SIVACRACY.NET

Siva already posted about Volokh's blogging on the issue of "homosexual conversion," and so have a bunch of other fine blogs. One point I haven't seen get enough attention, though, is that while Eugene is perfectly happy to say things like this:

"My earlier post noted in passing that male homosexual sex is much more dangerous for the men than is heterosexual sex. To my surprise, three people e-mailed me with fairly detailed messages that either denied or minimized these risks. I decided to respond, because this is actually an important point, on which people need to know the facts."

And this:

"Some readers challenged my claim that there is "disproportionate and grave health danger from male homosexual activity" to men, compared to the danger from male heterosexual activity. I think this danger is tragic, and I very much hope that medical advances will lead to the danger's decreasing. All decent people should agree that it's tragic. (The bunk that we hear from some quarters about AIDS being God's punishment for homosexuality would suggest, as some wit put it, that lesbians must be God's chosen people, since their rates are apparently very low.) But it seems to me quite clear that this danger is very much there."

...something important is getting glossed over. He doesn't spend any time talking about the risks of heterosexual sex for women. His whole emphasis is on the fact that heterosexual sex is safer for men. His brief allusion to the fact that lesbians have very low HIV infection rates is treated like a joke. I'm not laughing. If health is indeed Eugene's main concern about homosexual conversion, as he seems to claim it is, he should be advocating for as much "lesbian conversion" as possible. Instead, he is recommending the most dangerous kind of sex for females, without explicitly noting that enhanced safety for men comes (whoops, bad pun) at women's expense.

At one point he notes: "I'd prefer that men with bisexual orientations who can be happy with women not experiment with men; but that's a judgment about medical risk, not about the inherent morality of "conversion" attempts, and in any event it doesn't apply to lesbianism." Not good enough. Heterosexual sex puts women at risk not only for HIV, but other STDs such as the virus that causes cervical cancer, and of course unplanned pregnancies as well. If Volokh really cares about sexual health and safety, he should be warning women not to have sex with men, period. Logical coherence would seem to require that he laud "lesbian coversion" as a positive phenomemon. But as far as I can tell, he hasn't. Hmmm.

You can find the quoted posts and others on the topic at The Volokh Conspiracy, to which I prefer not to link. (Kudos, though, to his co-blogger Orin Kerr, for pressing Volokh on many of his claims and for being one of the smartest, most thoughtful and most decent conservatives I know).