And so how exactly does he intend to make sure that the man suffers the negative consequences as well? It takes two to tango...

I really despise these hypocrites.

SICK.

Sex obsessed. That's what they are. Sometimes it seems all these religious conservatives do is think about the rest of us having sex.

Which sort of creeps me out.

I read about this piece of heartless stupidity this morning. As I recall Schultheis went on to say, in so many words, that he HOPED the child of an HIV+ mother went on to develop AIDS, and soon, so the mother would suffer these negative consequences even more.

To paraphrase Barney Frank, the concern with the right wing over unborn children beings at conception and ends at birth.

I'm all for the religiotards having less sex. Fewer opportunities to pass on that stupid gene

The silver lining is that this crackpot was all alone on this issue. There may be some hope that even Republicans can see the light in promoting public health.

Schultheis believes it's important for women to face "negative consequences" for sexual behavior that he considers "unacceptable."

That's doesn't really tell the whole story. Schultheis believe CHILDREN of women who engage in sexual behavior he considers unacceptable should pay the price for that behavior.

Wait, no, that's not good enough. He believes that because some women may engage in sexual behavior that he deems unacceptable, their children AND the children of women who contract HIV through other means, ought to be punished.

So let's say dad goes on a business trip and decides to get himself a hooker. Dad gets HIV and passes it to mom, who had sex with dad in the course of their traditional marriage. (which fortunately hasn't been destroyed by the homo-nups). According to Schultheis, their kid deserves to get AIDS because of dad's dalliance.

But these guys are all really pro-life. Just ask them.

Well, it's carrot-and-stick. And governments do employ both carrot and stick-- just ask anyone who's been incarcerated. The specific argument against Shulteis is that he advocates punishment where no crime has been committed. Most people, including everyone else in the Colorado state Senate, agrees that's not a good idea.

The key is to discourage sex.

No. The key is to punish WOMEN for having sex, because all women are inherently evil and all men are utterly helpless before their evil powers. Or something like that.

Basically, if I choose to use my vagina in a manner not approved by Schultheis, I deserve to get AIDS, as does anyone related to me, except a man, because they don't have vaginas.

Or something like that.

The specific argument against Shulteis is that he advocates punishment where no crime has been committed.

Well, no, the specific argument against Schultheis is that he wants to punish someone who had nothing to do with the so called "unacceptable" behavior. He wants the baby to get AIDS to teach the mother a lesson. That's flat out sick.

I despise hypocrites like this too, but one thing is worth mentioning: the bill passed 32-1. Many pro-choicers (like many pro-lifers, gun nuts, etc. etc) tend to view their opponents as monolithic and defined by their most extreme members. Hence, the oft-heard complaint that pro-lifers, broadly speaking, seek only to punish women for having sex. This example shows pretty clearly that there are, indeed, extremists who want just that, but I'm certain that there are other pro-lifers among the 32 yes votes in the CO Senate - yet they didn't follow this extremist's invitation to prioritize punishment over health.

It's just something to bear in mind for those who would paint every pro-lifer with the same broad brush.

It's not just sex. I'm sure Schultheis would also oppose ER treatment for, say, drug users, participants in a bar fight, or jackass stunt injuries.

It's important to remember that Colorado Springs, home to the Air Force Academy, was one of the most liberal, tolerant cities in Colorado until it was invaded by these creeps, under the direction of James Dobson and Ted Haggard and supported by rightwing money from all over the country. They drove out the residents they didn't like, going so far as to hold 24-hr. prayer vigils in front of their houses until the victims sold for pennies to members of the Christofascist congregations. All this is documented in the books "American Fascists" and Christian Nation."

They've been partially checked for now, but these were the groups behind the last federal government. They're not just nuts, they're this far from imposing on the country what happened to Colorado Springs. They're domestic terrorists, more dangerous than the Taliban because they still operate largely unopposed. Their callousness toward people who are not exactly like them is in the worst tradition of humanity.

Does Schultheis have the local distributorship in Colorado Springs for branding irons with Scarlet Letters?

These people are a bunch of emotionally and sexually retarded creeps who blame women for the twisted freak show that goes on in their sleazy little minds. They are rocks you don't want to look under. And they're usually the ones who get caught with hookers.

Look closely at the fundamentalist "Moselm" vision of sexuality and compare that with the fundamentalist "Christian" version, or the fundamentalist "Jewish" version or the fundamentalist "Hindu" version and you see why, when you take great nouns like Moslem, Christian, Jew and Hindu and put the word "Fundamentalist" in front of them, you have adjectives that descrive the various shades of shit brown that result.

Scared little boys who have never had much sex (when they go to hotels and watch porn, they only have to watch for 90 seconds to get their jollies) and who are terrified of their women having sufficient experience to know how deficient as men they really are.

You don't have to be promiscuous to contract HPV.

According to a report in today's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, about 25 million women ages 14-59 carry the human papillomavirus.

Forty-five percent of women between 20 and 24 are infected with a strain of the virus. And condoms don't prevent the spread of HPV.

It's a real problem that narrow minded abstinence only approaches won't address, since that approach has only resulted in a dramatic increase in the negative consequences of sexual activity over the last several years.

Education, education, education. The adult and youth population of this country is woefully uneducated about sex, and unfortunately, that ignorance does kill.

Amalgamated from above: "Twisted, heartless stupidity." Take note, Mr. Benen.

According to Schultheis, their kid deserves to get AIDS because of dad's dalliance.

Close -- the kid deserves to get AIDS because Mommy was a bad wife and didn't keep her husband satisfied, so he was forced to visit a prostitute. If only she'd been a better wife, he wouldn't have strayed and none of this would have happened.

As with all of these things, it's always Mommy's fault in the end. Always.

I refer to Deuterotomy 24:16 "Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; everyone shall be put to death for his own sin."

why does this guy hate the Lord?

I believe that the term "pro-family" is just another euphemism which really means anti-women.

These religious right do-gooders will say anything to keep women in their "place." They are terrified of powerful women who demand a say in what happens to their own bodies.

It is all about power.

Ancient as dirt: If you can't control your women, you can't rule the world.

People need to be constantly reminded that these are core social conservative values, which form a primary plank of the the republican platform. These are your hard-core Bushies.

Why stop there? How about obesity, heart disease, and diabetes? Most of the time those result from "bad behavior." And, anyway, aren't diseases God's will?

So stupid it burns.

Infants should be punished for choosing HIV+ mothers. How complicated is that?

It's practically identical to Schultheis' take. The key is to discourage sex. If the discouragement leads to "negative consequences" -- cancer, HIV, etc. -- so be it.

If it leads to negative consequences for the children, they're fine with that too, it would seem.

Remember, these folks like to consider themselves "pro-family."

Last I looked, they also claim to be "pro-life," especially when it comes to shedding crocodile tears for innocent children.

Hypocrites.

It is opinions like his that lead me to believe that some in the “pro-life� crowd are against abortion because it removes the “punishment� for having sex, rather than out of the reverence for “the sanctity of life.�

Remember, these folks like to consider themselves "pro-family." No, I don't understand it, either.

Even more incredibly, they like to consider themselves followers of Jesus. I wonder what the Nazarene's thoughts on sickness and children might have been?

If only we had some way to know....

Y'all have short memories, folks.

In the 1990's the standard liberal line was -- like Schulteis -- to oppose requiring HIV tests for pregnant mothers (and their children). This was based on privacy concerns. And the health of the babies (and their mothers) be damned.

See Nat Hentoff's take on this: "When Good People do Bad Things: Feminists, Gays, and the ACLU all Fought Nettie Mayersohn," The Village Voice, 24 September 1996, 9.

In the 1990's the standard liberal line was -- like Schulteis -- to oppose requiring HIV tests for pregnant mothers (and their children). This was based on privacy concerns.

Privacy concerns. Consequences for "improper conduct."

Yeah, I see your point. Those are just the same, aren't they?

"Infants should be punished for choosing HIV+ mothers. How complicated is that? "

Don't forget the mothers! The mothers should also be punished, for unwittingly coupling with a dishonest, infected husband or boyfriend! Sin is conservative and commutative!

Remember, these folks like to consider themselves "pro-family."

Not to mention Christian.

This guy is very useful. He has exposed the sick core of the cultural "conservative" world. It is all based on a desire to punish...which is why almost all measures proposed by such people (in politics too) seem to increase the pain in the world.

It doesn't take Dr. Freud to sniff out what is going on. These people are deathly afraid of and angry with their own impulses, and are projecting that fear and anger onto the outside world. They are trembling in terror, ever threatened by "evil" which they see everywhere, which is natural because it is inside them and goes wherever they do.
I don't think it's a great stretch to see them as devil-worshippers, strange as that may sound. They think that Satan is lurking everywhere, that he has enormous powers --- say, to construct an entire world that looks like it was formed by geological processes and populated by evolution, but is really 6000 years old etc. Any entity that can do that must be very powerful. And so on with every affectionate compassionate, and/or erotic feeling that might spontaneously spring up in some poor adolescent (it's not hormones, it's the Devil!).

Why don't these folks trust God a little more? Do they not believe that He can take care of business on His own, but that they have to jump into everything on His behalf? Really, if He is so potent, can't we let him take care of some of this, say, by sending a hurricane...

It's almost possible to feel sorry for them. A few years ago I spent an interesting morning driving on I-70 from Kansas City to St. Louis. On the radio all I could get was one ranting hell-fire preacher after another, the densest agglomeration of such I had encountered anywhere on a cross-country driving trip that took me on US 20 from Kenmore Square in Boston to Newport, Oregon in 2 weeks. What made it interesting was that about every 5 miles or so on the highway I saw very large billboards for "adult" shops and bookstores, with videos, DVD's, sex-toys, the whole catalogue advertised.

Like the preachers, this was the most concentrated collection of such things I saw anywhere. I guess the folks needed the preachers...but I think the preachers need the sex shops too. It gives them all a target for their fear and loathing.

The irony is that so much of what they hate so is the free market entrepreneurial economy working away at top speed. There were no sex shops advertised in the USSR.

In the evolution of social conservatives sex is sanctioned exclusively within the religion because this will encourage a large and docile labor supply.

People, especially women, who engage in sex outside religious sanction are less likely to be tractable or produce tractable offspring.

It's not about society, it's about doing what the god-king tells you to do. Society is for the god-king.

Very sick. Punishment for people (oh sorry, just the women) who have a disease. And I suppose it's 'sin of the mothers' for the children. And why this assumption that HIV only comes from sexual promiscuity on the part of a woman. Husbands have been known to give it to their faithful wives. Yuk!

Is the man married? Has someone thought to ask both him and his wife why he thinks that kids should die because of something their parents (either one of them) had done?