By Jim Brown and Ed Vitagliano
(AgapePress) – An abstinence advocate says while the mainstream media continues to portray AIDS as an epidemic among U.S. heterosexuals, and the federal government spends massive amounts of money to fight the fatal disorder, other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) are claiming far more lives.
Motivational speaker Lakita Garth says America was already in a national state of emergency before 9/11 when the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that 87% of newly reported viruses are sexually transmitted. Half of all sexually active single adults have at least one STD — and Garth says most of them do not even know they are infected.
The former Miss Black California and Black Miss America runner-up says nearly twice as many people died last year of Hepatitis B than died of AIDS.
“All we every hear about is AIDS because [it] is politically expedient [and] there are lots of agendas behind it,” Garth says, “but nearly twice as many people died as the result of another sexually transmitted disease known as human papillomavirus [HPV], which is the leading contributor to cervical cancer.”
According to Garth, condoms are virtually no protection in preventing the transmission of HPV, which she says people are 20 times more likely to contract than AIDS.
People like Lakita Garth and Christian groups that encourage abstinence before marriage and then monogamy within marriage have more than just the Bible on their side — they also have medical science on board.
According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), for example, women who have had multiple sex partners are at a higher risk for developing cervical cancer than women who are less sexually active. That is because the primary risk factor for developing cervical cancer is HPV.
HPV is incurable, and is the most common sexually transmitted disease in the United States, according to the CDC. There are some 20 million Americans infected with it, and 5.5 million new cases are reported in the U.S. each year.
The ACS website lists “intercourse at an early age,” “having many sexual partners,” and “having unprotected sex at any age” as the types of sexual behavior that increase a woman's risk of getting HPV. ACS also warns that using condoms is not a guarantee against HPV infection, because the virus can be transmitted from areas of the body not covered by a condom.
Garth, who speaks to more than half a million school students every year, says most of those young people are not immoral but rather “amoral” — or without moral standards. Teenagers, she says, are not being given boundaries or guidelines to abide by when it comes to sex and relationships.
“The previous generation has lowered the bar so far that the next generation has had to crawl through the sewer just to get to the other side,” Garth says. “[Parents] wonder 'Why are we cranking out the kind of kids we're cranking out?' — and it's because impressionable minds live up to or down to the expectations that are placed upon them.”
According to Garth, when adults tell young people they are going to have sex regardless or that peer pressure is too great to resist the temptation, it gives kids no “out.” She says many adults do not realize young people are reasoning from an entirely different mindset than they had during the sexual revolution.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)
