Black Community News News and Commentary for Christians
Picture it. A doctor writes about the dangers of cigarettes. He discusses the elevated risks, including heart disease, stroke, and lung cancer. Society has more than sufficiently stigmatized smoking. Anybody complaining about “secondhand smoke” has facts and popular opinion on his side. A doctor encouraging people to smoke or afraid to discourage people from smoking would cause confusion at best and disgust at worst.
But take another high-risk activity — homosexual sexual behavior. It is a fact that men who have sex with men, about two percent of the U.S. population, account for two-thirds of all new HIV cases every year. Men who have sex with men account for 75 percent of syphilis cases. They are at increased risk of anal and oral cancers, hepatitis, and alcohol and drug abuse.
Homosexual sexual behavior, like smoking, is harmful to your health.
Yet to warn about one is “controversial” and politically incorrect. Why? Because one has a powerful lobby to normalize this behavior and stifle dissent. Homosexuality has gone beyond mainstream. People who have sex with people of the same sex are now a quasi-protected class, one whose special rights are beginning to trump the fundamental, constitutional right to religious liberty.
Dr. Paul Church is a urology professor at Harvard who had admitting privileges to a local hospital. He commented on a hospital discussion portal and received hospital e-mails promoting homosexual “pride.” He wrote about this high-risk behavior. From the Christian News Network:
“The evidence is irrefutable that behaviors common within the homosexual community are unhealthy and high risk for a host of serious medical consequences, including STD’s, HIV and AIDS, anal cancer, hepatitis, parasitic intestinal infections, and psychiatric disorders,” Church wrote on the [hospital’s] portal on one occasion, according to reports.
“Life expectancy is significantly decreased as a result of HIV/AIDS, complications from the other health problems, and suicide. This alone should make it reprehensible to the medical community, who has an obligation to promote and model healthy behaviors and lifestyles,” he said.
For this, the truth, the hospital gave Dr. Church a choice: quit or we investigate you. He asked to be taken off the e-mail list. He wasn’t. He continued to criticize the hospital.
“Celebrating sexual perversions is highly inappropriate, especially in the context of a medical center that should be aware of the negative health consequences of high risk behaviors,” Church wrote in 2013. “It also ignores and dishonors the religious convictions and moral objections that many members of the hospital community share who are opposed to these behaviors.”
Dr. Church was eventually expelled from the hospital. His recitation of facts was “offensive” to staff. He recently lost his appeal for reinstatement. Liberty Counsel, which represents Kim Davis and recently won a lawsuit against a city in Massachusetts for discriminating against Christians, represents Dr. Church.
Christians, gird yourselves for more of the same. Our mission is to be relentless in the face of religious discrimination. What offends us doesn’t matter to those committed to infringing on our rights. Don’t back down.
I was with him until he brought religious convictions into the discussion. Health-wise certain sexual behaviors are more risky. As a doctor, it is his job to remind his patients of safer methods. After that, the patient is responsible. He should not be fired for doing that.