and were marked with the nuclear symbol placard.
Mr. McNeil seems more concerned with the backlash, or should I say disgust likely to be directed at the alphabet crowd than the actual threat to the population at large. If it "keeps spreading and even kills some children or pregnant women” I suspect he’s on to something. Just as with AIDs, it’s clear how Monkeypox spreads and a simple behavioral modification could reduce it’s spread until vaccines can be ramped up for those who can’t resist excess promiscuity.
While Mr. McNeil clearly laments the somewhat muted response to Monkeypox we’ve witnessed so far, he shouldn’t be surprised because old Joe and the democrats control the federal government. I suspect that self-imposed silence will all change when Republicans take over the House in November. That’s when the shrill, gender fluid activists and their media toadies will begin accusing them of killing the “queers” just like they did to Reagan during the AIDS “epidemic”.
It seems to me that, unless this strain is a result of the same gain-of-function research that gave us the Covid pandemic, it is most likely to remain primarily a sexually transmitted disease.
The greater the affected number people infected, the greater the opportunities for random variations to emerge that can spread into other potential populations or modes of transmission . This is especially true of infections with more mild symptoms. When a communicable illness largely “kills the host” (like HIV), the spread is much more restrained.
I won’t lose it over this, especially if the at-risk community is complacent about it.
Maybe we just need to rush a vaccine development and get all our 4 year olds vaccinated before the next election??
From the description it sounds like the disease is spread from contact with the pustules so no bodily fluids necessary. That puts healthcare workers at risk. Thankfully they're wearing masks and gloves pretty much all the time now since covid.
I'm assuming it's spreading more among promiscuous people because of their bare-body contact with so many anonymous people in a short span of time.
Well, monkey pox is no AIDS. It’s not very lethal. There have been outbreaks in the west before and they just don’t result in death. Look it up if you can find an unbiased source. This article is classic fear porn and I’m shocked it’s published here!
But agree with you the way to stop this is to cut out sex parties. Monkey pox sounds gross, even if it’s not lethal here in the west.
What concerns me is the possibility that this virus has been...tampered with. We already know that there are labs engaging in gain of function research---just a fancier way of saying "tampering with microbes to make them more deadly."
I recently read that the ‘famous’ Wuhan Lab was working with monkey pox a few years ago. Wish I could reference that news but I think it was on the TV news.
To be fair, the author does say there have been no deaths in the West. (Also, I think the reason he doesn't say "gay people should stop having promiscuous sex" is because the article is about his suggested government response, not what people should do with their lives. I think the personal responsibility part goes without saying, from his perspective.)
The truth is that out of half a dozen or so outbreaks in the west over the last ten years or so, no one has died. That’s an important thing to mention yet he’s implying that people WILL die.
I’m sick to death of these alarmist pieces that don’t present all of the actual information in favor of raising the fear. Without the fear is there anything to write about?
“Since may, about a thousand party boys got a nasty infection through sexual contact that goes away after two weeks, leaving a scar maybe but otherwise they recover fine” isn’t much of a story.
I don't see that he thinks "personal responsibility goes without saying" at all. I think he's afraid to say it. To a NYT Leftist progressive, the idea of personal responsibility is essentially unthinkable. And that's what he is: a Leftist progressive whose solution to everything begins with government. Remember, Dr. McNeil did fine at the Times for 35 years, only kicked to the curb when he accidently ran afoul of a modern shibboleth he likely didn't even know existed. Dr. McNeil is likely to the Left of Bari at this point, and despite having been voted off the island, it doesn't appear he's learned anything about the dangers of his own progressive tribe.
But AIDS hit American kids, and that didn't seem to affect our acceptance of the gay lifestyle. Maybe you mean if it hits American kids in larger numbers?
AIDS hit two groups of kids: 1) the children of women who got AIDS (either from bi-sexual partners or through drug use), and 2) kids with hemophilia (who got AIDS from contaminated clotting factor).
Neither of those groups is "that could be my kid" for most Americans. People pitied the children who were affected, but the risk was very, very low for the average American kid.
If my oldest son had been born a few years earlier, he would have been in that second group, but by the time his hemophilia B was discovered, blood products were carefully screened. I feel like we dodged a bullet.
You are great with facts, Celia. But we live in a world where facts don’t matter. Whatever is on Twitter or Tiktok matters. I worry about the “narrative”.
That is always the thing that is most worrisome. When we have an administration telling us that inflation is good, it's clear that it doesn't matter what the facts are, only how they can spin those facts.
Bari put it best in her resignation letter: "Twitter has become the de-facto editor of the New York Times". That applies to essentially every major media outlet in America today (incl FoxNews).
Forget "if it bleeds it leads". The new motto is, "if it clicks it leads".
McNeil got cancelled by the extreme left. To read his own story about how he was abused is compelling.
Yet for some reason he seems incapable of taking as hard a look at the left and the principles underpinning it as he does in his deep dives into health and science issues.
You’d think a life changing event would result in a top down reassessment of the political world he associated with, but that’s clearly not the case.
He still has the same harsh leftist views - somehow he’s able to separate them without understanding how the views are interconnected.
The cheap shot about Clarence Thomas was completely unnecessary to his story, yet he just can’t help himself. It undermines his credibility in general and the credibility of his reporting.
He's like a Californian who gets fed up with the wacko and damaging policies of his state, moves to Austin, and then votes for the same policies all over again.
It’s funny that you say that. I find him to be a very hard left winger. Bari is too. They are older leftists, so they aren’t as extreme, which is why they got cancelled at The NY Times. The Times, like any other organization has t9 rotate the stock, and so the younger people in the news room, like that crazy wacko Nikole Hannah-Jones are really off the wall intolerant.
I particularly like how they say that the words and thoughts of colleagues and ope-ed guests makes them feel “unsafe”, as if these opposing ideas will pick up an axe and bludgeon them.
Orgs like the Times who sacrifice individuals like Weiss, McNeil and Bennet are literally sick - they are captive to the more activist extreme leftists coming up. They don’t reliE they are giving up control of their own organizations to the crazies of the world.
They should take the Netflix approach - we are going to feature a broad base of thought and opinion and if you don’t like it, feel free to leave. Believe me, there would be a long line around the block of the NYT building for replacement applicants.
The funny thing is, the outlets were already destructively liberal. The problem is to these crazies, not destructive enough, fast enough.
I was misled by Bari subscribing for a year. The features that other people write on her site and the few that she does are rip roaring liberal.
The shame of it all is that people like Bari, Bennet and McNeil never took up the cudgel to make their liberal co-religionists are dangerous to their own movements. If I were chased from my dream job, I’d do that. You wouldn’t be able to shut me up about the Hannah-Joneses and the squads of the world and the danger they pose,to their own liberal move,e t.
But I guess Bari recognized that the money scraped from 220,000 non crazy liberals is too much to risk.
So she keeps churning out the works of hard left but not extremist liberals and cashes her checks.
So, are we following the science here? Authorities had no problem forcing schools, businesses, and churches to close during COVID, but they are reluctant to run afoul of the gay community by closing the places where monkeypox is super-spreading.
Because it is intentional just like the rest of all this. The strength of these kleptocrats, if there is one, is knowing how to engage in using outliers to work both ends against the middle. They engage in accusing anyone questioning the narrative as racist, sexist, anti-gay, etc. Common Sense in 2022 has devolved into divisive rhetoric as old as human kind. It gets us nowhere but is attractive to many.
It says a lot about the moral core of the West, and of the medical industry in particular, that after lockdowns, mask mandates and forced vaccinations, stopping gay sex orgies or even criticizing promiscuous sex is too much.
I don't blame the "gay lifestyle" or anything like that, I blame our culture's worship of sexual pleasure and our refusal to put boundaries on sexual indulgence.
Omg, THIS!!! The cultural message is that our overarching purpose in life is to cater to our genitalia. Every day we move closer to the unintentional prophecy of Idiocracy.
When I read Brave New World in college, I and the other students didn't understand its satirical portrayal of shallow and dehumanizing sex. It had already become normalized in movies and media.
Anthony, right on the money! Once you go down the road of believing that the purpose of society is maximal individual pleasure, it becomes impossible to set any boundaries around sexual behavior.
In fact, if "maximal individual autonomy" is the purpose of your society, it's actually impossible to define any shared moral or ethical standards, or any form of "the common good" at all, because any rule you define may someone's personal pleasure and autonomy, so the rule must fall.
This is precisely what Malcolm Clarke and other members of the British LGB Alliance have been saying since mid-May and were pilloried as alarmist. One of Clarke's friends ended up in hospital with it (the friend's partner had stopped off for a quickie in the park and brought home something extra). Clarke wrote on twitter that the illness was more serious than the press and WHO were saying.
The figures I saw back in June was that it was almost exclusively gay or bisexual men. There is also this huge reluctance to stigmatize that community or indeed to put an end to hugely profitable businesses. It also could spread to other parts of the community.
The worry is that it does go out further into the community but thus far in the UK, it seems to be confined to this particular community and the reluctance to raise the alarm continues.
No real surprise there as Britain has form for sweeping things under the carpet when they don't want to raise tensions between communities (Telford and Rochdale stand out).
I find it depressingly hypocritical that people who refused Covid vaccinations were decried as "granny murderers," but no one will be allowed to say that people with sores on their bodies might want to avoid having sex until they are confirmed free of monkeypox.
The psy-ops with COVID was awful, I agree. They basically terrified people and the long term consequences remain ongoing. Public Health bodies do seem to be addicted to gross scare-mongering (currently have this about the heat in the UK -- where I am it is 84F and no humidity)
The problem is that many of the super-spreaders for monkeypox might not realise they have it as it can be mild. I know some of the suggestions were to transform the various adult entertainment venues into vaccine centres etc. The LGB A want the venues shut down for a short period. The Powers that Be did not want to stigmatize and it has been allowed to spread.
Anyone who is over 42 will probably have been vaccinated against smallpox and therefore immune.
According to CDC routine smallpox vaccinations ceased in 1972 so probably anyone 50+ has been vaccinated. I am over 42 and have not been vaccinated against smallpox - this article prompted me to dig up my childhood vaccination records (thankfully my mom recorded this stuff in my baby book - hahaha).
the vaccines do not lat forever , i caught whopping cough 8 years ago and had the vaccine as a child , broke 2 ribs i was coughing so much . sure hope the other vaccines last
I was tremendously grateful that my children had all had chicken pox before the vaccine became required. As we learned with the whooping cough resurgence, vaccine immunity does not always last. And chicken pox is far, far worse when you get it when you're older. I didn't get it until I was 12, and I was sick for 2 weeks. I knew someone who got it in his 20s and was out of commission for a month. Whereas my daughter got it as a toddler and was well again in less than a week.
I predict that at some point we will have a severe chicken pox outbreak among 30-something that will kill FAR more people than chicken pox used to when it was an ordinary childhood disease (40 people, nationwide, per year BTW).
The one thing that could reasonably link Roe in this article is the effect of Roe on sexual behavior. Roe added unnecessary fuel to the fire of promiscuity that had begun with the baby boomers who enjoyed the great lifestyle in postwar America. The use of drugs exploded, the free sex movement developed and people, knowing they could get a pregnancy removed as easy as a mole on your face, and sex became a far more casual experience. Just another search for a “feeling” like the high from pot or mushrooms.
McNeil talks about anonymous multiple sex partners as if it’s as benign as buying a quart of milk at the supermarket. He suggests that people pause while they resolve this health problem. Once that’s done, well people, it’s back to all the fun and games.
McNeil still writes like a true Timesman - he makes sure NOT to protect the facts from a far left perspective. And while he’s at it, take a gratuitous smack at a conservative.
Thank you to Donald McNeil for writing this article and to Bari Weiss for publishing it. I hope to see your byline in many future medical/scientific stories on this site.
Did I miss it, or did the author discuss whether the virus passes through blood contact, making recipients of blood transfusions and IV drug users at risk? That's when AIDs jumped out of the gay population.
He did not address that. But mentioned that other monkeypox variants are more easily spread in respiratory droplets - this variant not so much. Monkeypox is not a bloodborne pathogen (HIV, HPV-B & HPV-C). It appears to be mostly spread by contact with pustules or items that touched the pustules (bedding, towels).
Thank you for the article. Back in the 70's and early 80's I worked in a hospital blood bank. It still amazes me how cavalier we all were handling blood and blood products back then. It was only when the hospital had patients with HIV that was the game changer. We treated every blood sample as if it were infected.
You're welcome! My mother-in-law worked in a blood bank too. I started working in a lab in 1997 and she made sure to tell me not to mouth-pipette (luckily that's not a thing anymore). Ah yes, universal precautions - we still have those annual bloodborne pathogen training.
What really bothers me about this article is that there is SO LITTLE MENTION of using meds. I recognize supposedly the FDA is holding out. Does that seem off to anyone? Here we are begging for vax production but not demanding the FDA release the meds?! It's like someone (insert Pharma) want more vaccines. How convenient. It's just like Pharma didn't want us taking cheap repurposed meds for covid. It's so disgusting how our powers at be have let us down..again.
The "Fog of War" mentioned shall persist. Join me in a little Reality Check. At the beginning, we were told that the lockdown would "Only last fifteen days", that a vaccine was being developed at warp speed, that 'cutting red tape' was shortening the timeline and that all previous safety measures were being faithfully obeyed, and the the immunity that these rapid-fire vaccines produced would last the vaccinated a lifetime. That's what we were promised.
What the health system delivered was: (1) Fifteen days??? Don't get me started (2) Previous safety measures? Tossed aside, selling the EUA as political cover (3) Immunity? Less than a year, with or without boosters. Vaccine rollout in January, by November overseas governmental authorities were already warning their populations that none of the inoculations could protect against Omicron.
All of that, but there's more. Censorship by search engines, social media, video platforms of early treatments that already had been proven to be effective months BEFORE the vaccines would be rolled out. Fared/Tyson protocol had been proven the first spring, tens of thousand of lives might have been saved had the rest of us been permitted to even learn of them. Those precious few who HAD heard? Sorry, your hospital system or pharmacy refused to fill the prescription.
All of this, months BEFORE the first vaccine got injected into the first arm of the general public.
What we SHOULD be talking about but most of us WON'T is the epic failure: why this massive "refusal to treat" by the health care establishment in the the midst of a pandemic when the public was most in need of them?
The health authorities in America have blood on their hands. Why should any of us believe the next pandemic will be handled any better?
Also on this topic is the Pfizer fraud that has been uncovered by those reading the Pfizer documents that have been released. Naomi Wolf has assembled a team of volunteers made up of doctors, lawyers, scientists, and other experts in their fields to comb through the Pfizer documents and what they have found is FRAUD. The most obvious fraud is vaccinating the placebo group, or removing people from the trial if they suffered an adverse reaction, or losing track of study participants entirely, but it's worse than that. Pfizer knew their product was harmful and ineffective before this product was rolled out to the public. It's well documented.
Absolutely AGREE! The drug companies knew before even one person was injected in January 2021 that those shots did not prevent infection or transmission. They also knew how harmful they were but went ahead anyway because the public was begging for it. Begging for it! Because the media feared them into begging for it.
This was and is the sickest, most diabolical plan to mass vaccinated a global population with an experimental gene therapy with no long term safety studies and the ramifications of it are evident and will be far into the future.
People are ignoring all the young who are dying suddenly as the media calls it SADS (Sudden Adult Death Syndrome). Who is buying this BS? The same people that think Monkey Pox is a thing and not just an adverse reaction to the shot.
Notes for My Corona Investigative Committee Interview
"Since the beginning of this manufactured crisis, the Berlin Corona Investigative Committee has been conducting the exploratory work that I would have expected every government and so-called public health organization to have undertaken from the outset.
The fact that this did not occur was one of the first signs that COVID represented a departure from all prior pandemic protocols, but the question I kept asking myself is, Why?
Here are some of the permutations of that question I started asking beginning in early 2020 and continuing through the present-day:"
Clarence Thomas’s decision has nothing whatsoever to do with this of course. Medico-political mumbo jumbo written to deceive. What we have grown to expect from rags like the NYT.
I would appreciate, if not a verbatim quote of Thomas' decision, at least a link to it or a capsule summary. The oblique reference without explanation leaves an impression that I suspect is not honest or accurate.
Why don’t you research it yourself? In the aftermath of the Dobbs decision there was hysteria about how Thomas had written something about how other prior SCOTUS decisions were poorly reasoned as was Roe. But in the Dobbs decision it was stated that the decision didn’t extrapolate.
So the MSM of course claimed, They’re coming for gay marriage next!!
I did. There still should have been a link to it.
NCMaureen why do you think it’s illogical to extrapolate, “They’re coming for gay marriage next!” When Justice Thomas says: “in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [contraception], Lawrence [sexual acts], and Obergefell [same-sex marriage].”
Just me: Reread the quote. Thomas's issue is the theory substantive due process, not contraception et al.
Interracial marriage is based on “…the theory substantive due process,…”.
In the wake of Griswold, the Court expanded substantive due process jurisprudence to protect a panoply of liberties, including the right of interracial couples to marry (1967),
https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/interpretation/amendment-xiv/clauses/701
But it no longer requires substantive due process to justify its existence.
In the alternative, assuming no laws preventing racial discrimination exist (which of course they do) Thomas would argue that the Privileges and Immunities clause of the 14th would still support a prohibition on anti-miscegenation laws.
@Just me: Just like abortion was not made illegal by Dobbs; it was simply sent back to the states to decide, Thomas opines that same-sex marriage should also be decided by the states. It is existentially important for liberty and the Constitution that powers that do not belong to the federal government should be wrested away from Washington and restored to the states.
Jan, by taking away a right that was guaranteed by the federal government, essentially makes it illegal in other jurisdictions. You can play the silly word game if you like, but essentially it is taking a right away: for the first time in America’s history!
Two things: 1. Rights are not gifts from government. Rights precede it and can neither be granted nor taken away by government. Even the late RBG admitted that the Roe v Wade decision was not properly derived from the Constitution. By contrast, the Bill of Rights was not just dreamed up by some justices. Those rights were established by amending the Constitution. 2. The Constitution is not a silly word game. The 10th Amendment reinforces that the federal government is supposed to have limited powers: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people." Consequently, California, New York, or any other state whose legislature so decides, can codify abortion rights in any way it wants. New York codified abortion rights three years before Roe v Wade and will continue to allow it after it has been struck down, https://www.ny.gov/programs/abortion-new-york-state-know-your-rights
It would take cases brought before the court, have any been brought on gay marriage or contraception?
Thomas just signaled to every homophobe in America that he would like to hear a case and is asking them, please bring one forward.
Because Thomas is just one justice. No other justice agreed with him.
That predisposes the other conservative justices won’t agree with him; that’s a bridge too far!
just Me it sucks so bad here I will buy you a first class ticket to any workers paradise you choose . What say you? You want Russia , China or North Korea , you would be so happy there no complaints
Jerry, I’m confident that our forefathers who penned the Constitution of the United States decided that when they were writing it, the First Amendment meant: no badmouthing the government, particularly the Supreme Court. I mean, what other explanation could there be for your comment?
no what i'm saying if things are so bad for you here I'm giving you a ticket out to some workers paradise where you will be happy , no Thomas no Trump just dicktaters , your kind of people . No one to blame for your failures there
By the time we get to the cowardly tarring of Thomas’s decision without a link we are already feeling so serially abused as readers by having taken any of his fear mongering seriously we just shrug and note the source.
It’s a good word when we use it accurately. Has historic significance.
Tarring a black justice? Hmmm …
Same here lol!
I read the decision on the link below. As I read it (disclaimer: I’m an engineer, not a lawyer), Justice Thomas does argue that any court decisions, like gat marriage, substantively based on the 14th Amendment) could (I read “should”) be revisited.
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22067323-dobbs-v-jackson-womens-health-organization-clarence-thomas-concurrence
I think that's a fair reading of Thomas' opinion. However, it should be noted that there are probably eight justices opposed to that, four said so in their Dobbs opinions, I assume the three Dobbs dissenters would also be opposed and the chief justice wouldn't want to deal with such a controversial issue. Much of the media has tried to stir up panic over this, both to get clicks and to promote pro-abortion activism. I think the chance of gay rights, gay marriage or interracial marriage being banned is negligible.
I don't think that's what Thomas meant. I think he was pointing out that many of these "rights" we now take for granted are based on some of the same flimsy legal reasoning that Roe was, and that it would be better not to assume that those "rights" are on solid ground.
Exactly. And Obergfell is one of those decisions. Like Roe, if overturned, state legislatures could easily permit same-sex marriage via statute. Thomas is trying to make the Constitution and constitutional jurisprudence make sense. That's all. He's not anti-gay.
Yes, from what I read Thomas wasn't arguing that gay marriage should be revisited to be made illegal again, he was pointing out that Obergefell's reliance on the Fourteenth Amendment and the made-up judicial doctrine of "substantive due process" is flimsy Constitutional grounding, whereas a stronger argument might be made from elsewhere, like from the "privileges and immunities clause."
Leah, Thomas did indeed state that same-sex marriage should be revisited.
“in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [contraception], Lawrence [sexual acts], and Obergefell [same-sex marriage].”
And I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume Thomas is a homophobe!
“has been a reliable vote against LGBTQ rights. He dissented from its pro-LGBTQ rulings in 1996’s Romer v. Evans, which struck down an antigay state constitutional amendment in Colorado; 2013’s Windsor v. U.S., which struck down the main part of the Defense of Marriage Act, and Hollingsworth v. Perry, which let stand a lower court ruling invalidating California’s Proposition 8, an anti-marriage equality ballot measure; and 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. In his dissent in Obergefell, he wrote, “In the American legal tradition, liberty has long been understood as individual freedom from governmental action, not as a right to a particular governmental entitlement” — marriage being that “entitlement.”
He joined in the court’s 2018 decision vacating the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s finding that a baker illegally discriminated against a gay couple by refusing to create a wedding cake for them. However, he wanted the decision to go further and expressed concern about whether marriage equality could be used to stamp out freedom of speech and religion.”
https://www.advocate.com/news/2019/10/07/homophobic-justice-clarence-thomas-ill-may-miss-lgbtq-rights-cases
https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/justice-thomas-compares-number-of-abortions-to-civil-war-deaths-in-concurrence-identifying-other-landmark-cases-to-overturn-after-roe/
Dobbs was about the baby, there are no innocent victims in gay marriage or any of the other issues Thomas refers to. It is the human being killed in utero that makes abortion a unique problem of conflict between right to choose, privacy and another right to life.
Here's a quote from the Dobbs opinion:
But we have stated unequivocally that “[n]othing in this opinion should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” Supra, at 66. We have also explained why that is so: rights regarding contraception and same-sex relationships are inherently different from the right to abortion because the latter (as we have stressed) uniquely involves what Roe and Casey termed “potential life.” Roe
Slip at 71
And then Justice Thomas says:
“in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [contraception], Lawrence [sexual acts], and Obergefell [same-sex marriage].”
Yes, Thomas rejects substantive due process and has for pretty much his entire career. Don't confuse that with the notion that he supports prohibiting contraception et al.
Sure. I'm a big fan of Justice Brandeis, who said that it is sometimes more important that a thing be DECIDED than it be decided RIGHT. Having said that, though, for certain Roe v. Wade should have been revisited because its effects reached far into the future and tainted the Court. It wasn't just a decided case, then over. A terrible precedent.
I understand Justice Thomas' desire to get things right all down the line, but am not sure whether revisiting other decisions is the best thing. As Johnny 5 said, "Need input."
If he said "could," why did you read "should"?
Thomas, Thomas did indeed use the word should!
“in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [contraception], Lawrence [sexual acts], and Obergefell [same-sex marriage].”
https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/justice-thomas-compares-number-of-abortions-to-civil-war-deaths-in-concurrence-identifying-other-landmark-cases-to-overturn-after-roe/
That’s because those cases are not within the purview of the court to be decided.
“Gay” not “gat”, obviously.
Gat it. I mean got it. Ha ha. We all do that.
🙏
Dobbs Thomas Concurrence.... there are your search terms. Its all of about ten pages long. Knock yourself out.
Your suspicion is well grounded...
McNeil's single line about the Dobbs concurrence is an unfortunate distraction in an otherwise well-written and informative piece. It was completely unnecessary, didn't even make the point it was trying to make, and showed that McNeil did not understand what Thomas was saying in his concurrence (or that Thomas has been making those points in solo concurrences or dissents for about 20 years now).
Thanks for calling it what it was. Maybe it’s just splitting hairs but it annoys me that MSM keeps calling it “Thomas’s decision”. Alito wrote the majority opinion and Thomas just wrote a concurrence.
Apologies but I cannot regard this as an informative piece. Well-written, yes, the writer is skillful, but.... These lines earlier are a dead giveaway among others: "I blame several factors: shortages of vaccines and tests". Really, after Covid, and the real abiding concerns about vaccines and tests? There are other more complete and accurate pieces on Monkey Pox free of the amateur and fear mongering aspects of this.
Very well put. it could've been written:
1) there is a virus that originated in Africa called Monkeypox, even though it has a rodent vector.
2) it is related to smallpox, but far, far less dangerous. There is no measurable mortality, and the primary complaint is localized lesion pain
3) it spreads by contact, and so associated with sexual activity that is should properly be referred to as a STD.
4) The affected groups are all well-aware of the pathogen, how it spreads, and what can be done about it.
5) There is no need for the general public to become concerned.
Not exactly what the self-interested Mr. McNeil wrote, is it?
Good catch, particularly the "shortage of tests." Really? How would you test for Monkeypox BEFORE there is any physical evidence? Test the entire population? Set up road blocks?
Once the postules erupt why test? The physical evidence would be conclusive.
As far as vaccines go, if there is no immediate need to vaccinate for a particular disease why would any sane government go to the expense to stockpile massive doses of vaccine?
It’s another scam maybe the Dems want a lockdown again especially in the BG states
Yes, exactly. It was a gratuitous slur.
McNeil probably harbors hopes of his cocktail parties returning. It's a shame but he is overall a credible science reporter, and this is really the first monkeypox article I've taken remotely seriously. I have just assumed the MSM ones are basically pharma-funded psyops.
That wasn't the impression I got from his article. He had to throw in his bonafide liberal card by slurring Justice Thomas. It if hadn't been Thomas it would have been Trump. It's a mindset.
I call it out when I see it but I also realize where it comes from. It is so intrinsically wired into his being that he can't help himself. If Bari is editing she won't notice it either because her inclination goes that way too.
We have to call it out but we also have to be gentle about it.
Mr. McNeil is nearly a man without a country. He lost his prestigious position at the NYT. We need to overlook some of his innate prejudices.
I would say it's more about hoping some lefties will take the rest of his piece seriously as long as he meets his Orange Man Bad quota (or in this case, Clarence Thomas).
It's political in-group signaling to try to avoid being written off as a "right wing post" by people who like their echo chambers good and airtight.
"He had to throw in his bonafide liberal card by slurring Justice Thomas. It if hadn't been Thomas it would have been Trump. It's a mindset."
Absolutely. I call it "Trump Tourette's Syndrome."
We all have short memories. Remember "Bush Derangement Syndrome?" The Left became hysterical and nearly apoplectic about George W. Bush.
I remember it well. I knew people who would practically foam at the mouth at the mention of W.
Ah yes, those halcyon days when it was perfectly acceptable at all levels of society and media to relentlessly call a sitting President a complete idiot, the new Hitler, and a chimpanzee.
More like Derangement Syndrome
Naomi, when Donald wrote, “One need only read Clarence Thomas’s decision in Dobbs…” Justice Thomas was basically saying the court should consider looking into same-sex marriage!
“in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [contraception], Lawrence [sexual acts], and Obergefell [same-sex marriage].”
https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/justice-thomas-compares-number-of-abortions-to-civil-war-deaths-in-concurrence-identifying-other-landmark-cases-to-overturn-after-roe/
It's amusing how these liberal/Lefties manage to always inject a sling/slur/hit against their favorite righty trope. It's either Donald Trump or Clarence Thomas.
I am a lawyer and although it's clear from Justice Thomas's Opinion that he firmly rejects any legal basis for the use of "substantive due process" in deciding cases (he thinks the concept is imaginary), he only mentions Obergefell along with other cases that did rely on substantive due process as one of many cases that may need to be re-examined in the future. I don't see how it's a fair call to state that Thomas is therefore showing animus towards homosexuals.
Substantive due process has been a way for SCOTUS to enforce contentious social issues in an attempt to settle them. It hasn't worked with Roe obviously but I think gays right to marry is constitutional regardless. Our rights are as individuals not as members of a group. If individuals have a right to marry then likewise gays - they're 2 individuals each with that right.
OK, I will write this only once and hope you get it:
The issue is not whether you as an individual have any particular “right” but whether the US Constitution protects such right from being interfered with.
Pretty easy to understand though an amazing number of folks just don’t get it.
I ‘don’t get’ your comment. Are you saying the constitution protects a right for some but not others?
I guess you consider yourself the smartest guy in the room. Thanks for making me 😊
I am "saying" that the US Constitution protects as a US Constitutional right only those things - rights - that are stated in the Constitution. First Amendment rights - freedom from the government interfering with speech, religious affiliation and expression, press. Second Amendment - freedom from government interference with citizens bearing arms. 3rd Amendment - government may not quarter soldiers in citizens' homes. 4th - freedom from the government conducting searches and seizures. Etc. Etc. Etc.
In other words, unless a "right" is "enumerated" in the US Constitution, such right, while it may still exist, is not a US Constitutional right. Maybe a state statute or constitution protects such rights, but not the US Constitution. The US Constitution did not purport to determine all rights or to exclude "rights" in fact it specifically stated in the 9th Amendment that things not enumerated in US Constitution may still exist, but they are for the People (not Supreme Court Justices) to decide.
The way to understand this is to get your mind wrapped around the circumstances of the Colonies at the time of the Declaration of Independence -- you know, breaking away the lord and master known as the King of England, aristocracy and all that European crap. Tyranny of the King, not decision of the people.
So the US Constitution is written in a manner of providing negative rights, not, with a few exceptions, positive rights. The Constitution lays out the form of government the colonies will have once united, the powers and authorities the parts of government will have. That is the powers of the legislature, the courts, the executive - in each case of the federal government. That is the basis for each of the colonies accepting this form of government and Constitution and ratifying it.
Unless the US Constitution explicitly protects something, it is not a US Constitutionally protected right. You might still have such a right, but you need to look elsewhere for protection - state law, etc.
Is it conceivable that a gay couple could be authorized to marry under a state constitution? Of course. Under state law? Of course. Under the US Constitution? That was what Thomas was writing about. That the idea of "substantive due process" was invented (in the 1930s and really came into force in the 1950s and thereafter) and is not part of the US Constitution when written and not - other than by consulting a Ouija board - part of our form of republican government seems lost on folks.
And on your question of gay marriage, it is pretty much beyond dispute that homosexuality was a crime and homosexuals could not be married in any state in a sanctioned fashion at the time of the US Constitution. That was the frame of reference when the US Constitution was ratified. If you think that was the result merely of religious bigotry you need to do lots of reading on the history of human society. That we may think it acceptable today is beside the point of the US Constitution. That many do accept it is simply a basis for states to legalize it - as many have.
Get it? "Substantive Due Process" is a theory that is not found in the US Constitution itself (other than using a Ouija board to mush together the due process clause of the 4th and the equal protection clause of the 14th amendments) but indeed was used by many Supreme Court decisions - ones that strayed from the text of the Constitution but that fed the "feelings" of fairness of the then sitting Justices - it is not in the Constitution itself.
You may not like this; you may disagree with it. If so you are simply part of the debate on interpretation. If you think that Supreme Court Justices should sit as an ultimate decider of conflicting social theories and pressures, you have given that Court way too much power. You have divested the People of their right to decide what sort of society that will have. You will not like where it might lead to.
I would love a link to this so I could share; truly excellent comment
I really appreciate your lengthy and lucid explanation. I didn’t fully understand it before, and the majority of the public definitely doesn’t get it. This should be an educational oped every newspaper in the country. Sadly it won’t be.
I thought you were only going to say it once.
KJMAC: No, it hasn't. Substantive due process enforces NON-contentious social issues. It applies to non-enumerated rights deeply embedded in our history and traditions which are necessary for ordered liberty.
Abortion cannot pass that test because it fails both prongs. Contraception, same-sex marriage, and sodomy also fail. None is a traditional, recognized, historical norm. This does not mean they should be prohibited. Thomas simply suggests that the privileges and immunities clause is the better authority for supporting them.
Interesting comment. Would you care to provide some examples of these "non-enumerated rights deeply embedded" but that are protected by "substantive DP"??
Probably the most controversial is privacy. Not privacy itself because several Bill of Rights protections implicate such a right (search and seizure for example). The controversy is when it is expanded. Justice William O. Douglas, who once found a tree had standing to sue in a court of law, argued that the Bill of Rights casts penumbras (shadows). Emanating from those shadows are non-enumerated rights such a right to contraception, right to an abortion, etc.
Other rights that pass the substantive due process test mentioned above include things like the right to marry, right to have children (which is also argued negatively, the right not to have children).
Thomas objects to this doctrine of substantive due process for two reasons. First, he objects to the court creating non-enumerated rights that legislatures or the amendment process can achieve. He believes in the machinery of the democratic process, he recognizes sometimes the process will fail or produce bad results. He simply believes, imo correctly, that the Court is just as fallible but those decisions are much more likely to linger and fester.... see for example... Roe. Second, he thinks that the original intent of the privileges and immunities clause is the more appropriate foundation to support these rights currently based on substantive due process. P&I basically stand for equal protection. Originally, in Art. 4 of the constitution it worked the prohibit states from discriminating against citizens of other states. (Hmmm... CA bans state travel to MT?) The 14th created national citizenship. Art. 4 protected against "intra-state" discrimination but not "inter-state" discrimination. The 14th wiped out that distinction. It's been a long time since I studied this so I've probably erred in some of the above but the broad strokes I think are reasonably accurate. If not I'm sure I'll be corrected 😉
Now you are gonna make me go back and review P%& jurisprudence! Thanks (I mean that sincerely).
I agree that there are other legal ways to approach a right to gay marriage besides substantive due process. But it's like abortion in that there is still no easy way to craft a "solution" that fits completely.
I see marriage as an organic human institution based on family formation through procreation, that doesn't translate perfectly to the general idea that any two people can be married. I do want to see all 50 states support gay marriage even if not based on the Federal Constitution.
I think the ban on gay marriage was a blue law based on religious discrimination common in the past but not compatible with the concept of equal rights. It treats a person differently based on others’ opinion of that person. I see it as analogous to racial discrimination.
I can make a pretty strong case based on Plato or Aristotle opposing gay marriage. The idea that the only reason is religious animus is pretty absurd.
Here's a shot: The first goal of any society is to produce, raise, and acculturate the next generation to be capable of doing the same. Does treating same sex relationships the same as hetero-sexual relationships help achieve that goal? In an Aristotelean sense, does it promote the common good?
While I can see many ways that legally recognizing and subsidizing gay "marriages" promotes individual happiness (which is a good), I think it's very hard to make the claim that it is in the common good. And considering that we now have 25% of college girls self-identifying as LGBT, it should be pretty clear that such policies have had very nasty side affects that directly harm that "produce the next generation" goal.
I’d say yes, same sex couples can produce and raise the next generation. I think I saw on this very blog that Bari and Nellie are due to be parents soon.
You can see analogies all you want. Anyone can do that 4th grader analysis. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments were adopted after the Civil Way - which was about slavery (notwithstanding that the slave states thought it was "states' rights - yeah, rights to have slaves). The purpose of those amendments was to bar slavery (though it could still be OK for prisoners - read the 13th!), citizenship of born and naturalized persons (but no Indians until 1924), and the right to vote - for people of color or former slaves - no mention of homosexuality here). Those Civil War Amendment have little to do with all the expansion of "rights' the Supreme Court came up with under the Equal Protection banner. It is inventing rights out of whole cloth.
It may be on the basis of the 9th amendment.
Sheryl, Thomas stated that same-sex marriage should be revisited.
“in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold [contraception], Lawrence [sexual acts], and Obergefell [same-sex marriage].”
And I don’t think it’s unreasonable to assume Thomas is a homophobe!
“has been a reliable vote against LGBTQ rights. He dissented from its pro-LGBTQ rulings in 1996’s Romer v. Evans, which struck down an antigay state constitutional amendment in Colorado; 2013’s Windsor v. U.S., which struck down the main part of the Defense of Marriage Act, and Hollingsworth v. Perry, which let stand a lower court ruling invalidating California’s Proposition 8, an anti-marriage equality ballot measure; and 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. In his dissent in Obergefell, he wrote, “In the American legal tradition, liberty has long been understood as individual freedom from governmental action, not as a right to a particular governmental entitlement” — marriage being that “entitlement.”
He joined in the court’s 2018 decision vacating the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s finding that a baker illegally discriminated against a gay couple by refusing to create a wedding cake for them. However, he wanted the decision to go further and expressed concern about whether marriage equality could be used to stamp out freedom of speech and religion.”
https://www.advocate.com/news/2019/10/07/homophobic-justice-clarence-thomas-ill-may-miss-lgbtq-rights-cases
https://lawandcrime.com/supreme-court/justice-thomas-compares-number-of-abortions-to-civil-war-deaths-in-concurrence-identifying-other-landmark-cases-to-overturn-after-roe/
You missed Thomas's and Sheryl's point. Thomas said nothing about contraception, gay marriage, or sodomy. He said substantive due process is not an appropriate foundation to sustain those rights.
Getting to the answer the right way matters a great deal to Thomas. Some find it tedious. Those people tend to be much more tolerant of judicial overreach and fiat. Those people want their preferred result and don't much care how they get there.
DemonHunter, You say: “Getting to the answer the right way matters a great deal to Thomas. Clarence said: “…we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents…” Clarence Thomas mentions multiple “substantive due process.” decisions except this one: interracial marriage. I understand he is married to a white woman, is he not? Is this not a glaring inconsistency? How does one explain him bringing up gay marriage, but not his interracial marriage? So much for his integrity!
Not inconsistent. Interracial marriage has already been addressed through a variety of other methods and does not rely on substantive due process (sodomy, contraception, and same sex marriage rely on substantive due process). That's why he does not include it on his list.
edit: But it, interracial marriage, no longer requires substantive due process to justify its existence.
In the alternative, assuming no laws preventing racial discrimination exist (which of course they do) Thomas would argue that the Privileges and Immunities clause of the 14th would still support a prohibition on anti-miscegenation laws.
Demon, I call bullshit!
Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) was the case in which the Court held that the Virginia anti-miscegenation laws violated the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. After assessing the case facts with “strict scrutiny”, the Court also held the laws violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. On July 11, 1958, Mildred and Richard Loving were apprehended in their homes in violation of Section 20-58 and 59, which were the anti-miscegenation laws that prohibited leaving the state to interracially marry and returning to the forum state as well as labeling this activity a felony. Mildred, a woman of color, and Richard, a Caucasian, both plead guilty, received one year in prison, but had their sentences mitigated on the condition that they not return to Virginia together for 25 years. Unaccepting of this cruel reprimand, the Lovings’ sought legal relief, an endeavor that lead their fate to be overturned by the SCOTUS. Relying on the federal and state obligations to honor each citizen their due process rights and equal protection under the 14th and 5th amendments and guiding public policy to recognize the sanctity of protecting the private life, the SCOTUS unanimously ruled the anti-miscegenation laws unconstitutional, a monumental decision that restored another political and social right for minorities (specifically blacks).
Wow, I'm a pretty online person but I didn't see this take coming. I even scrolled back up to make sure I hadn't accidently entered the comment section to a different article. Oh well, just came to say thanks for the info Mr. McNeil. As for KW Norton...wow...
Agreed. I was willing to listen to this writer until this "after 50 years of progress, a serious backlash against gay rights is growing in this country: One need only read Clarence Thomas’s decision in Dobbs to get a sense."
The LGBT lobby just got finished with a 1 month celebration of their pride (historically a vice, not a virtue) in screwing their own sex. This bizarre festival was trumpeted by every media outlet. Corporate logos were festooned with rainbows to show solidarity. Most major cities in the world bedecked their major thoroughfares with the LGBTQIAXYZ flag. American embassies flew gay pride flags. For the month of June, sexual deviance and oddity of all kinds was heralded and celebrated by the entire edifice of Western culture. And whoa to he who questions the wisdom of this sacrament, for he shall be cast into outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth (with all the bigots in Alabama or Kentucky or some other red state.)
Based on the last month (heck, based on the last 30 years), , where, exactly, is this "growing gay rights backlash"?
I'm not seeing a backlash, but I live a pretty cloistered life in a small town.
While I have a close friend, a devout Catholic, who takes the "screwing their own sex" point of view, I have known more than a few gay men - and, delight of delights - lesbian women too, and my POV has softened quite a bit.
One queer friend and I discuss the matter pretty frankly, and he told me, "Do you think I LIKED getting hell beat out of me at school? Getting laughed at? I got to where even I hated myself for being who I was, but the fact is, it WAS who I was. People say, 'Just stop being queer.' I know you're (Jim) not a believer - if you decided tomorrow to become one, would you genuinely believe? Of course not. It's not a decision under your control." Made me think.
I really dislike the "trans" stuff because I see it as truly a mental disorder, and you don't treat those with surgery - even if it will make you a champion "female" swimmer. Homosexuality, OTOH to my eye is a different beast. It has been with humanity since the dawn of time; as a non-reproductive persuasion, you'd think it would have been eliminated from the gene pool by now. That it has not gives me great pause; nature does not do things without a reason.
And now the bullied gay kid and his friends have taken power and is bullying anyone who refuses to celebrate his lifestyle.
If this was about respect and tolerance, I would be completely on board. But at the point that you're forcing florists to work your wedding, harassing bakers who don't want to bake cakes, getting people fired for contributing to Prop 8 in California, and sending people to re-education if they use the wrong pronouns... that's not about tolerance.
I want a liberal society. I want a society where Jewish families can go to synagogue without fear, Catholics don't have to worry about their churches being vandalized, and where 2 gay men can walk down the street holding hands without being harassed. I want a liberal society and am willing to "live and let live" a great deal to obtain it. But it doesn't appear that the Left wants this at all. They want a society where ideological non-conformity is punished severely. Forced to choose between an illiberal Left society that hates me and an illiberal Right society that doesn't hate me, I know which I would have to pick.
I think that's the point. Things were stable; now people who don't wish this nation well are using every weapon they have to cause dissention and hatred among groups who had been tolerating each other's peculiarities just fine. Division, disorder, and chaos are their weapons of choice. Oh yes, and violence. Lots of violence, tolerated and even encouraged by one political party.
I can assure you that my friend, the height of whose aggression was, upon helping my wife erect an electric dog fence, put his hands on his hips and proclaimed, "God, I feel SO butch!" is not in that group and does not want to be.
Your friend must be appalled at that which is being done in the name of his tribe today. I know several gay men who are as well.
The writer’s take on Thomas was a throw away to show his bona fides, KW. I agree with you that it was not necessary. Having said that, I do think Thomas wants gay marriage and contraception settled via legislation and leave the Constitution out of it.
Looking back on the recent history of the United States through the twentieth century - contraceptive and gay rights were certainly not afforded by either states’ or the federal gov’t - hence activists looking for constitutional relief.
If Clarence had his way (and not necessarily the rest of the conservative wing of the Court), in my opinion he would throw it all back to where governments failed to act.
Back to the future.
I've an old friend who constantly reminds me that "evil always overplays its hand." I don't want to get into the "evil" meme, but I can tell you this: everyone I know is well and truly exhausted by the Alphabet People, as they call them. Just exhausted.
And yet they have been brilliant and seizing levers of influence in society, infiltrating the schools and universities and driving out any opposition. It's going to be a long slog to get rid of them.
Exhaustion yes but would you call it a backlash? I wouldn't.
That's my experience, too. I have - I wouldn't say a lot, but certainly several - gay friends. We're in a conservative small southern town; everyone who knows them knows their persuasion and they don't care. We're all friends and nobody rubs anybody else's nose in his own personal orientation. It just doesn't come up. It's live and let live. But the aggressiveness, the haranguing, the attempts to secretly propagandize children - THAT is a deal breaker.
That's the difference. Most conservatives can get along with gays, even gay liberals. It comes down to our belief that we want to be left alone, so we're willing to grant the same to other people.
However, progressives have a much harder time getting along with conservatives, especially Christians. They believe that their policies are universally good, so the only reason to oppose them is evil, which must be crushed on general principle.
In this fight, the conservatives will keep losing until we start (rhetorically and legally) punching back.
It may go deeper than that. Christians, who believe in God and believe there is an ultimate moral standard direct from and answerable to God, stand as a rebuke to those who want no constraints, no rules, and no guilt on any actions they choose to take.
Going after the children is a bridge too far.
However the Trans group is so loud and intimidating that many gay people are just hesitant to speak out against their nonsense. Plenty of gay people do not agree with that agenda. I even know a trans woman that doesn’t agree with it! I just wish they would rally and speak out, as a group, because they’d have a lot of credibility if they did. It’s kind of like the doctors who are afraid to speak up about the ineffective covid management.
It is difficult to stand up to bullies. But we need to do it, lest the consequences of remaining silent become infinitely worse.
Exactly, as Dr Martin Luther King put it;
“The End is when we remember not the voice of our enemies but the silence of our friends”
Why was my comment removed?
Did you save a copy of it? I'd like to read it.
This is what I wrote. Not sure why someone had enough of a problem with it to demand it be deleted.
I think McNeil is trying very hard to pretend that the backlash against gay people is somehow a result of the overturning of Roe, rather than a result of trans activists taking over and attempting to act as the voice of the entire LGBT+ community.
As far as I can tell, the LBG community is beginning to make efforts to divorce themselves from the T+ community. When the T+ community is demanding that lesbians allow transwomen with penises to rape them, promoting drag shows to children, and encouraging young children to want to mutilate their bodies, the LGB community has everything to lose by allowing trans activists to speak for them and very little to gain.
Don’t know if you read that Taibi story about the California prisons, it was horrifying.
Mr. McNiel,
Thank you for writing this. I have appreciated your work for quite some time, and I am still astonished at how your Times career was ended. It scares me for my own self, as it is probably intended to
Just to be clear- we've just gone through three years where we were asked / told to modify our behaviors to stop the spread. No weddings, no funerals, no Christmas dinners, no church, no gatherings of any sort. Normal life stopped for all of us because the behavior was hazardous to ourselves and to others.
And yet in this new pandemic, "stop having copious amounts of anonymous gay sex" does not appear on your list of remedies. Is it more outrageous to ask gay men to stop promiscuous sex than to tell him that he can't go to a family wedding or funeral (as we have the last two years)?
None of your recommendations address the actual behavior that is known to spread this disease. Why is that?
It isn't allowed. It was frowned upon 40 years ago when AIDS came on the scene, even though the Woke had far less power. Now, with the Woke in control of every institution, no one will dare to even whisper it.
Some Gays take the risks and suffer the consequences. Once I understood how Monkeypox is transmitted, I knew my family and friends, including gay friends were safe. None of us engage in the risky activities. If you enjoy extreme sports, then go for it.
My outrage is the author putting all the responsibility on taxpayers/government. (And the insanity that the government can still be competent under Dem leadership.) My other outrage is that someone I love gets this disease innocently/non-sexually and has to suffer because there are gay men who will not interrupt their indulgences for themselves or anyone else's health.
"none of us engage in the risky activities."
I can't stop laughing at this comment. Do you not have sex? None of your friends have sex? Do you believe that no one in your chain of friends might have sex outside a "monogamous" relationship? Never kissed someone who might have kissed someone who might have had sex with ... ?
If you think this is just a result of gay sex, or anal sex, or fetish sex, or whatever you might believe is at the core, you are possibly in for a rude awakening.
Rude Awakening? - are you really trying to frighten me? You want to scare all of us who are not part of the small subsets of gay men: the BDSM/leather/fetish/rough subset and the party-n-play/chemsex subset. I do not have friends who play these "extreme sports." To conflate these folks with my circle is to compare the purple-haired, screaming, violent trans folk with my circle. Sorry, culture matters and some cultures are far more dangerous than others. If monkeypox spreads to a larger circle, I will deal with it just as I did with AIDS in the 80s. Except then I was single and now I have been married for 25 years. And I later learned that the fears for heterosexuals were totally overblown by the nascent woke crowd back then. So it appears the risk will be de minimis.
Most of my friends are in monogamous relationships, and those that are single are very careful. This is what my culture encourages. Culture matters unless you are woke. If you are woke, then enjoy your sex parties.
BTW, at 74 I am having the best sex of a very long sex life.
Happy you are having great sex. Good on ya.
But the risk here is that sexual transmission may not be the only risk. Some might say that we - males - got lucky with HIV. Sounds like you did. It has stayed pretty much limited to a small segment of the populace. But women are at risk of spread from infected males. That is the African experience and among sex workers in the US.
That may not hold for this new pox. Time will tell. You can continue to believe that this pox is just skin bumps and not a risk to you and your fellow believers. But you may be disappointed.
I'd prefer to deal with the realities of a variety of humans, not just those I might think of as "woke" or unawake or whatever. I don't think IV drug users are "woke" but they sure are at risk.
I'd prefer we look at the world the way it is (consevative thought) not the way I think it should be (Prog thought).
We simply have different priorities for particular health risks. No big deal. My complaint is that personal responsibility is thrown out the window by the woke crowd, and tax payers have to pay thru increased health risk, and to fund the increased harm done by irresponsible people.
Nope
Best comment of the lot...
He addressed that several times. Do you suggest that the government lock up every gay man in the nation so they won’t have copious sex? Or what? Providing vaccines to all gay men seemed, to me, more effective. Also providing a thirty day isolation period for anyone who tests positive to it, even though it would be expensive, seems to be a good thing.
I think people are reacting to the fact that kids weren't allowed to go to school, everyone on a plane had to wear a mask and no one could go to a funeral or wedding but no one is expecting this verified at risk group to change their behavior even temporarily.
If they can lockdown literally everyone whether spreading it or not, I see no reason why they can't put gay men who can't control their genitals into lockdown. In fact, let's put all gay men into lockdown until the danger is over! For their safety!
Exactly. He did address this.
So he did repeatedly say for large sex parties to stop, or whatever else they would be called. I’m not sure how you missed that or aren’t able to infer that that is a warning against casual sex with strangers.
The way I read it, he wants the government to step in and MAKE those parties stop. He wants to government to provide vaccinations, so people can go back to having those parties without any concerns. He wants the government to provide quarantine areas.
He did not, as far I could tell, recommend any PERSONAL responsibility.
I agree with you, Celia. Someone has to pay for the treatments and housing and it's not going to just be the special group affected by it. It's all of us. All of us were told how selfish we were for wanting life to go back to normal the last two years, but heaven FORBID a smaller group refrain from anonymous sex whenever the urge strikes.
Without re-reading the article I think he did lament the fact that the hosts of the parties are going ahead with them rather than postpone until the vax is widely available.
But those who attend have to be aware of their risk so if they want to play the odds there's not not much anyone else can do.
For the last year ++ we've had proggies screaming about how anyone not vaccinated should be rounded up and put in a camp "for the greater good", along with heaping scorn and wishing death on those same people.
Why aren't proggies screaming about how any male that has butt sex be rounded up and put in a camp "for the greater good", along with heaping scorn and wishing death on those same people.
He didn't say "stop"; he said postpone until the fall when there are better supplies of vaccines available.
DMDM, below you’ll find the CDC’s recommendation. I suppose the recommendations won’t satisfy you because it doesn’t say: gay men stop banging each other so much. After all, that’s what homophobes want to hear.
Take the following steps to prevent getting monkeypox:
• Avoid close, skin-to-skin contact with people who have a rash that looks like monkeypox.
o Do not touch the rash or scabs of a person with monkeypox.
o Do not kiss, hug, cuddle or have sex with someone with monkeypox.
o Do not share eating utensils or cups with a person with monkeypox.
• Do not handle or touch the bedding, towels, or clothing of a person with monkeypox.
• Wash your hands often with soap and water or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
• In Central and West Africa, avoid contact with animals that can spread monkeypox virus, usually rodents and primates. Also, avoid sick or dead animals, as well as bedding or other materials they have touched.
If you are sick with monkeypox:
• Isolate at home
• If you have an active rash or other symptoms, stay in a separate room or area away from people or pets you live with, when possible.
https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/prevention.html#:~:text=Prevention%20Steps&text=Avoid%20close%2C%20skin%2Dto%2D,with%20a%20person%20with%20monkeypox
LOL! "homophobes"
Calling people names isn't generally good argumentation either. Got anything better?
My point in the original comment was that Mr. McNiel dared not call on people to take responsibility for their behaviors or life outcomes, the fact that the CDC DOES makes my question that much more pressing. Why is he afraid to ask gay men to stop banging each other so much? Why does he conceal this part of the CDC guidance from his readers?
If you want to be trusted as a science writer, facts are facts and evidence is evidence. You can't be fighting on one side of the culture war and deserve to be trusted.
OMG, gay sex - fetish or otherwise - is part of the Culture War????
FWIW, I think the import of McNeil's piece was fairly obvious. Any gay guy will understand it. That it does not satisfy the Jerry Fallwells of American is irrelevant.
The problem is that the CDC has not written that monkeypox is currently spreading in the MSM community.
They should state something like "MSM are at higher risk of contracting monkeypox in the U.S. due to community spread in the MSM community". This would be responsible & help MSM to at least be aware of risks in the community.
Sally, the CDC says: "Do not kiss, hug, cuddle or have sex with someone with monkeypox." Why do you feel the MSM community should be singled out? Don’t heterosexuals have sex too!
Wait, what .... ? The MSM? You mean Monkey Pox is rampant in the main stream media? Or did you mean the Bondage Discipline Sado-Masochism - BDSM - crowd and your autocorrect just couldn't take that acronym?
MSM=men who have sex with men (medical jargon)
Ahhh! Thanks.
I only gave you one upvote because that is all Substack permits. I'd give you 100 if I could. 😂
This actually represents a welcome return to a more evidence-based approach to human behaviour in public health.
The reason the focus here is not on behaviour modifiction, is that we know, and have known for a long time, that it simply doesn't work. See: abstinence-only education and teen pregnancy rates; how shaming can hinder disclosure of HIV (or STD) status; the misguided war on drugs; and on and on.
We ought to focus on wondering why we went full throttle for it on Covid, despite all evidence against it, rather than asking why we won't try that same doomed strategy again with monkeypox.
If people can't even be /asked/ to refrain from risky behaviors, if they cannot restrain their appetites to contain communicable diseases that they are uniquely susceptible because of their particular chosen behaviors, then they are not candidates for adulthood, nor citizens in a self-governing republic.
Abstinence-only education and telling people to stop self-destructive behaviors does people the respect of treating people as /agents/ rather than helpless people to whom things happen.
Several years ago, I would have totally agreed with you, (and I still largely like what you're saying). Then COVID came, and we witnessed massive, widespread behavior modification before our very eyes--parents diligently masking toddlers, families canceling Christmas, and millions rolling up their sleeves for experimental injections. Either out of fear or the desire to stay within cultural norms, there's no question that Americans changed their behavior during COVID.
If the gay community sounded the alert and made anonymous sex parties socially unacceptable and a cause for shame by their own, even just temporarily as suggested, I think we'd see decreased transmission.
"The reason the focus here is not on behaviour modifiction, is that we know, and have known for a long time, that it simply doesn't work."
Utter horseshit. I, and millions of others, have quit smoking. That is just one of countless examples that could be used. You have no idea what you're talking about.
I don’t get your point. Are gay men supposed to stop having sex? Fauci tried that and was excoriated for it. I’d say ask Larry Kramer about it but he is dead.
Best advice is to learn from the mistakes of the early days of the AIDS epidemic.
Umm.. yes?
Are they not capable of that level of self-control?
If not, why not?
Are you capable of not having sex with women? For an indeterminate time?
It is simply contrary to human nature to not have sex. The urge is far too strong to ever believe it a successful approach.
One of the thing that McNeil's article did not address is the efficacy of condoms.
Why did he not do that?
Why? Because he is a Fauci acolyte. Has the same }my way or the highway" attitude.
An adult that is not capable of putting the good of those around him ahead of his own appetites is a poor excuse for an adult.
This may be news to you, but in living memory most people abstained from sex before marriage. Crazy as it may seem, some people do that yet today. Not because they hate sex, but because they have a high view of sex and a high view of humanity. We can, and should, subjugate our desires to higher purposes.
If we can't, we're just animals.
I would hope to aspire to that behavior myself, but am way too old and too human to conform to such lofty goals.
As to reality, not behavioral fascism, we are trying to deal with a medical infection risk, a possible pandemic, we need approaches that account for a variety of views on things like sex.
Fauci had that notion decades ago - "just don't have sex". It did not work. What worked is figuring out how to deal with reality (you know, the same failing he had with Covid???) of folks actually engaging in sexual behaviors.
The drive to copulate is powerful. One of the most powerful our species has. Acting like they are not "adults" or that they don't give a shit about others is just silly. And childish. You know, folks who are poor excuses for adults.
In the days before dating sites, in the days before the automobile, in the days before the bicycle, it was much harder than it is now to have sex before or outside of marriage.
But I think you greatly overrate avoidance of nonmarital sex. Sex is an immensely powerful urge, and often, even outside of marriage, a great joy.
People also have many ways of expressing it, some which work for some, and don't for others. A lot of bad marriages have happened between partners who didn't get to sample enough sex prior to marriage to figure out what they liked, and what they didn't like. Ann Landers used to say that out of 20 marriages there was one great one, 9 good ones, five that were not good, and five that were sheer hell. She also came to recognize that sex without marriage is OK.
Note the word "most", which means a) most people were able to do it and b) some people didn't.
By the logic of your third paragraph, our most promiscuous eras should yield our happiest, most durable marriages. Care to defend with evidence?
Your view is outdated by nearly a century. My parents began living together in the summer of 1946. They didn't get married until mid-December, a few days after my mother's divorce papers arrived in the mail.
To call something outdated is not argument. The word says nothing about the value, utility or truth of an idea, only its place in time.
Yes and yes, and it's honestly appalling that you can't conceive of people who can abstain or AT LEAST stay committed to a single partner.
People who are capable of sexual self-control and commitment view people who are not as little more than animals.
Oh, for fucks sake. I can as many others can "conceive [funny word in this context"] of monogamous relationships.
The really "appalling" thing is that you seem to see the world only through your eyes, your "morality".Really, you have the mentality of Jerry Falwell. Shame on you.
The world does not mirror your views. In fact yours are a tiny fraction of human interests.
You seem to have a clear morality in mind, where some things are celebrated and others rejected.What makes yours right and those that disagree with you deserving of shame?
I understand you agree with "the world", but you surely understand this: by your own standard of "popular makes right" the activities you hold up as right would have been wrong (being as at that time only a tiny fraction of humans would have agreed with you).
Do you have another standard you'd like to suggest instead?
"for fucks sake"
Lol! Yes, that's the point.
Funny, I feel no shame. Projection?
"The world" is precisely what I reject. Have you actually read the Bible?
Ten thousand years, and no real progress. You are slaves to your instincts.
I'm proud that I'm not like you.
Seems simple doesn't it?
Let me get this straight... The CDC made us shutdown schools for 6 months to protect kids & teachers from a virus that wasn’t dangerous to 99% of them. They then insisted that our children & their teachers wear a mask and “socially distance” themselves when they went back to school- both of which made learning incredibly difficult. They inflicted serious, lasting harm on an entire generation of children... yet when it comes to shutting down orgies and prohibiting sex fetish “parties” they’ve decided to take a more cautious, less abrasive approach, lest they cause harm or stigmatization of gay men? GTFOH. These public health experts make me sick. They deserve nothing but scorn for their actions in the last 2.5 years.
Great point Mel. Your point really shows how far we've fallen and are under the control of a nihilistic perverted minority.
One slight error here. The number is more like 99.99%. There are only a couple dozen cases of young children dying from Wuhan/C19 virus. (Underlying conditions is a different story.)
Couldn’t agree more.
Once I was an alarmist about diseases spreading from the tropics. When a man from Africa came to see his girlfriend in Texas and was discovered to have Ebola, I was sure--based on the transmission and fatality rates seen in Africa--that we had a major and highly serious pandemic looming over us.
It turned out (fortunately) that I was wrong. Neither transmission nor fatality of the disease was as serious in the West as it was in Africa.
So I am not as willing to become alarmed as I used to be. My reaction to this article--which definitely seeks to be alarming--is consequently very skeptical.
Nor am I convinced that McNeil is yelling at the correct audience. As he himself points out, those most at risk are gay men, particularly those who have sexual contact with strangers. And ALSO as he himself points out, that population is as unwilling to follow health-protective cautions now as they were when the AIDS epidemic began. I'm not convinced that any amount of lectures or warnings will change their minds. I don't see how lecturing the Common Sense audience will have any effect.
From the outset this article impressed me as being wreck-less fear mongering. We have been subjected to so much drivel of this sort I don’t see the point in lending any credibility to it by taking it seriously. The media have only themselves to blame. Picking it apart piece by boring piece is simply a waste of time.
It's always better to know and have information.
Yes, which is why I still engage in reading any of this useless information. Better to understand how stupidity exists and sustains itself than not.
It wasn't all "useless." I have been reading all the articles about Monkeypox that come across my purview. I learn something from all of them.
"Useless" information still informs. First it must be identified as useless. I suppose we should be grateful to those supplying useless information for being willing to stand up and be so identified. Discussion in a free society should be revered.
Interesting words reckless and wreckless. Sound the same, mean the opposite :)
It's circulating among sex workers. Many more people than we may be aware avail themselves of sex workers (prostitutes). We also have a tragic human trafficking operation going on across the nation thanks to the Biden administration and the importation of millions of illegals. Many of those women and children are being forced into prostitution.
A man goes to a prostitute, picks up the disease, then takes it home to his wife/girlfriend/lover.
This disease may end up circulating primarily the way HIV did and not affect the majority of Americans. It is still troubling.
Skeptical indeed. Gay men are the target once again. The Marxists claim to embrace them but, as AZT demonstrated, they actually want them dead. And more vaccines for them-perfect! Why not throw in some remdesivir for treatment while they are at it? Bari’s choices for medical pieces show you can take someone out of NYT but you can’t fully take NYT out of that someone!
Yes, that NYT angle always seems to find a way to crop up in any article, doesn't it?
However, it is important to be aware of what is out there. It's curious and curiouser to discover Monkeypox was being discussed a few years ago by the usual suspects. I watched a video or two on it.
Here are two. There are more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDjQ8ivwbCU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4E6cD-VWhQY
The video should make it clear to anyone their game plan, yet too many are under the zombie spell of Gates and Xi and Klaus. Gates pontificating about his concern for minorities - unless you happen to be one of his lab rats in Africa. Gates and China are the ones buying up our land as well - how long before people realize that their tentacles intend to choke every aspect of your life. Thanks for sharing❤️
Sure, I'm not against discussion of Monkey Pox or much of anything else just completely over being victimized by fear mongers.
Me too. This was so over the top. I really can’t believe Bari published it.
Bari is still closely associated with NYT culture, just not an employee of the paper itself
Perhaps those outliers in society need feel validated as now they want us all dead. The deception, harms, and intent to divide and conquer are very personal and very real.
That last sentence is a stone classic--bull's eye!
I imagine we all have gay friends and family.
Ebola is Scurvy and Monkey pox is a adverse reaction to the covid vaccine that is now being mislabeled as something else to be concerned about. Vaccines cause adverse reactions immediately or 10, 20, 30 years later.
All this information is available to the public, (The Poison Needle by Eleanora McBean and Vaccine Epidemic by various authors, to name a few) but it's not a fun or entertaining topic so people continue to be woefully mislead. Until people start thinking critically about this topic most will continue to be harmed.
We are in an abusive relationship with our medical establishment, governments, and the psychopaths (philanthropaths) that continue to push this BS on the human population.
Ebola is scurvy?? Am I missing some sarcasm there?
Connections are being made between ebola and scurvy. Vitamin C deficiency, also known as scurvy, is characteristic of hemorrhaging, and immune dysfunction. Unexplained hemorrhaging, bleeding or bruising is a symptom of ebola.
"Unexplained hemorrhaging, bleeding or bruising is a symptom of ebola."
But not of scurvy. And Ebola can be very contagious whether anyone has a Vit C deficiency or not. To conflate the two is a bit disingenuous.
Read the link I shared above. Ebola in the early stages can be treated like scurvy and never get to the unexplained hemorrhaging. If there is one thing we learned from Covid, which we may not have been privy to before, is they will suppress treatments to promote a vaccine as the save all and they will let people die as a result. The vaccine is the objective and anything that gets in that way will be maligned. So allowing people to suffer with Ebola to the point of unexplained hemorrhaging and bleeding saying that there is nothing they can do but vaccinate is a LIE! Treat it like scurvy and never get to that point. Additionally, some would argue the contagious point. I will see what else I can find on that note. Again, I am listening to videos on the topic and they are long. I will post what I find with time stamps.
Yes Lori the preferred treatment is the one that makes the most money. Injury or death is part of the business. Damages paid out by pharma are nothing compared to the billions they make. The next moneymaker will be monkeypox.
I do agree with your last sentence. However with scurvy the slightest touch will cause bruising. Internal bleeding will cause your skin to look splotchy.
No sarcasm. Many naturopathic doctors have spoken about this. I am trying to find some other references to share other than long videos. Here is one article talking about how Ebola is a scurvy like illness. Very similar symptoms in both diseases. Instead of a vaccine for Ebola, perhaps vitamin c would help since it helps with scurvy.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2014/10/dr-david-brownstein/ebola-a-scurvy-like-illness/
At first heterosexuals were all relieved we weren’t at risk for AIDS, until…..
I don’t like to dwell in alarmism either, but I do remember AIDS vividly. And the stories of how it inevitably jumped to heterosexuals. Whether this is actually likely with monkey pox won’t matter if the story gets out it can.
Being a “reader” I have to put a plug in for “and the band played on” an exhaustive, well researched book on the AIDS epidemic. The press tried to characterize it as an indictment of the Reagan administration (big surprise!! Some things never change!!). But it was really an indictment of almost everyone/and every group involved.
And at the top of the list?
Tony Fauchi.
If you go back and read some of the articles from the 80s discussing HIV, you'll see Tony getting skewered by the Gay folks, but back then, they didn't have the voice they do today, so nobody paid attention to the comments criticizing the grandstanding narcissist back then.
It astonishes me that the LGB community won't loudly recall who did what back then. I guess supporting the Dem agenda is more important than reminding everyone how harmful Fauci was to their community at that time. He shouldn't get a pass.
Agreed. That was by the late Randy Shilts. I, too, thought of the book as I read this article.
Randy was ten times the journalist this mediocrity is...
I recall the predictions for HIV/AIDS in the 1980's. NIH and CDC were predicting it would spread through the population the way Herpes had with millions infected.
We know they were wrong because HIV is primarily spread through blood and semen. It was particularly infectious for homosexual men because of their practice of anal sex.
HIV was confined to gay men in the U.S. because that was the population where it was introduced, not because it infects only that population. In Africa it has been a terrible plague for both sexes, and heterosexuals as well as homosexuals. For a while it looked like it might largely depopulate the continent.
It did not help that, in Africa, the superstition was rife that having sex with a virgin would cure you of AIDS.
But heterosexuals weren’t really at risk, not like gay men. It’s especially difficult for a man to get hiv from a woman. The threat was really overblown.
HIV was in Africa a long time before it came to the US via Haiti. As with covid there are different sub-types and can affect people differently.
It’s only a matter of time until it crosses over to non-gay members of society. There are, among the gay community, bi-sexuals that bonk women. And there are women that bonk strangers and are married or have children. We need to get a handle on this so when it hits the non-gay community, we don’t have thousands of cases hit all at once and overwhelm the system.
We don’t know how transmissible it is. We don’t know the risk to children and pregnant women. Since we don’t know much about it, it is best to forewarn people.
The primary warning necessary at this point--if it would be heeded--is to stop having sex with random strangers, to stop having sex if you have sores on your body, to stop having sex with people who have sores on their bodies.
Sure. But that’s not how humans act. You can’t make a snake be a bird so you work around the known problems.
How do you work around a known problem of independent people ignoring a warning given in their own best interest? A human is a human regardless of sex, not a snake or a bird. No one is asking anyone to change species - they're just being asked to abstain for a bit to protect themselves and possibly others.
I understand what you are saying, but young people like to bonk. It’s in their nature.
A work around would be educating them on the dangers but also making vaccines and tests available to them before they go to the party. Perhaps having health care providers right there at their parties, like the scheduled one this article talked about, to set up appointments to be tested after the party or to maybe health care providers could be on site to do quick exams for the pustules before they can enter the party. There are any number of ways to make their unsafe behavior a little safer for others.
I disagree. Recent history has given us all a very expensive lesson in passing out "scary info" to a population that is largely poorly educated, scientifically illiterate, innumerate, and highly vulnerable to manipulation by a corrupt, untrustworthy media (see current article). NOTHING about Monkeypox justifies taking the extreme risks you are proposing
The MSM is going to latch onto Monkeypox and gin up the fear and panic. Count on it. I expect escalation leading into the 2022 elections.
I agree, Naomi. Their clumsy coordination on these stories is laughably obvious. My subjective observations are that they are already finding it harder going--at least I hope so. My personal strategy is just to keep calling attention to the MSM's perfidy whenever I can. What would be enormously helpful would be YOUNG influencers really getting interested in calling attention to all this deception, and reclaiming sanity for the world they are inheriting
We have to speak the truth to lies.
Mail in ballots only because you might get monkeypox going to your local school gymnasium or church.
It seemed to me the highly educated were duped as well Gordon.
Yes, I agree--they were very often the most easily deceived and confused, primarily because their acculturation and value system blinded them to their own ignorance and gullibility. They are also the group most HIGHLY invested in believing anything fed to them by the MSM.
I'd think looking at the photos of people with the sores should enough to scare anyone away from it.
This may be a way to scare parents into vaccinating their children against monkeypox. It seems many parents are resisting having their young children and babies vaccinated against COVID.
The timing is amazingly convenient.
You are correct about it crossing into the general population. However, I don't think the crossover will become an epidemic into the general population because it should follow the same course HIV took and we know it didn't decimate the general population as the NIH originally projected.
This isn’t transmitted by sex, though, or blood or semen. HIV was actually limited by the difficulty of transmission. Monkeypox can be transmitted by something as simple as using a towel that someone wiped their infected hands on or laying on a bedspread that a hotel didn’t wash after one guest left. Those aren’t sex acts. They are just common acts that no one thinks about. Children aren’t immune from hugging a relative that has it or sitting in a relative’s lap and reading a story. Close contact helps it spread.
It’s entirely different. Parents, when the smallpox vaccine came out, made sure their children got the vaccine. Mostly. This doesn’t have anything to do with the Covid vaccine. Parents should research both. They will see that Covid was never a risk for most children, so the vaccine was unnecessary, but that monkeypox is a risk so a vaccine would be good. Even though, at this point, I don’t see the CDC pushing to get children vaccinated against monkeypox.
Not yet but it's coming. Wait...they will find one child who gets it, (remember Ryan White during the AIDS episode)?, and then the media will hype parents into a state of terror.
Well. I got the smallpox vaccine. It protects me from monkeypox and I didn’t die from it. Some vaccines are good. Some aren’t necessary. If the parent doesn’t care enough to research them or the potential risks cf infection for their children, what can I say.
My daughter was a nurse at Baylor University Hospital in Dallas when that Ebola patient came in. He was, I think, at Presbyterian close by. She knew a nurse who got infected but her case was mild. It's a scary virus, as are all the hemorrhagic viruses. There have been warnings recently about Marburg being on the loose, another hemorrhagic virus.
Hemorrhagic viruses are exactly what Dr. Li Meng Yan, a virologist who escaped from China, urgently warned would be the next bio attack due to the joint research between US and China of which she knew firsthand from Wuhan.
Whatever happened to her? She was a big deal then quickly there was nothing.
She is still in hiding but not certain specifically what else.
Hope she's ok.
As COVID was waning or the new variants were not as lethal there were reports of a hemorrhagic virus beginning to circulate. I suspected this was going to be the new source of fear porn. It may still be but looks like Monkeypox virus is the current one.
I was alarmed when my daughter came home with a letter saying one of her classmates (2nd grade iirc) had been exposed to one of the ebola cases here in DFW. But that virus kills most people it infects. Monkey pox kills, so far, no one in the US. The first seems more reasonable to cause alarm than the second.
Children and pregnant women are the risk groups for monkeypox. Those are the groups most likely to die once they have an infection. Weighing risks, such as how transmissible a disease is, what groups have the most severe outcomes, long term health problems, etc, is the most important thing. A cautious approach and personal research is much better than alarm in any case. But, yes. I would hit google and the library if I received a letter like you did.
Ah, yes, it only took three or four years for the kind and understanding Pres. Ronald Reagan to mention the word AIDS, true courage; I guess he didn’t think they were his constituents!
The disease hadn't even been named until several years into his Presidency.
In September 1982 the CDC identified AIDS, in September 1985 Reagan uttered the word AIDS, chronologically isn’t that three years?
It sure is. But it was generally isolated at the time. To be sure the crisis escalated and became an extremely serious public health issue by the late '80s but 1985 was not late to the party.
: a way of describing, interpreting, or explaining something (such as bad behavior) that makes it seem proper, more attractive, etc.
The most challenging part of this article is that trust in public (and private) health officials was so badly eroded during covid. It’s difficult to know who to trust and what to believe when the last ‘outbreak’ saw so many health professionals in hot water (to put it mildly) for having any difference of opinion.
So...welcome to the new normal.
Public health squandered 100 years of trust on COVID. Lying to citizens. Getting caught. Lying more. Insisting that gatherings must be avoided. Then insisting that BLM gatherings must be attended. Shutting down schools for over a year. But refusing to shut down gay bath houses now.
My kids (teens) will never trust public health people again. Neither will I. It will take at least 2 generations to rebuild that trust. Monkeypox is minor and will, in all probability, remain confined to the promiscuous gay subculture. But God help us if we get a real pandemic (something on the level of smallpox) in those 2 generations.
We are all over saturated with all the Covid lies, state of “emergency” extended again and again so they can approve and force on us shitty emergency vaccines and drugs that get you sick again and again (LOL Fauci), and of course pharma propaganda and fear mongering. Testing, asymptomatic transmission, vaccine, isolation, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Our health authorities became a joke and it is their doing. Our patience with them is running VERY thin.
Safe to say our patience has completely run whatever course it may have possessed. Of course there are those still infected with CFS - Covid Fear Syndrome. This syndrome may be incurable.
And in case anyone in major cities, such as NYC, may be recovering from CFS, there is a new public service announcement (PSA) about nuclear attack. Charming. There are links on the Internet.
Yes this came down last week. More use of nonsensical fear mongering to divide and deceive. Upon reading this PSA we discover the logical fallacies imparted here impart no useful knowledge as to how perhaps to survive nuclear attack. More epic senselessness.
When I was a kid we had drills in school where we crouched under our desks.
I had them too. That was for a nuclear bomb attack. All larger apartment buildings had designated bomb shelters and were marked with the nuclear symbol placard.
My patience with them is non- existent.
Oh dear. Gay young men are too young to remember SF in the 1980s. But I do.
I sincerely hope they curb their behaviors NOW. Acceptance of the gay lifestyle will take an awful hit if monkeypox hits American kids.
Maybe acceptance of the gay lifestyle needs to take a hit.
Especially if the lifestyle = heedless promiscuity.
Mr. McNeil seems more concerned with the backlash, or should I say disgust likely to be directed at the alphabet crowd than the actual threat to the population at large. If it "keeps spreading and even kills some children or pregnant women” I suspect he’s on to something. Just as with AIDs, it’s clear how Monkeypox spreads and a simple behavioral modification could reduce it’s spread until vaccines can be ramped up for those who can’t resist excess promiscuity.
While Mr. McNeil clearly laments the somewhat muted response to Monkeypox we’ve witnessed so far, he shouldn’t be surprised because old Joe and the democrats control the federal government. I suspect that self-imposed silence will all change when Republicans take over the House in November. That’s when the shrill, gender fluid activists and their media toadies will begin accusing them of killing the “queers” just like they did to Reagan during the AIDS “epidemic”.
Alas, I think you're right.
That aspect of the lifestyle anyway. I don't think I'm a prude but reading descriptions of those parties was rather eye-popping.
My eyes didn’t pop but I did have a gag-reaction,
It seems to me that, unless this strain is a result of the same gain-of-function research that gave us the Covid pandemic, it is most likely to remain primarily a sexually transmitted disease.
The greater the affected number people infected, the greater the opportunities for random variations to emerge that can spread into other potential populations or modes of transmission . This is especially true of infections with more mild symptoms. When a communicable illness largely “kills the host” (like HIV), the spread is much more restrained.
I won’t lose it over this, especially if the at-risk community is complacent about it.
Maybe we just need to rush a vaccine development and get all our 4 year olds vaccinated before the next election??
From the description it sounds like the disease is spread from contact with the pustules so no bodily fluids necessary. That puts healthcare workers at risk. Thankfully they're wearing masks and gloves pretty much all the time now since covid.
I'm assuming it's spreading more among promiscuous people because of their bare-body contact with so many anonymous people in a short span of time.
Well, monkey pox is no AIDS. It’s not very lethal. There have been outbreaks in the west before and they just don’t result in death. Look it up if you can find an unbiased source. This article is classic fear porn and I’m shocked it’s published here!
But agree with you the way to stop this is to cut out sex parties. Monkey pox sounds gross, even if it’s not lethal here in the west.
What concerns me is the possibility that this virus has been...tampered with. We already know that there are labs engaging in gain of function research---just a fancier way of saying "tampering with microbes to make them more deadly."
Well, it doesn’t seem that way so far. The men are recovering fine and it’s not spreading outside the party boy subcommunity.
Also hi Celia! I always appreciate your voice of reason and critical thinking skills!
It seems there’s a new suddenly reappearing pathogen every week.
I recently read that the ‘famous’ Wuhan Lab was working with monkey pox a few years ago. Wish I could reference that news but I think it was on the TV news.
To be fair, the author does say there have been no deaths in the West. (Also, I think the reason he doesn't say "gay people should stop having promiscuous sex" is because the article is about his suggested government response, not what people should do with their lives. I think the personal responsibility part goes without saying, from his perspective.)
He says ‘no deaths in the west … yet’
The truth is that out of half a dozen or so outbreaks in the west over the last ten years or so, no one has died. That’s an important thing to mention yet he’s implying that people WILL die.
I’m sick to death of these alarmist pieces that don’t present all of the actual information in favor of raising the fear. Without the fear is there anything to write about?
“Since may, about a thousand party boys got a nasty infection through sexual contact that goes away after two weeks, leaving a scar maybe but otherwise they recover fine” isn’t much of a story.
I don't see that he thinks "personal responsibility goes without saying" at all. I think he's afraid to say it. To a NYT Leftist progressive, the idea of personal responsibility is essentially unthinkable. And that's what he is: a Leftist progressive whose solution to everything begins with government. Remember, Dr. McNeil did fine at the Times for 35 years, only kicked to the curb when he accidently ran afoul of a modern shibboleth he likely didn't even know existed. Dr. McNeil is likely to the Left of Bari at this point, and despite having been voted off the island, it doesn't appear he's learned anything about the dangers of his own progressive tribe.
But AIDS hit American kids, and that didn't seem to affect our acceptance of the gay lifestyle. Maybe you mean if it hits American kids in larger numbers?
AIDS hit two groups of kids: 1) the children of women who got AIDS (either from bi-sexual partners or through drug use), and 2) kids with hemophilia (who got AIDS from contaminated clotting factor).
Neither of those groups is "that could be my kid" for most Americans. People pitied the children who were affected, but the risk was very, very low for the average American kid.
If my oldest son had been born a few years earlier, he would have been in that second group, but by the time his hemophilia B was discovered, blood products were carefully screened. I feel like we dodged a bullet.
You are great with facts, Celia. But we live in a world where facts don’t matter. Whatever is on Twitter or Tiktok matters. I worry about the “narrative”.
That is always the thing that is most worrisome. When we have an administration telling us that inflation is good, it's clear that it doesn't matter what the facts are, only how they can spin those facts.
Not to nitpick but I'd categorize 'Inflation is Good' under Desperate Pathetic Lie rather than Spin :)
Bari put it best in her resignation letter: "Twitter has become the de-facto editor of the New York Times". That applies to essentially every major media outlet in America today (incl FoxNews).
Forget "if it bleeds it leads". The new motto is, "if it clicks it leads".
McNeil got cancelled by the extreme left. To read his own story about how he was abused is compelling.
Yet for some reason he seems incapable of taking as hard a look at the left and the principles underpinning it as he does in his deep dives into health and science issues.
You’d think a life changing event would result in a top down reassessment of the political world he associated with, but that’s clearly not the case.
He still has the same harsh leftist views - somehow he’s able to separate them without understanding how the views are interconnected.
The cheap shot about Clarence Thomas was completely unnecessary to his story, yet he just can’t help himself. It undermines his credibility in general and the credibility of his reporting.
He's like a Californian who gets fed up with the wacko and damaging policies of his state, moves to Austin, and then votes for the same policies all over again.
I believe he has a few personal issues he could be working on as well based on a reading of his own articles of what he went through.
It’s funny that you say that. I find him to be a very hard left winger. Bari is too. They are older leftists, so they aren’t as extreme, which is why they got cancelled at The NY Times. The Times, like any other organization has t9 rotate the stock, and so the younger people in the news room, like that crazy wacko Nikole Hannah-Jones are really off the wall intolerant.
I particularly like how they say that the words and thoughts of colleagues and ope-ed guests makes them feel “unsafe”, as if these opposing ideas will pick up an axe and bludgeon them.
Orgs like the Times who sacrifice individuals like Weiss, McNeil and Bennet are literally sick - they are captive to the more activist extreme leftists coming up. They don’t reliE they are giving up control of their own organizations to the crazies of the world.
They should take the Netflix approach - we are going to feature a broad base of thought and opinion and if you don’t like it, feel free to leave. Believe me, there would be a long line around the block of the NYT building for replacement applicants.
The funny thing is, the outlets were already destructively liberal. The problem is to these crazies, not destructive enough, fast enough.
I was misled by Bari subscribing for a year. The features that other people write on her site and the few that she does are rip roaring liberal.
The shame of it all is that people like Bari, Bennet and McNeil never took up the cudgel to make their liberal co-religionists are dangerous to their own movements. If I were chased from my dream job, I’d do that. You wouldn’t be able to shut me up about the Hannah-Joneses and the squads of the world and the danger they pose,to their own liberal move,e t.
But I guess Bari recognized that the money scraped from 220,000 non crazy liberals is too much to risk.
So she keeps churning out the works of hard left but not extremist liberals and cashes her checks.
So, are we following the science here? Authorities had no problem forcing schools, businesses, and churches to close during COVID, but they are reluctant to run afoul of the gay community by closing the places where monkeypox is super-spreading.
Because it is intentional just like the rest of all this. The strength of these kleptocrats, if there is one, is knowing how to engage in using outliers to work both ends against the middle. They engage in accusing anyone questioning the narrative as racist, sexist, anti-gay, etc. Common Sense in 2022 has devolved into divisive rhetoric as old as human kind. It gets us nowhere but is attractive to many.
It says a lot about the moral core of the West, and of the medical industry in particular, that after lockdowns, mask mandates and forced vaccinations, stopping gay sex orgies or even criticizing promiscuous sex is too much.
I don't blame the "gay lifestyle" or anything like that, I blame our culture's worship of sexual pleasure and our refusal to put boundaries on sexual indulgence.
Omg, THIS!!! The cultural message is that our overarching purpose in life is to cater to our genitalia. Every day we move closer to the unintentional prophecy of Idiocracy.
When I read Brave New World in college, I and the other students didn't understand its satirical portrayal of shallow and dehumanizing sex. It had already become normalized in movies and media.
Anthony, right on the money! Once you go down the road of believing that the purpose of society is maximal individual pleasure, it becomes impossible to set any boundaries around sexual behavior.
In fact, if "maximal individual autonomy" is the purpose of your society, it's actually impossible to define any shared moral or ethical standards, or any form of "the common good" at all, because any rule you define may someone's personal pleasure and autonomy, so the rule must fall.
This is precisely what Malcolm Clarke and other members of the British LGB Alliance have been saying since mid-May and were pilloried as alarmist. One of Clarke's friends ended up in hospital with it (the friend's partner had stopped off for a quickie in the park and brought home something extra). Clarke wrote on twitter that the illness was more serious than the press and WHO were saying.
The figures I saw back in June was that it was almost exclusively gay or bisexual men. There is also this huge reluctance to stigmatize that community or indeed to put an end to hugely profitable businesses. It also could spread to other parts of the community.
The worry is that it does go out further into the community but thus far in the UK, it seems to be confined to this particular community and the reluctance to raise the alarm continues.
No real surprise there as Britain has form for sweeping things under the carpet when they don't want to raise tensions between communities (Telford and Rochdale stand out).
I find it depressingly hypocritical that people who refused Covid vaccinations were decried as "granny murderers," but no one will be allowed to say that people with sores on their bodies might want to avoid having sex until they are confirmed free of monkeypox.
The psy-ops with COVID was awful, I agree. They basically terrified people and the long term consequences remain ongoing. Public Health bodies do seem to be addicted to gross scare-mongering (currently have this about the heat in the UK -- where I am it is 84F and no humidity)
The problem is that many of the super-spreaders for monkeypox might not realise they have it as it can be mild. I know some of the suggestions were to transform the various adult entertainment venues into vaccine centres etc. The LGB A want the venues shut down for a short period. The Powers that Be did not want to stigmatize and it has been allowed to spread.
Anyone who is over 42 will probably have been vaccinated against smallpox and therefore immune.
According to CDC routine smallpox vaccinations ceased in 1972 so probably anyone 50+ has been vaccinated. I am over 42 and have not been vaccinated against smallpox - this article prompted me to dig up my childhood vaccination records (thankfully my mom recorded this stuff in my baby book - hahaha).
I've got the tell-tale scar on my shoulder, as does my husband and my best friend. We're 55/56.
the vaccines do not lat forever , i caught whopping cough 8 years ago and had the vaccine as a child , broke 2 ribs i was coughing so much . sure hope the other vaccines last
I was tremendously grateful that my children had all had chicken pox before the vaccine became required. As we learned with the whooping cough resurgence, vaccine immunity does not always last. And chicken pox is far, far worse when you get it when you're older. I didn't get it until I was 12, and I was sick for 2 weeks. I knew someone who got it in his 20s and was out of commission for a month. Whereas my daughter got it as a toddler and was well again in less than a week.
I predict that at some point we will have a severe chicken pox outbreak among 30-something that will kill FAR more people than chicken pox used to when it was an ordinary childhood disease (40 people, nationwide, per year BTW).
The one thing that could reasonably link Roe in this article is the effect of Roe on sexual behavior. Roe added unnecessary fuel to the fire of promiscuity that had begun with the baby boomers who enjoyed the great lifestyle in postwar America. The use of drugs exploded, the free sex movement developed and people, knowing they could get a pregnancy removed as easy as a mole on your face, and sex became a far more casual experience. Just another search for a “feeling” like the high from pot or mushrooms.
McNeil talks about anonymous multiple sex partners as if it’s as benign as buying a quart of milk at the supermarket. He suggests that people pause while they resolve this health problem. Once that’s done, well people, it’s back to all the fun and games.
McNeil still writes like a true Timesman - he makes sure NOT to protect the facts from a far left perspective. And while he’s at it, take a gratuitous smack at a conservative.
What a POS.
Yes. Thank you.
Thank you to Donald McNeil for writing this article and to Bari Weiss for publishing it. I hope to see your byline in many future medical/scientific stories on this site.
Did I miss it, or did the author discuss whether the virus passes through blood contact, making recipients of blood transfusions and IV drug users at risk? That's when AIDs jumped out of the gay population.
He did not address that. But mentioned that other monkeypox variants are more easily spread in respiratory droplets - this variant not so much. Monkeypox is not a bloodborne pathogen (HIV, HPV-B & HPV-C). It appears to be mostly spread by contact with pustules or items that touched the pustules (bedding, towels).
In the early 80's my husband's best friend died of HIV-AIDS. He was a hemophiliac and was given tainted factor IX. He was 34 years old.
I am sorry for your loss. Indeed it was a scary time and it was not known in the beginning that HIV was a bloodborne pathogen. Remember HIV was a totally novel virus and Monkeypox is not. This article provides some great information on Monkeypox transmission: https://www.cureus.com/articles/100707-monkeypox-a-comprehensive-review-of-transmission-pathogenesis-and-manifestation
Of course, our understanding of things changes all the time - horribly evident during the past few years.
Thank you for the article. Back in the 70's and early 80's I worked in a hospital blood bank. It still amazes me how cavalier we all were handling blood and blood products back then. It was only when the hospital had patients with HIV that was the game changer. We treated every blood sample as if it were infected.
You're welcome! My mother-in-law worked in a blood bank too. I started working in a lab in 1997 and she made sure to tell me not to mouth-pipette (luckily that's not a thing anymore). Ah yes, universal precautions - we still have those annual bloodborne pathogen training.
What really bothers me about this article is that there is SO LITTLE MENTION of using meds. I recognize supposedly the FDA is holding out. Does that seem off to anyone? Here we are begging for vax production but not demanding the FDA release the meds?! It's like someone (insert Pharma) want more vaccines. How convenient. It's just like Pharma didn't want us taking cheap repurposed meds for covid. It's so disgusting how our powers at be have let us down..again.
The "Fog of War" mentioned shall persist. Join me in a little Reality Check. At the beginning, we were told that the lockdown would "Only last fifteen days", that a vaccine was being developed at warp speed, that 'cutting red tape' was shortening the timeline and that all previous safety measures were being faithfully obeyed, and the the immunity that these rapid-fire vaccines produced would last the vaccinated a lifetime. That's what we were promised.
What the health system delivered was: (1) Fifteen days??? Don't get me started (2) Previous safety measures? Tossed aside, selling the EUA as political cover (3) Immunity? Less than a year, with or without boosters. Vaccine rollout in January, by November overseas governmental authorities were already warning their populations that none of the inoculations could protect against Omicron.
All of that, but there's more. Censorship by search engines, social media, video platforms of early treatments that already had been proven to be effective months BEFORE the vaccines would be rolled out. Fared/Tyson protocol had been proven the first spring, tens of thousand of lives might have been saved had the rest of us been permitted to even learn of them. Those precious few who HAD heard? Sorry, your hospital system or pharmacy refused to fill the prescription.
All of this, months BEFORE the first vaccine got injected into the first arm of the general public.
What we SHOULD be talking about but most of us WON'T is the epic failure: why this massive "refusal to treat" by the health care establishment in the the midst of a pandemic when the public was most in need of them?
The health authorities in America have blood on their hands. Why should any of us believe the next pandemic will be handled any better?
Also on this topic is the Pfizer fraud that has been uncovered by those reading the Pfizer documents that have been released. Naomi Wolf has assembled a team of volunteers made up of doctors, lawyers, scientists, and other experts in their fields to comb through the Pfizer documents and what they have found is FRAUD. The most obvious fraud is vaccinating the placebo group, or removing people from the trial if they suffered an adverse reaction, or losing track of study participants entirely, but it's worse than that. Pfizer knew their product was harmful and ineffective before this product was rolled out to the public. It's well documented.
https://campaigns.dailyclout.io/campaign/brand/cc3b3e5a-6536-4738-8ed6-5ee368c67240
Absolutely AGREE! The drug companies knew before even one person was injected in January 2021 that those shots did not prevent infection or transmission. They also knew how harmful they were but went ahead anyway because the public was begging for it. Begging for it! Because the media feared them into begging for it.
This was and is the sickest, most diabolical plan to mass vaccinated a global population with an experimental gene therapy with no long term safety studies and the ramifications of it are evident and will be far into the future.
People are ignoring all the young who are dying suddenly as the media calls it SADS (Sudden Adult Death Syndrome). Who is buying this BS? The same people that think Monkey Pox is a thing and not just an adverse reaction to the shot.
This is Fraud and Democide!!
The following is worth a read:
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A Mostly Peaceful Depopulation
Notes for My Corona Investigative Committee Interview
"Since the beginning of this manufactured crisis, the Berlin Corona Investigative Committee has been conducting the exploratory work that I would have expected every government and so-called public health organization to have undertaken from the outset.
The fact that this did not occur was one of the first signs that COVID represented a departure from all prior pandemic protocols, but the question I kept asking myself is, Why?
Here are some of the permutations of that question I started asking beginning in early 2020 and continuing through the present-day:"
https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/a-mostly-peaceful-depopulation
Anatomy of a Philanthropath: Dreams of Democide & Dictatorship
Part 1: A Mostly Peaceful Depopulation
https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-a-philanthropath-dreams
Anatomy of a Philanthropath: Dreams of Democide & Dictatorship
Part 2: Downloadable Digital Dictatorships
https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-a-philanthropath-dreams-947
Anatomy of a Philanthropath: Dreams of Democide & Dictatorship
Part 3: Yuval Noah Harari: Not the Man We Think He Is?
https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/anatomy-of-a-philanthropath-dreams-3fd
Well said. Rage ON!
“ the next pandemic?”
Wow.