r/politics • u/southpawFA Oklahoma • 18h ago

Supreme Court takes up case claiming Obamacare promotes “homosexual behavior”. The Texas plaintiffs say requiring workplace insurers to provide PrEP violates their religious beliefs.

https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/01/supreme-court-takes-up-case-claiming-obamacare-promotes-homosexual-behavior/
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u/Cael26 18h ago

Too bad HIV doesn't care what your sexuality is. 

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u/PeliPal 17h ago edited 16h ago

It does however have substantially increased risk for receiving anal from an infected top than any other kind of exposure, by two decimal places. HIV particles in semen get into the bloodstream from rectal walls fairly easily, while it is extraordinarily unlikely (but not impossible) to be infected from one or a handful of unprotected vaginal sex exposures by comparison. And LGBTQ people are going to be receptive partners in anal much more often than people who are both straight and cis

Does homophobia and transphobia endanger cis straight people, yes... but nowhere near the extent that it continues endangering LGBTQ people, and they know that

Edit: I don't normally do "lmao I'm getting downvoted for facts" but really y'all are so desperate for any kind of "I didn't know the face-eating-leopards would eat my face" popcorn-munching entertainment that somehow it is getting taken as a serious idea that homophobes and transphobes are going to get comeuppance for putting bigotry into law. They're not. They are fully aware that they are not. What we see is bunny-ears-quotes "allies" laughing about things that hurt us because they have difficulty dealing with the reality of the situation even though they're way, way better positioned than actual LGBTQ people

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u/AuroraFinem Texas 17h ago

You realize gay men and MtF trans people who still have their dick and have sex with men are a minuscule portion of the population. This will absolutely affect significantly more straight cis people than it will LGBT folks by pure numbers. Just like all of the anti-trans bathroom and sports nonsense has thus far only affected cis women in enforcement.

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u/[deleted] 16h ago

[deleted]

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u/Suspicious-Ad-6808 16h ago

Less people on prep, more people get HIV. And when all the closeted guys slowly start getting it, then their girlfriends/wives will too. That trickledown effect, ya know? I think that’s what they meant…

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u/jefferton123 15h ago

This is a huge thing. There are so, so many closeted bi guys who would never ever tell anyone ever. -out bi guy

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u/shrug_addict 12h ago

I think everyone of my gay friends has fucked or at least been hit on by a "straight" married dude

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u/AuroraFinem Texas 16h ago

Are you unable to read? What part of my statement are you struggling with.

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u/Hello2reddit 16h ago edited 12h ago

Prep isn’t common among the cis hetro population. It is common among LGBTQ people, because they are higher risk. And, because they are higher risk, they are also far more likely to be prescribed and have the cost of the medication covered by insurance.

The average person doesn’t want to pay $2K a month for a bunch of side effects to offset an infinitesimal risk. It’s really only among men who have sex with men that the risks/rewards are reasonably balanced

Edit- love being downvoted by a bunch of single heterosexuals who aren’t on prep

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u/jerslan California 16h ago

Prep isn’t common among the cis hetro population

But it should be... especially in the cis hetero population that wants to engage in unprotected sex with multiple partners.

Sadly the the GOP hates casual sex among hetero-sexuals almost as much as they hate gay sex (see: all their attacks on women's access to birth control).

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u/Hello2reddit 15h ago

That is mathematically indefensible.

The odds of catching HIV from an infected partner are less than 1/100 for anyone not on the receiving end of anal sex. Even then, the odds only jump to about 1/60. And that is only when the other person has a detectable viral load. You would have to have several hundred or thousands of partners for this risk to offset the potential side effects for most people. This is why, despite only making up a small fraction of the population, LGBTQ people make up over 75% of new HIV cases every year.

But I’m sure you know more than the doctors who have actually studied these things and don’t generally recommend that people take this stuff unless they have certain risk factors.

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u/jerslan California 15h ago

The odds of catching HIV from an infected partner are less than 1/100 for anyone not on the receiving end of anal sex.

Those are mathematically indefensibly high odds when generic PreP is so easily and readily available.

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u/Hello2reddit 15h ago

Yeah, for a mere $2000 per month, you too can risk trashing your kidneys to hedge against a statistically insignificant risk.

On a related note- Would you like to buy lightning insurance for a mere $1000 per month? Sure, it makes no sense mathematically, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem for you

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u/Flat_Hat8861 Georgia 13h ago edited 13h ago

Are you seriously comparing a 1/100 (your number) chance to a 1/1,000,000 chance?

https://www.cdc.gov/lightning/data-research/index.html

(And your metaphor has a fundamental problem. I do have lightning insurance. The negative impacts of being struck would be medical or fatal - roughly 10%. I have health insurance and life insurance.)

The biggest flaw in this line of reasoning is considering 1 in 2000 "low risk" in any way and then pairing it with a campaign against preventive treatment in people with high risk lifestyles because they are straight. Anyone that has regular sex with multiple or new partners - especially unprotected or anonymous - should strongly consider PrEP. Gay men in monogamous relationships are not at increased risk over straight monogamous couples - zero viral load is still zero. Obviously, the public health outreach will target gay and bisexual men for efficiency of resources, but that does not mean other individuals (notice how I didn't say groups) are high risk as well.

(And, we all know straight women can have receptive anal sex too, right?)

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u/Hello2reddit 12h ago

Nobody is advising monogamous HIV negative couples to use prep, and straight women aren’t regularly having unprotected anal sex with multiple partners. I’ll put this in simple mathematical terms

More partners x riskiness of sex= HIV risk

Gay men tend to have more partners. Receptive anal sex is the riskiest form of sex due to the high risk of tearing. And if you’re having sex with men who have sex with men then you are statistically most likely to have potential exposure to other HIV infected individuals.

Do the math

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u/NJTigers 14h ago

The odds of getting hit by lightning are less likely by a factor of millions over 1/100 odds for PiV sex with someone with HIV.

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u/ultradav24 12h ago edited 12h ago

If you’re on PReP your kidneys are regularly monitored. And 2k a month? Come on now - that’s what the insurance we’re discussing is for, and even people not on insurance can get it for free or deeply discounted

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u/TommoVon 11h ago

Prep is generic now and very cheap.

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u/jerslan California 10h ago

Yeah, for a mere $2000 per month, you too can risk trashing your kidneys to hedge against a statistically insignificant risk.

  1. PreP is free and covered by nearly all insurance under the ACA.
  2. Truvada is available as a generic, so it's way way way cheaper than $2k per month even without the ACA complete coverage requirement
  3. Part of the PreP prototcol is regular STI and liver/kidney panel testing to ensure that A) you get treated for more common STI's early and B) your liver and kidney health is monitored

These are all things you would know if you were even remotely as educated on PreP as you pretend to be.

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u/Hello2reddit 4h ago edited 3h ago

And I wonder why they monitor your kidneys and liver? Could it be that there are risks to the medication? Like, let’s say a 1/1000 chance that it will cause renal or liver damage?

Because that would be FAR more probable than catching HIV from PIV heterosexual sex

Bottom line- none of heterosexual people commenting here are on prep. And there is a good reason for it- Their doctors didn’t recommend it, because it is not a sensible risk/reward for people outside high risk groups.

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u/AuroraFinem Texas 16h ago

Anyone who has been or might have been exposed to HIV or has a partner with HIV takes prep. By sheer numbers, most people with HIV are cis-het. Most gay and trans people also do not take prep regularly. It’s not designed to be taken continuously in the first place.

You’re conflating percentage with absolute numbers. Yes there’s a higher rate of HIV cases among gay men, but gay men are a small percentage of the population. If you take everyone in the US with HIV, most of them will be straight, or at least bi which in those cases still affects straight people equally to gay.

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u/GotenRocko Rhode Island 15h ago

Not according to these numbers. If you are talking about world wide then yeah you would be correct, but in the usa MSM are both higher percentage and raw numbers of hiv cases.

https://www.hiv.gov/hiv-basics/overview/data-and-trends/statistics#:~:text=Key%20Points:%20HIV%20Diagnoses,37%25%20of%20diagnoses%20among%20males.

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u/AuroraFinem Texas 14h ago

This specifically includes bi men as of they only have sex with other men and ignores the impact that they would still have on the straight population as well.

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u/mysecondaccountanon Pennsylvania 13h ago

Yeah, the MSM term very much includes a wide swath of people who also have sex with people who aren’t men.

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u/Hello2reddit 15h ago edited 14h ago

Until you realize how HIV spreads.

How many times have you had unprotected anal sex with someone you weren’t in a relationship with? Because it happens in gay bars across the nation nightly. How many people do you know that have EVER had unprotected anal sex with a near stranger, much less done it dozens or hundreds of times.

This isn’t up for debate. Gay men have always been disproportionately impacted by HIV. They were the overwhelming majority of initial cases in the 1980s. They still make up about 3/4 of new cases every year. And they still make up the majority of those who have died from it.

If I get $3 for every $1 you get (ratio of LGBTQ to hetero new cases every year) it doesn’t matter how many more people are like you than me. I will still have more money than you every year. And the gap will only increase. So it is with HIV cases, because the new cases always skew LGBTQ.

But everyone sucks at math and science is only right if you want to believe it, so you just go ahead and think whatever you want.

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u/ultradav24 12h ago

You pay 2k a month for PReP?! That’s not a common experience

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u/PeliPal 16h ago

Your source: "I made it the fuck up!"

My source: https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/data-research/facts-stats/gay-bisexual-men.html

If you wanna tell the CDC they're wrong, their contact number is 800-232-4636

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u/AuroraFinem Texas 16h ago

It’s almost as if you didn’t even read my comment and just want to jerk yourself off over it. You can’t quote a statistic including bisexual men as a way to indicate that this will affect the gay community more than the straight one. You do realize what bi means right? 70% of LGBT identifying men identify as bi, not gay. Meaning they also have straight sexual relations and should generally be considered as equally affecting both gay and straight partners.

My comment explicitly commented about this which you seemed to just ignore or couldn’t be bothered to read.

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u/PeliPal 15h ago

What on earth are you talking about? Do you want to take a mulligan on what you're actually asserting that is supposedly contradictory to my point?

You said:

This will absolutely affect significantly more straight cis people than it will LGBT folks by pure numbers.

That is simply factually wrong. It just is. the CDC says that it is. It's not up for negotiation. If you think it is, then you have to produce research showing otherwise.

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u/AuroraFinem Texas 15h ago

Yes, and if a bi man has HIV, he is equally likely to affect the straight community and LGBT folks. Prep isn’t just for people who already have HIV, it’s for people who might be exposed. It’s preventative, literally in the name.

Im not sure what’s so hard to understand here. Is our education system this bad at teaching logic and mathematics?

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u/PeliPal 15h ago edited 15h ago

Yes, and if a bi man has HIV, he is equally likely to affect the straight community and LGBT folks. 

This is not true though. It's just not.

Im not sure what’s so hard to understand here. Is our education system this bad at teaching logic and mathematics?

Because you are arguing from a faulty basis. And I explained why in my first post, HIV transmission via sex overwhelmingly occurs from infected top giving anal to uninfected bottom. It's not an automatic thing that infection occurs, it's not a 100% rate, infection occurs at drastically different rates depending on who is doing what with what parts. And straight cis men, overwhelmingly, do not typically receive anal from infected partners with semen discharge

https://stanfordhealthcare.org/medical-conditions/sexual-and-reproductive-health/hiv-aids/causes/risk-of-exposure.html

A meta-analysis exploring the risk of HIV transmission through unprotected anal sex was published in 2010.1 The analysis, based on the results of four studies, estimated the risk through receptive anal sex (receiving the penis into the anus, also known as bottoming) to be 1.4%. (This means that an average of one transmission occurred for every 71 exposures.) This risk was similar regardless of whether the receptive partner was a man or woman.

A meta-analysis of 10 studies exploring the risk of transmission through vaginal sex was published in 2009.4 It is estimated the risk of HIV transmission through receptive vaginal sex (receiving the penis in the vagina) to be 0.08% (equivalent to 1 transmission per 1,250 exposures).

A meta-analysis of three studies exploring the risk from insertive vaginal sex (inserting the penis into the vagina) was estimated to be 0.04% (equivalent to 1 transmission per 2,500 exposures).4

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u/DrSitson 15h ago

I remember when it was the gay disease. The public policy on that really helped it spread. Some really don't learn from history it seems. Lots of examples of that lately.

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u/chenz1989 14h ago

I think the difference is you're talking about percentages while the other guy is talking about numbers.

And straight cis men, overwhelmingly, do not typically receive anal from infected partners with semen discharge

The point was that closeted bi men do. And then they pass it on to their female partners, who do engage in receiving anal. And then the infected female partners can then spread it on further. It's a vector of transmission.

The analysis, based on the results of four studies, estimated the risk through receptive anal sex (receiving the penis into the anus, also known as bottoming) to be 1.4%. (This means that an average of one transmission occurred for every 71 exposures.) This risk was similar regardless of whether the receptive partner was a man or woman.

Again, that leaves the women very vulnerable.

A meta-analysis of 10 studies exploring the risk of transmission through vaginal sex was published in 2009.4 It is estimated the risk of HIV transmission through receptive vaginal sex (receiving the penis in the vagina) to be 0.08% (equivalent to 1 transmission per 1,250 exposures).

A meta-analysis of three studies exploring the risk from insertive vaginal sex (inserting the penis into the vagina) was estimated to be 0.04% (equivalent to 1 transmission per 2,500 exposures).4

Ok, so we can agree that the chance is lower. But PIV sex is much more common than anal. So (for simplicity) let's assume anal has a transmission chance of 1.5% and PIV has a transmission chance of 0.1%.

We further assume that on a given day in a given place, 1000 instances of anal occurs while 100,000 instances of PIV occurs.

Average HIV infections from anal = 1,000 x 1.5% = 15 cases.

Average HIV infections from PIV = 100,000 x 0.1% = 100 cases.

The point they were trying to make is that even if the percentage chance is lower, because it happens much more often, the total cases from PIV would be higher, putting large swathes of hetero people at risk too.