Hetero TB Patient Quarantined, Media Ignore Straight Angle, Speaker Photos at Mock Trial
(Andrew Speaker, a straight man with TB under federal quarantine, is the man on the right in both the top and bottom photos.)
It's said among gay political and media types that there's usually a gay angle to every major news story of the day, and I think that rule applies to growing coverage of Andrew Speaker and his dangerous infection.
I wish to point out a few things about the now-quarantined Atlanta lawyer infected with a strain of drug-resistant TB, starting with the fact he's heterosexual.
Many news accounts report that he traveled far and wide because of his wedding to a woman and their honeymoon itinerary, but no story or health expert has yet directly addressed the heterosexual aspects of this unfolding tale.
You can bet the house that if Speaker were gay or bisexual, the headlines would be screaming, "Homosexual With TB Quarantined," and much fear and alarm would be integral to the public discussion about the man and his case.
When gay men are infected with drug-resistant strains of gonorrhea, staph infections, or super HIV like the man in NYC in February 2005, health officials sound loud alarms, relayed in the mainstream media, and the subtext of it all is one of gays spreading diseases, not diseases being transmitted by people who happen to be gay.
But the Speaker case is notably absent any discussion about his sexual orientation, other than that he got married to a woman. If he were gay, I think at this point in the investigation, health experts and reporters would be very publicly questioning if he had other sex partners recently, and a larger discussion about his entire sexual history and that of other gay men.
Can we have a little equal treatment of the Speaker quarantine and ask that the media broach the subject of if and how the man's sexual orientation may have been a contributing factor to acquiring TB?
It's not that I think any (hetero)-hysteria should be whipped up, like we see when homosexuals are the subject of intense medical and media scrutiny over the transmission of rare strains of deadly and injurious infections, but the unexplored sexual transmission routes of TB have not factored in to any coverage I've seen.
Final few points. I found these photos of Speaker from the 13th American Bar Association's Annual National Criminal Justice Trial Advocacy Competition, where his team won first place in the mock trial. Those skills might come in handy if Speaker faces any sort of criminal charges related to his infection, travel abroad and then re-entry into the United States.