EDITOR, The Tribune.

According to the Centre’s for Disease Control and Prevention, monkeypox is a rare disease caused by infection with the monkeypox virus, and is related to the variola virus that causes smallpox.

First discovered in 1958, its symptoms include lesions throughout the body and in the mouth; fever, headache, muscle ache and swollen lymph nodes.

According to the CDC, the period of active lesions is when the pathogen is most contagious, lasting for approximately two to four weeks. While there is only one confirmed case of the monkeypox in The Bahamas, there are 2,323 cases in the US. Two-hundred-and-eight of those cases are in Florida where thousands of Bahamians visit annually. In addition to Florida, Illinois, California and New York have the highest numbers of confirmed cases.

Globally, there are 15,378 cases, as of July 20. Members of the LGBTQI+ community might feel as if I am singling them out for ridicule and stigmatisation; but every data that epidemiologists in the US and the CDC have collected so far points to their demographic spreading this pathogen. It is possible that an outbreak occurs in The Bahamas, given the promiscuous behaviour of this demographic.

According to a July 18 Washington Post editorial by an expert in the field of epidemiology, 96 percent of the confirmed cases are gay and bisexual men and men who have sex with men. The current outbreak is believed to have started in Western Europe among a group of gay revelers this past Spring. This timeframe seems to coincide with the many Gay Pride events throughout Europe and the US. In one particular instance, the CDC discovered that of the 17 confirmed cases it tested in the US, 16 were men who had sex with men.

On the NBC News site, one American man named “Jeff” had visited London, Paris, Amsterdam and Berlin - “having sex with multiple partners along the way”. Jeff candidly spoke of visiting a bathhouse and a sex club in Germany. His testimony gives us an inside scoop of the degree of sexual promiscuity within the LGBTQI+ community.

I have stated in the past that monogamy is rarely practised by this demographic. This is not to condemn the LGBTQI+ community. With the CDC admitting that the number of confirmed cases among heterosexuals being very low, I am left to wonder if this monkeypox outbreak is God’s providential response to the recent Gay Pride festivities. C S Lewis said in his The Problem of Pain that pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world. It is one thing to transgress God’s moral laws; it is quite another to celebrate doing so. While the government, health-care professionals, mainline denominations and the political directorate are all bending over backwards to accommodate the LGBTQI+ community, I am going to issue the clarion call to the members to repent before it’s too late. The Bible says that open rebuke is better than secret love.

KEVIN EVANS

Freeport, Grand Bahama

July 21, 2022.