Patient Zero and Ryan White

“Not so long ago, any form of sexuality not leading to the conception of children was seen as, at best, wanton lust, or worse, a perversion. One by one, the taboos have fallen.”
--Peter Singer

Among the many things I talked about with my father over the the weekend was gay civil rights. He takes the view that homosexuals choose to to be homosexual, that homosexual behavior is deviant, and that the government should not give them special civil rights as a consequence of their sinful choices.

I believe that homosexuality is largely a result of forces outside of choice such as genetics and that homosexuals should be given the same rights given to anyone else, including the right to enter into state-sanctioned stable life partnerships or civil unions.

Just as I think the church shouldn't intrude into affairs of state, I also think the state should not intrude into matters that are the domain of the church. Thus, I don't think the government should mandate that clergy should marry gays.

In the 2008 Arizona Proposition 102, I voted no to defining marriage as the union of a man and a wife in the Arizona constitution. My vote was driven by my sense that this was an effort to gin up Republican votes and that it policy contrary to a citizen's equal protection and privacy rights generally. But I was on the losing side, 56 percent to 44 percent.

Gaeton Dugas

The position that is held by my father is not uniformed. This Time, 1987 article personifies his anxiety in Patient Zero, Gaeton Dugas.

"Since the early days of the AIDS epidemic, researchers have reasoned that a handful of people -- maybe even a single individual -- bore the unknowing responsibility for having introduced the disease to North America and its first large group of victims, the homosexual community. By tracing sexual contacts, officials at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta in 1982 found a likely candidate: one man who, through his sexual liaisons and those of his bedmates, could be linked to nine of the first 19 cases in Los Angeles, 22 cases in New York City and nine more in eight other cities -- in all, some 40 of the first 248 cases in the U.S. The CDC acknowledged his role with an eerie sobriquet: it called him Patient Zero.

"Now Patient Zero is publicly identified for the first time in a stunning new book on the AIDS epidemic, And the Band Played On. Zero, says Author Randy Shilts, was Gaetan Dugas, a handsome blond steward for Air Canada, who used to survey the men on offer in gay bars and announce with satisfaction, "I'm the prettiest one." Using airline passes, he traveled extensively and picked up men wherever he went. Dugas developed Kaposi's sarcoma, a form of skin cancer common to AIDS victims, in June 1980, before the epidemic had been perceived by physicians. Told later he was endangering anyone he slept with, Dugas unrepentantly carried on -- by his estimate, with 250 partners a year -- until his death in March 1984, adding countless direct and indirect victims. At least one man indignantly hunted him down. Dugas' charm proved unfailing: he sweet-talked the man into having sex again."

I have had little contact with people who have identified themselves as gays, although it is likely that I have had gay friends over the years. Some of my thinking about how gays should be treated goes back to my days as a youth leader at the Willow Creek Commity Church in Barrington, Illinois. Another youth leader was stripped of his ministry because he “had the potential to sin”, which they implied but never quite stated that he was a homosexual. I was one of the youth leaders in Willow Creek’s young people group Prime Time during this shameful episode. While Matt was blubbering, a stalactite of mucus lengthening from his nose, I raised the obvious but unanswered question with Jon Bodin, the youth pastor: who among us does not have the potential to sin? As I drove out of the expansive Willow Creek parking lot, I thought to myself, “Where in all of Christendom are the Christians?”

In the Gospel of John, the crucifixion of Jesus is described in which the two Marys stood under Jesus’ cross. Sometimes, when we have friends in pain that is about all we can do: stand by their cross until the end. And that is what wife Nancy did for her friend David Mellner. You count your friends when you’re flat on your back, and Nancy was a friend to David from 1979. She was by his side when he went “code blue” and died of AIDS in 1988. David was 33 years old.

Much hatred is directed toward homosexuals, and I question the moral foundation for that hate. The Bible has verses that condemn homosexuality, but the Bible condemns a lot of things, not the least of which is hypocrisy. Some of proof texts against homosexuality are from the Old Testament, which also has verses that require us to kill our disobedient children (Deuteronomy 21:18-21, Leviticus 20:9, and more.) Furthermore, claims that Jesus is a “gay basher” forgets much of the message of the gospel that Jesus died for the least of us and for all of us, not for many or some of us (1 John 2:2, 2 Cor. 5:15, 1 Tim. 2:4-6, and more).

I might also mention that bigots throughout the history have used scriptual texts to oppress Jewish people, women, blacks, and other groups. Those verses do exist, and so the question then becomes: how should we evaluate such texts? My answer: through a clear understanding of the character of Jesus Christ, who was not an excluder but said: "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven." The Apostle Paul also defines the transcending ethical imperative: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus."

As much as I believe we can by force of will choose our destiny, I think nevertheless there is still much that we cannot choose. And one of the things I believe that we cannot choose is our sexuality. Maybe God made gays for the same reason He made blue birds and red birds. If it’s genetically based, we should no more criticize homosexuals than we should criticize people with black skins or blue eyes. If it’s environmentally based, it’s most plausible to believe that homosexuals were shaped by their early childhood family dynamics-- again a fact of existence that transcends personal choice. Some gays not coincidentally come from families with either absentee or weak fathers, fathers that were harshly moralistic, or families that are torn by divorce. They have grown up with poor parenting models.

I doubt the claim that people chose the gay lifestyle in the same way that people choose to go over the speed limit, because the consequences are so much more debilitating. The consequences are often the rejection by their family and church and ostracism by their community, including sometimes the loss of their job. Does it really make sense to say that anyone would freely chose any or all of that?

The final irony is that conservatives who rant most vehemently against homosexuals sometimes find homosexuals within their own families or are themselves homosexuals. And I think it’s only fair that conservatives that make an issue of homosexuality should open their closet so that all the world can see what kind of people and parents they are in how they treat their spouse and their children as well as their own fidelity to their marriage vows. They should make sure that there is no glass in their houses before they pick up those stones.

Ryan White

It is by the littlest hair from the littlest hamster that the scales tip positively for me on the question: does Christianity really matter? To re-frame the question, I ask: how does the Christian world view inform us as to how then shall we live? Is it relevant to how we behave, how truthful we are, and how we treat others, or is it irrelevant?

I think, for example, of how the Christians of Kokomo Indiana treated Ryan White who contacted AIDS through a blood transfusion. Ryan’s testimony before the President’s Commission on AIDS tells his story: “My name is Ryan White. I am sixteen years old. I have hemophilia, and I have AIDS. In 1971, when I was three days old, the doctors told my parents I was a severe hemophiliac, meaning my blood does not clot. December 17, 1984, I had surgery to remove two inches of my left lung due to pneumonia. After two hours of surgery the doctors told my mother I had AIDS. I contracted AIDS through my Factor VIII which is made from blood. I came face to face with death at thirteen years old. I was diagnosed with AIDS: a killer. Doctors told me I'm not contagious. Given six months to live a being the fighter that I am, I set high goals for myself. It was my decision to live a normal life, go to school, be with my friends, and enjoying day to day activities. It was not going to be easy. The school I was going to said they had no guidelines for a person with AIDS. The school board, my teachers, and my principal voted to keep me out of the classroom even after the guidelines were set by the I.S.B.H., for fear of someone getting AIDS from me by casual contact. Rumors of sneezing, kissing, tears, sweat, and saliva spreading AIDS caused people to panic. We began a series of court battles for nine months, while I was attending classes by telephone.

"Eventually, I won the right to attend school, but the prejudice was still there. Listening to medical facts was not enough. People wanted one hundred percent guarantees. There are no one hundred percent guarantees in life, but concessions were made by Mom and me to help ease the fear. We decided to meet them halfway:

· Separate restrooms
· No gym
· Separate drinking fountains
· Disposable eating utensils and trays

"Even though we knew AIDS was not spread through casual contact. Nevertheless, parents of twenty students started their own school. They were still not convinced. Because of the lack of education on AIDS, discrimination, fear, panic, and lies surrounded me:

· I became the target of Ryan White jokes
· Lies about me biting people
· Spitting on vegetables and cookies
· Urinating on bathroom walls
· Some restaurants threw away my dishes
· My school locker was vandalized inside and folders were marked FAG and other obscenities

"I was labeled a troublemaker, my mom an unfit mother, and I was not welcome anywhere. People would get up and leave so they would not have to sit anywhere near me. Even at church, people would not shake my hand.”

Finally, Ryan’s family decided to move to the community of Cicero, Indiana. Cicero welcomed Ryan with open arms. He attended Hamilton Heights High School, where students had all attended an informational seminar on AIDS. Ryan continued to speak out against discrimination toward people with AIDS. On August 18, 1990, ten days after Ryan died, Congress passed Public Law 101-381, the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency (CARE) Act. This Act was created to help states, communities and families cope with the growing impact of the AIDS epidemic.

The leading role taken by the Baptists and Methodists and Presbyterians of Kokomo County was shameful, but they were afraid and fear was fueling their ignorance. They saw Ryan not as a courageous kid with brown eyes and light brown hair who liked Robo Cop, Debbie Gibson music, Star Wars, Andy Griffith, and his two dogs but as a sin that needed to be demonized and exorcized and a disease that needed to be isolated and destroyed.

I would say then in summary to try to be tolerant of those around you, even though you don’t necessarily understand or agree with their behavior. “Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God, for Christ’s sake, has forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:32).

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As I get older, my hobbies become cheaper but somehow more satisfying. In my 30s, it was about stamp collection, day trading, and boating. Now, my hobbies pretty much start and end with gardening, talking, and writing. In my wide circle of corresponders is Mark Descher, Nancy’s cousin who got his PhD from Oxford University in England, after getting his undergraduate degree at Wheaton College several years after me and then interning at Willow Creek at the time I was there. He has since become a Catholic, and I believe he is now a professor of philosophy in Oklahoma. On just about everything, we are on different sides of religious and political issues. But Mark has a strong and clear mind and understands the ground rules of civil debate, and so I appreciate getting his considered opinion.

Mark wrote:

Great to hear from you, and I truly relish the kind of quality, serious conversation that is possible with a person such as you. I read your post with great interest. There is much to say, but I'll let a few comments suffice.

First, religion in general and Christianity in particular are relevant to morality. This is so in at least two ways. First, if God and an afterlife exist, then that has enormous consequences for the question, "How then shall we live." If our highest good is friendship with God, and if friendship with God is obtained, at least in part, through the moral life, then we have gargantuan reason,tremendous motivation, to live the moral life.

Second, not only does God and an afterlife provide a source of added motivation to live the moral life, but God's commands might well be the source of at least some moral obligations, important ones at that, that would not exist apart from a God to command them. For example, is every human being to be accorded with a minimally decent morality--call it "human rights"--or not? If so, why would any equal baseline of moral treatment obtain for all human beings when human beings are empirically so unequal in every morally relevant way? Answer: God commands it. That's why it is not surprising that when there is a loss of sensitivity to the divine in a culture it tends to get more careless with the value of human life and with the seriousness of grave evil done to the dignity of human life. I think the correlation is not accidental.

Third, you're certainly right that Christians have failed miserably to live up to their ideals, but I ask you to consider the folly, not to mention the non-sequitur, of therefore throwing away the ideals. The ideals stand, irrespective of how many Christians do or do not happen to live up to them.

Fourth, if you're going to point to failures on the part of Christians to exemplify the moral life, then you most certainly can point to any other religious, ethnic, national group and point out all of their failures, too, since all of them have them. But what is the point of doing that? Shouldn't the focus be on what morality truly requires and not on how some or other group(s) fail to live up to it?

Fifth, I think there is a very common and equally egregious mistake made in the thinking of many folks today regarding the application of compassion. Nowadays it is seen as a mark of moral goodness and intellectual sophistication to have compassion on certain interest groups as a matter of public policy. This, I think, is a mistake. I would argue, for example, that it is not compassionate to homosexuals or to the wider society at large to mainstream homosexuality. It is a dangerous lifestyle (especially for male homosexuals) that results in inordinate addiction, suicide and horrendous physical diseases. In fact, the average life-expectancy of an active homosexual male is between eight and twenty years shorter than his heterosexual counterpart and this holds true also in the Netherlands, a place extremely accepting of homosexuality, so it is not attributable to heterosexual persecution or stigmatization. Therefore, to mainstream homosexuality and teach it as an "alternative lifestyle" to impressionable school children is not compassionate; it is the opposite. On the other hand, where compassion is good and morally required is with respect to individuals. Individual homosexual people should be loved as the people they are, because that is what God commands, and because there is so much good to love in homosexuals, just as there is in heterosexuals. I believe it is not a cliché but the truth that we ought to love the sinner while hating the sin. This, of course, goes for homosexuals and heterosexuals alike. Much of what I believe is wrong-headed in our culture stems from this idea that moral goodness is constituted by having the right attitudes toward certain interest groups, but that it does not matter much how kind, generous, polite and civil a person is to the individuals with whom he associates. Our culture, I’m suggesting, is on the road to getting it exactly backwards. Compassion should be the basis upon how we treat the people we come into contact; it should not be the basis upon which we make public policy.

Sixth, on a different note, why do you think it is the case that people who make moral objections to the homosexuality are often themselves homosexuals in the closet? Is that Freud? Is that a clever ruse on the part of homosexuality to further their agenda by silencing opposition by labeling the opposes as being the very thing they oppose? I wonder, do you think that people who are deeply morally concerned about economic oppression are themselves secretly greedy oppressors? Do you think people who hate war secretly want to be shooting at the enemy from the front lines? Do you think people who have serious moral scruples about abuse of the natural environment are people who secretly enjoy seeing whales, baby seals and beautiful trees destroyed? Do you think those who oppose second-hand smoke secretly chain-smoke in their "closets"? Why is moral opposition homosexuality singled out for this dubious distinction?

Lastly, I became Catholic because I believe it is the true Church. The harder one thinks about the world, and especially about morality, one is driven inexorably either to the Catholic Church or to moral nihilism. Since the moral awareness of my heart is far too strong for me to buy into nihilism, I became Catholic. That has been the greatest blessing in my life. I'm sure you'll have plenty by way of response. I’m looking forward to reading what you have to say.

Blessings,

Mark

P.S. I've written a piece of late on homosexual marriage. If you want, I'll send it to you. I'd be delighted to get your comments on it.

(Excerpts follow.)

The historic Christian conception of marriage may be formalized as follows:

Is there really a historic Christian conception of marriage?

4) The proper context for sexual expression is the permanent bond of marriage
5) One of the purposes of the marital, sexual relationship is its complementary, unitive function of friendship and complete, mutual self-giving
6) One of the purposes of the marital, sexual relationship is its openness to procreation in every marital act

Let’s call 4-6 the ‘Traditional Understanding of Marriage’ (TUM) and those who endorse this understanding of marriage, TUMers.

I'm not sure I precisely understand some of the words used in (4) and (5). Point five may be a recent invention in the history of Christendom.
Point six strikes me as cruel, as it seems to create a caste of those who cannot have children. I question whether there is much scriptural foundation for such a teaching. I'm assuming you are right that it is Catholic dogma. But I see no warrant in assuming it is universally accepted Christian dogma. Sexuality is surely more than marriage and legitimately proceeds marriage and need not include marriage. I consider point six unfounded and reductionistic-- that marriage resolves itself into procreation with every marital act. I question whether TUMers even exists to any great extent. I guess hetros are just as capable of high risk behavior as homos, even they are to make every act of marital love a chance to engender children without regard to whether or not they are wanted.

My view is that homosexual expression is morally permissible to the same extent that heterosexual expression is morally permissible; however, they are not necessarily morally equivalent. On numbers alone, there never can be moral equivalency, just as there isn't moral equivalence between inter-racial marriages and other marriages. But that isn't an argument against the morality of gay marriages.

You seem to look at the consequences of dispensing with traditionally understood marriage (TUM) as a zero sum game, that with the advance of homosexual rights, there must of necessity be the recession of heterosexual rights. I see no basis for that.

As much as I admire the Catholic church for preserving the Bible through the dark ages and for her unmatched stream of intellectual thought, here is where the church disappoints me. It takes a certain sophistry to condemn birth control while venerating the institution of priestly celibacy-- both of which have no scriptural foundation whatever and are the source of much misery-- poverty in the first place and child abuse in the second place.

I consider it profoundly immoral-- and I used that word with precision-- to incite families to procreate if they don't have the material and psychological foundation to care for those children-- again, a beef I have with Catholic teaching. That mathematics (counting days) is moral whereas chemistry (the pill) is immoral strikes me as wonderously backwards.

While there may be other types of friendship that are genuine and intense, the friendship that involves the sexual uniting into “one flesh” of one man and one woman who stand before each other “naked and unashamed” with the possibility of producing offspring is sui generis. It is one of a kind.

Sure. But there are many ways to bring children into a family, including adoption and through birth. That a child is produced from one or the other of the dyad seems irrelevant. Lesbians can bring children into this world with no less efficacy that heterosexual women. And we can surmise that homosexuals can be no less effective, caring, and protective of their children than homosexuals.

The basis of discrimination in the case of cousins, animals, and polygamists is based on a state interest for reasons of genetic health, for reasons of law (poodles have no legal standing although trust funds for poodles do-- that the majestic equality of the law for you!), and for reasons of the protection of children. Equality is not a consideration. Homosexual behavior as manifested in marriage faces no such compelling state interest. Such behavior may rile up the right-wing, but there is nothing intrinsic in such behavior that is contrary to good governance.

I was waiting for you to invoke ontology. This strikes me as one of the better arguments for homosexual marriage-- that complementarity is resolved by the union of two souls that encapsulate differences without respect to physical sexual function. The opposite attract paradigm is as much true among hetrosexuals as homosexuals, again suggesting to me that gender is a trivial or a coincidental element in the equation.

Child abuse is surely the elephant in the room when it comes to Catholic teaching. Sure, pedophilia cuts across all faith. But the Catholic church does seem to have a problem in particular with this vice. I state this as a simple fact and I think the church is still struggling to come to terms with this. What is it about specifically about Catholic institutions and dogma that creates such a hothouse for depravity that has resulted in the bankruptcy of entire parishes? Could it be the creation of a mandarin caste of priestly celibates combined with female subordination that creates these conditions?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_sex_abuse_cases

I don't think you have quite made the case. The article seems to be an example of special pleading-- a sequence of somewhat dubious syllogisms that arrives at a presupposed conclusion of the immorality of homosexual marriage. I don't think you have shown that TUM exists or is held to the extent that you believe it is, that it is Christian scriptural doctrine, and that the depravity you think exists among homosexuals is organic to their nature.

I would argue that a homosexual marriage is not a new right but the extension of existing right by removing an irrelevant barrier to that right. The blacks that were liberated after the Civil War were not given new rights. They merely now had access to rights that were always available to them under the dictates of natural law.

The drive for universal tolerence especially among marginalized members of society is far from rhetoric. This is more than just a benign liberterian acceptance of disagreeable people or practices. It is the heart and soul of civil rights-- the slow and painful extension of those rights to people who have been denied those rights for illusory reasons-- and the Catholic church has a storied history in standing athwart such rights, be it in the realm of science, race, family life, politics, art, or religion.

As a pragmatic question, we might ask: what bad things will happen invidually or societally if there is gay marriage? Or, conversely, what good things will happen if there is gay marriage? That marriage is a stablizing force and a positive good in society is beyond dispute. What harm if that stablizing force and positive good good is extended to gays?

I see this debate also in terms of scapegoating, in much the same way Jews, blacks, and Catholic immigrants were in past generations. The purpose of this scapegoating? To maintain existing political and religious traditions and structures. In effect, anti-gay bigotry becomes a means to the end of political and religious discrimination through domination. But, as Kant notes, there is a better and higher way: "Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end."

Thank you for allowing me to read your essay.

Thank you for the comments on my chapter. I appreciate you taking the time to read it.

Well, I must say that when I had in mind contacting you and updating you on my ecclesial status I never envisioned that our conversation would be of the nature that it has been. But I am really enjoying it; I enjoy your willingness to engage and your energetic approach. It's really good.

What got me into researching and thinking seriously about homosexuality was the incident last year with our Representative, Sally Kern. (I'm quite confident that you know about it. If not, do a quick Google of her name and you'll get more than you ever wanted to know?) Several professors from the university (we live in a university town in the shadow of Oklahoma State) started writing letters to the editor of the local paper attacking her. That got me starting to think about the issue and impelled me to defend her. It eventuated in that chapter that you just read.

I wrote:

As regards to your comment about been disappointed by Christians, I suppose there is some truth to that. As a missionary kid, I've been on the receiving end of the end justifies the means ethic for much of my early life, whereby the salvation of souls trumps family life. On the other hand, in a conviction that has taken decades to crystallize, I do believe truth is the highest good and that epistemology—is it true or false? is it right or wrong?-- is prior to all philosophy and religion in which I include of course metaphysics and Christianity.

I think you make some valid points, for example, in the Sally Kern controversy. (I confess I didn't know of the issue until you brought it up.) Wikipedia describes one such comment as follows:

"In March 2008, Kern made national headlines when she stated:

"Studies show that no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than, you know, a few decades. So it's the death knell of this country. I honestly think it's the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam — which I think is a big threat, okay? Cause what's happening now is they are going after, in schools, two-year olds...And this stuff is deadly, and it's spreading, and it will destroy our young people, it will destroy this nation."[9][10]

After receiving attention for the remarks, Kern said "I said nothing that was not true" and refused to apologize."

These are the kind of statements to which I apply my epistemological scalpel. As a first amendment absolutist, I would be the first to defend her right to make that or any kind of a statement without regard to consequences.

On the other hand, if truth is important to us, than we have a fundamental obligation to evaluate its truthfulness. I'm sure others have done so, so there is no need for me to weigh in. As a rhetorical technique, sometimes exaggeration has its uses. However, exaggeration has the danger of undermining credibility, and I think this is what has happened here.

American Gothic

Violent crimes

-- There were 5.2 million violent crimes in the United States in 2005, up 2.5 percent from the previous year, the highest rate in 15 years.
-- In 2005, for every 1,000 persons age 12 or older, there occurred 1 rape or sexual assault, 1 assault with injury, and 3 robberies.
-- Murder, robbery and other violent crimes reported in the United States jumped 3.7 percent in the first half of 2006 over the same period in 2005, with robbery alone up by a starling 9.7 percent.
-- The United States has the largest number of privately owned guns in the world. In 2005, 477,040 victims of violent crimes stated that they faced an offender with a firearm. Campus shootings are rampant in the United States.

Crimes and Penalities

-- Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the U.S. Department of Justice has used the material witness warrant to imprison without charge at least 70 men.
-- Nearly three-quarters of terrorism suspects seized by the United States in the five years following the Sept. 11 attacks have not even made it to trial because of lack of evidence against them.
-- About three percent of the U.S. adult population, or one in every 32 adults, were in the nation's prisons and jails or on probation or parole. The federal prisons were operating at 34 percent over capacity.
-- The United States is the only country in the world that allows the use of police dogs to terrify prisoners. Each year, approximately 7,000 Americans died in U.S. prisons and jails. More than 1.5 million inmates are released each year carrying life threatening contagious diseases.
-- At least 13 percent of inmates in U.S. prisons had suffered sexual assaults and many have suffered frequent sexual abuses. The number of prisoners who had suffered sexual assaults over the past 20 years is likely to exceed one million.

Privacy

-- Two-thirds of Americans believe that the FBI and other federal agencies are intruding on their privacy rights. The use of electronic surveillance and search warrants in national security investigations jumped 15 percent in 2005.
-- Pentagon research team monitors more than 5,000 jihadist Websites, focusing daily on the 25 to 100 most hostile and active.
-- 76 percent of companies in the United States monitor employees' website connections, 65 percent block access to specific sites, and 36 percent track the content, keystrokes and time spent at the keyboard. More than half of employers retain and review e-mail messages.

Money Politics

-- In 2004, candidates for the House of Representatives who raised less than one million U.S. dollars had almost no chance of winning, The average successful Senate campaign cost 7 million dollars. In 2006, all state campaigns in the United States were predicted to cost about 2.4 billion dollars.
-- Seventy-four percent of respondents to an opinion research poll say the U.S. Congress is generally out of touch with average Americans, and 79 percent of the surveyed say they fell big business does have too much influence over the administration's decisions.
-- More than 1,000 government employees, including hundreds of police officers, have been convicted in FBI graft cases in the past two years.
-- Over the past five and half years, U.S. Republican and Democratic lawmakers accepted nearly 50 million U.S. dollars in trips, often to resorts and exclusive locales.
-- From January 2000 through June 2005, House and Senate members and their aides were away from Washington for more than 81,000 days - a combined 222 years - on at least 23,000 trips. U.S. lawmakers accepted thousands of costly jaunts to some of the world's choicest destinations: at least 200 to Paris, 150 to Hawaii and 140 to Italy.

Wealth and Poverty

-- The United States is the richest country in the world, but there were 37 million people, or 7.7 million families, living in poverty in 2005, accounting for 12.6 percent of total U.S. population, which means that one out of eight Americans was living in poverty.
-- 34.8 million Americans did not have enough money or other resources to buy food.
-- Currently, there are 600,000 or so homeless people nationwide, including 16,000 homeless in Washington D.C. and 3,800in New York City.
-- The number of American people without health insurance coverage rose to 46.6 million in 2005, accounting for 15.9 percent of the total population and up 1.3 million over 2004. Racial discrimination
-- White people's income was 64 percent more than the blacks and 40 percent more than the Hispanics.
-- Nearly one in five Hispanics lacked sufficient access to nutritious food and one in 20 regularly went hungry. Blacks took up 42 percent of all the homeless people in the United States.
-- The unemployment rate of the blacks was more than twice that of the whites: 8.6 percent for the blacks and 3.9 percent for the whites.
-- One out of 12 black men were in jail or prison, compared with one in 100 white men. Researchers pointed to poverty, a lack of opportunities, racism in the criminal justice system for the black-white prison gap.
-- The number of extreme racist and neo-Nazi organizations has increased by 33 percent in recent five years, rising from 672 in 2004 to 803 in 2005.

The Disadvantaged

-- The female-to-male earnings ratio was 76 percent in the United States with median earnings of women and men standing at about 32,000 and 42,000 U.S. dollars, respectively.
-- In 2005, 37 percent of the low-wage mothers had to give up necessary medical care, and a third had their electricity or phone turned off because they could not pay the bills.
-- During 2005, there were an estimated 93,934 female victims of forcible rape, or 62.5 out of every 100,000 women suffered from forcible rape.
-- Nearly 1.3 million American children who were homeless or fled home wandered in streets.
-- The U.S. Department of Justice received nearly 800,000 cases of missing children and kidnapping every year. And among the nearly 100 dangerous missing cases each year, about 40 percent of the missing children were killed eventually.
-- People with disabilities are nearly three times more likely to live in poverty than people without disabilities; 26 percent of people with disabilities had annual household income below 15,000 U.S. dollars, versus 9 percent those without disabilities.

Human Rights Abroad

-- More than 655,000 Iraqis have died in Iraq since war started in March 2003, meaning about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country.
-- Since August 2002, 98 prisoners had died in American-run prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the dead, 34 died of premeditated murder, 11 deaths were suspicious, and 8 to 12 were tortured to death.
-- In May 2006 human rights group Amnesty International condemned the detention of some 14,000 prisoners in Iraq without charge or trial.
-- A poll by the BBC World Service released on January 23, 2007showed that the image of the United States has deteriorated around the world in the past year. Some 73 percent of the total disapproved of U.S. government's handling of the military campaign in Iraq, with 49 percent of respondents saying Washington was playing a mainly negative role internationally.
-- An average of only 29 percent of some 18,000 people surveyed in18 countries over the last three months believed that the United States is having a mainly positive influence internationally, down 7 percent from the previous poll conducted a year earlier.