Tackling the Permissive Society.

Above, the song of childhood, Puff the Magic Dragon and below a comment from a You Tube user – American English unedited: “The first time in my adulthood I heard this, I bursted into tears, and at that time, I really did not cry often. I did not realize why this song is so moving until lately when I looked at the lyrics good. The dragon is just a metaphor for your childhood, which you have lost. We all lost the magical perspective to life……”
Today’s Daily Mail in the top left hand corner of page 20 carries a brief article about proposals to provide homosexual men with a new drug that can help prevent HIV but costs £5000 per annum per patient.
It then goes on to report that local authorities should supply – at council taxpayers expense – condoms to boys as young as 13 to try and reduce the rising increases of syphilis (FAO to DM: there is one “l” and not two) and gonorrhoea.
The drug in question is called PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) and the Daily Mail has already come in for a great deal of flak from the politically correct.
Herewith a US government information site about the drug: http://www.cdc.gov/hiv/risk/prep/
Herewith the Huffington Post’s report: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/prep-hiv-prevention-drug-daily-mail-nhs_uk_57a19640e4b07cb01dd0c6fe
Quoting from the Huffington Post: MP Steven McDonald said he “thought we’d passed this dangerous shit”. The MP for Glasgow South, who is gay, described the Mail’s story as “thinly veiled homophobia”. The Huffington Post continues; Natasha Devon, the Government’s former children’s mental health tsar, called the newspaper “bastards” saying, “they just saw an opportunity to suggest contracting HIV is a ‘lifestyle choice’ [and therefore] not worthy of investment.”
The British Gazette will ignore McDonald’s coarseness but will address the comments of Ms Natasha Jade Devon MBE – clearly a fully paid up and honoured member of the politically correct.
Ms Devon castigates the DM’s use of the term “lifestyle choice” what Ms Devon is really complaining about is the DM is appearing to criticise a lifestyle choice Ms Devon approves of. There are of course lifestyle choices that Ms Devon does not approve of and would fully support prosecutions of certain persons indulging in these disapproved choices – such as heterosexual men paying for sex with a non-coerced and willing prostitute. This is because one of the beliefs of the politically correct is that there is no such thing as an non-coerced and willing prostitute. For Ms Devon, ALL prostitutes are victims of exploitation and ALL their clients are sexual abusers. No “ifs” no “buts”.
The British Gazette however does not disagree with Ms Devon on the point that this new drug could help public health. Looking at the issue on a strictly financial basis, the costs of treating a person with PrEP may well be lower than treating that person with antiviral drugs to prevent the onset of AIDS. However, at £5,000 per annum, PrEP is most certainly many times more expensive than condoms – which the person buys themselves.
Of course, the reason for the politically correct brigade’s intemperate fury with the DM is that the DM appears to challenge and criticise the social mores pertaining in 21st Century Britain.
There are of course many British Gazette readers who will argue to a return of the days of “traditional values” and where teenage girls such as Bella Thorne, left in 2012 when she was fifteen were not attired thus.
Sadly however we cannot put the genie back in the lamp or putting all the evils into the jar (not a box) that Pandora had opened, leaving only “Hope” inside once she had closed it again. We now live in a different age. The internet is a great blessing. But it is also a great curse.
So the question we have to address is how to address the issue of recreational sex.
The viewpoint of the Christian church and the Jewish faith is (some clergy please note) that sex is between a man and a woman who are married to each other. From that point there are of course denominational differences of which there is no need to discuss. This of course can be regarded as the traditional religious position.
For the purposes of the article we make the assumption that those of the Muslim faith are of the same viewpoint.
Of course the church’s teachings on this subject have always been observed in the breach. Shakespeare has Hamlet on the issue in 1602:
Ay, marry, is’t:
But to my mind, though I am native here
And to the manner born, it is a custom
More honour’d in the breach than the observance.
The difference is that in Shakespeare’s time and since then up till recently the correctness of the church’s stance has never been challenged directly. Even the court lascivious of Charles II held to the notional principal of Christian virtue even though it was notoriously absent. Today however children are not only not taught this, they are taught a curious guilt free experiment as you like. They are taught the mechanics, better described as “organics” but little of the a proper context.
The important aspect however is to concentrate on those things we can do something about and not spend so much time of trying to change things over which we have limited control. The FACT is that public health is something we can and should do something about. Medical professionals normally suggest that prevention is not only better but also cheaper than a cure. The fact is that sexual health is a very important issue as it not only effects let us say the philanders, but also their unsuspecting partners. The most obvious example, a husband seeking recreational sex from a woman of let us say, “easy virtue” contracting what was known as a “social disease” and passing same onto his wife.
We should be prepared to address this serious issue focused on to aspects: public health and personal responsibility. This does not mean people should go around quoting Leviticus 18:22 to men who describe themselves as “Gay”. However the issue of sexually transmitted disease has reached such an extent and the idea of spending £5,000 per year of tax payers money on every individual in the country with a potential interest in a certain form of penetrative sex is not on.
The FACT is that most people in the UK – the Editor included – values the NHS enormously and genuinely appreciates the principal of free at the point of use. The FACT is that there are many Britons with serious health issues only too aware that were they unfortunate to be US Citizens they would have faced financial ruin long ago.
However, it is now the opinion of the British Gazette that the bull of the public health implications of the widespread practice of recreational sex has to be grabbed by the horns. This means that there is a very strong argument to suggest that a certain element of the US style of health financing should be introduced.
Let us be clear: The great glory or the NHS is the fact that as the late Tony Benn put it so well, the National Health Service is a splendid example of socialism in practise: From each according to his means (income and other taxes used to fund it) to each according to his needs (medical services provided on the basis of clinical need and not the ability to pay).
The British People (the Editor of this organ included) DO NOT want to loose this!
But this principal so lauded by Tony Benn cannot be extended to any man (or teenage boy) wanting to emulate the behaviour of a tom cat.
If therefore there was a requirement to have personal health insurance but that this insurance was limited in terms of liability insofar as the insurance company’s level of risk was concerned then there would be a financial incentive for individuals to adopt lifestyle choices that are healthy and a financial incentive not to adopt lifestyle choices that are unhealthy or dangerous. The idea would not be to seek to transfer onto the shoulders of the private individual the whole costs of this aspect of health cover but enough to encourage them to change their behaviour – this goes far wider than the issue of recreational sex. It goes into areas such as dangerous activities – tightrope walking?
Of course one huge impediment with this is that much of the problem is with children aged under 18. By nature many are irresponsible and to a delinquent boy of 13 living in a deprived area the idea that his medical insurance will cost a lot when he is a grown up is something he will not consider. To a 13 year old, age 18 and adulthood is a lifetime in the future. This issue has to be grasped however for the consequences of the libidinous actions of a delinquent boy of 13 are generally visited upon a girl of around the same age. Therefore the parents have to be made financially responsible. Many of course are poor and could not afford such liabilities. This is where this organ gets really controversial. To a parent or parents of a delinquent child faced with financial demands they cannot meet due to the actions of their child should be allowed to “give the child up” into the hands of a local authority.
One other obvious route to better public heath is to adopt this organ’s proposals of prostitution: http://www.british-gazette.co.uk/prostitution-should-we-make-it-legal/