Death to gays

Death to gays

The latest attack on homosexuals from the Christian fundamentalist tribe at the state Capitol pops up in the house health committee's budget bill.

Rep. Tom Emmer, a Republican from Eagan, has inserted a rider explicitly prohibiting funding for Minnesota AIDS Project (MAP), the state's largest nonprofit HIV service organization. This year MAP is receiving $403,000--or nearly 10 percent of its overall budget--in state funds for various prevention and education efforts.

Emmer also introduced language enjoining the state health agency from funding ?web sites, pamphlets, or other communications that contain sexually explicit images or language.?

This is, of course, a knock on MAP's work targeting gay and bi-sexual men. For years the nonprofit group has effectively utilized explicit materials to warn men at high-risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases about health risks.

According to MAP, the de-funding effort is being pushed by the notorious gay-baters at the Minnnesota Family Council.  The group is apparently offended by explicit sexual content contained on MAP's Pride Alive web site (which isn't even supported by state dollars).

"They do this every year," notes Bob Tracy, MAP's director of development. "They try to collect really inflammatory stuff that taken outside of the community context of sexually-active high-risk gay and bi-sexual men would be read as outrageously salacious."

Tracy argues that it's imperative to have effective prevention materials available on the Internet given that it's often used by men as a tool to locate sexual partners. "Just like we have to take our information into bars we have to take our information into that environment," he says. "We're trying to stop a sexually-transmitted infection so we have to talk about sex."

There is little chance that the provision will ultimately be adopted. The DFL-controlled Senate, where gays aren't so actively reviled, is unlikely to go along with such a radical move. But it's just one more chance for social conservative like Emmer to score points with the Minnesota Family Council and its ilk by attacking homosexuals.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: Owing to incorrect information furnished by MAP, I mistakenly fingered Rep. Tim Wilkin as the sponsor of the provisions cited above. The actual sponsor is Rep. Tom Emmer, as currently indicated. Sorry for the error.