On Cardinal O'Connor, AIDs, and Act-UP

One of the episcopal heroes of the pro-life movement was also one of the favorite villains of the gay rights/anti-AIDs/pro-sexual revolution groups. Here, one man pays tribute to Cardinal O'Connor:

...Cardinal O’Connor’s mantra at that time was, “Good morality is good medicine.” The key to prevention was, and remains, abstinence. Even the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention came around to this realization. The following quote is from the CDC’s own document, “Condoms and STDs: Fact Sheet for Public Health Personnel”.

“The most reliable ways to avoid transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), are to abstain from sexual activity or to be in a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with an uninfected partner.”

Cardinal O’Connor was maligned for such common sense thinking, and for not advocating condom usage. But how effective were condoms at the time? Perhaps if Act Up bothered to read the New York Times they would have noted the stories in 1987 and 1988 citing that 20 percent of condoms fail, that 33 million condoms had been recalled...

Act Up’s mantra of “safe sex” has quietly given way to the less absolute, “safer sex”, as their disastrous advocacy has doomed countless people to horrendous deaths and early graves. Against their hellish onslaught, Cardinal O’Connor stood like granite. He effectively converted St. Calre’s hospital into an AIDS hospice and volunteered in simple clerical garb, insisting he only be introduced as “Father John”. He emptied bedpans, bathed patients, ministered to souls, while Act Up maligned him without mercy.

Act Up’s exhibit is their last shriek as they pass into irrelevance and oblivion. History has spoken, and Cardinal John O’Connor has been vindicated...

Further evidence and links in the original. The whole thing is well worth a read.