HIV/AIDS: VIRAL DISEASE OR MORAL LESSON?

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson (JBP) has been on my radar for several years. I actually wrote a letter to him early on when he was been castigated by University of Toronto students and others for defending his choice of pronouns against legislated mind control. On this issue, I became a true fan. 

As a gay man who is not at all pleased that the identity group I once belonged to has chosen to mask itself behind transgender entitlement, I simply felt sympathy for the guy. Drag queens and their like have always been prone to vicious overreactions, even toward sympathetic gay-lesbian folk.

Last evening I watched a presentation on YouTube from Australia (above). JBP was accompanied by his likable sidekick, Dave Rubin. They were being interviewed, to some small extent, by John Anderson, a retired minister of the Australian government. My interest in these JBP appearances has waned. I have listened to him quite a bit and have read his recent bestseller. In my opinion, he needs fresh material. 

JBP was on his usual ingenious hypo-manic roll. But this time he was banging at the concept of being truthful, apparently as a somewhat veiled attempt to flog a recent edition of Solzhenitsyn for which JBP had written a forward essay. The man is unabashedly in all this for the money as well as the message. I'm OK with that. 

I became engaged in his exposition on personal truth. I did notice that my resistance to his ability to hypnotize has grown. His voice and mannerisms have a mesmeric quality, especially when he is able to roam a stage as he speaks. In this presentation, he was seated.

What does all this have to do with the title of this piece? Well, JBP launched into his monogamy polemic at one stage. If you are not aware of this aspect of JBP's thoughts, he is of the opinion, based on research he likes, that sexual monogamy is the answer in relationships. I'm not sure what the question is, but JBP cited the AIDS epidemic as evidence that non-monogamous sexuality "didn't work so well". In other words, the AIDS epidemic was some sort of moral lesson about sexuality and commitment.

I think examining JBP's own relationship history is helpful when considering the weight of this assertion. He is heterosexual, as far as we know. He has been married once, to his neighborhood sweetheart from his childhood. He speaks of his good fortune at having met his soul mate so early in life. He was raised in an isolated small town on the prairies of mid-west Canada.

I have to raise the question of deep bias here. Why else would an accredited social scientist refer to a viral disease as validation that a choice of polygamy is somehow universally detrimental in human relationships? Moralist bias seems the most probable answer.

This type of moralist (all good vs. all bad) bias seeps out of JBP's presentations from time to time. Sometimes, he carefully modifies it. Sometimes, he just lets it flow. That's OK. He's no Billy Graham, by any means. And thank goodness for that!

Why should this particular thing bother me? Well, I have lived with HIV for 35 years, for one thing. For another, I actually contracted the disease while in what I thought was a monogamous relationship. Add to this that my experience throughout the epidemic's worst days as a registered nurse. I met quite a few people with AIDS who were infected in monogamous relationships. Some of them were happily married heterosexual hemophiliacs.

I am wary of anyone who begins lecturing against free sexual expression by men, who are naturally polygamous hunters, perhaps not unlike male lobsters who apparently practice serial (periodic and sequential) monogamy only. 

I think raising the specter of HIV/AIDS is a cheap shot. Why not cite gonorrhea, syphilis, herpes, hepatitis? After all, those were boilerplate boogie men of Victorian Bible-thumpers. And that is how JBP and others present themselves to my eyes when they exploit fear of microorganisms to discourage natural, and informed, sexual expression in the guise of wisdom or caring. It is not a wise or caring way to talk about sexuality, in my opinion. 

HIV/AIDS was lesson enough for the gay male populations worldwide. And it was a lesson for heterosexual populations as well. But the lesson was not "be monogamous, or else". I would hope that Dave Rubin, as a gay man, might comment on this aspect of JBP's preaching in future.