(LifeSiteNews) — Syphilis cases are at their highest level in seven decades, according to new data released by the CDC. The news comes as popular culture continues to celebrate promiscuity and homosexuality despite the fact that both behaviors are known transmitters of the disease.
A CDC report published January 30 indicated that 207,255 cases of the sexually transmitted disease had been reported in 2022. That number includes over 3,700 cases of congenital syphilis in newborns.
According to a press release issued the same day by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), those numbers represent the highest rate since the 1950s and an increase of 80 percent even since 2018, and the rate of newborns with the disease is 10 times what it was in 2012.
“The syphilis crisis in our country is unacceptable,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said in the press release, touting “actions” underway by the Biden-Harris administration to “help ensure we are improving outcomes for birthing parents (sic) and newborns. We must prevent more deaths caused by congenital syphilis, an entirely preventable disease.”
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While reported syphilis diagnoses have increased in “nearly every demographic group and region,” per the CDC data, the communities most impacted by congenital syphilis were Native Americans. Thirty percent of congenital syphilis cases were reported in African Americans.
Congenital syphilis in newborns was most prominent in Arizona, California, Florida, Texas, Louisiana, and Florida, which together represented 57 percent of the 3,700 reported cases. “Tragically, these infections resulted in 282 stillbirths and infant deaths in 2022,” the CDC said.
Solutions sought and recommended by federal agencies include workshops to address the issue, syphilis testing during pregnancy, and supplying antibiotics and drugs to treat the disease in adults and infants.
However, the actions did not include suggestions to alter the underlying behavioral and lifestyle reasons for the disease.
According to a CDC fact sheet on the disease, most U.S. syphilis cases are found among homosexual and “bisexual” men.
Moreover, a 2023 study published by healthcare education and technology company StatPearls noted that “(p)romiscuity plays an important role in disease transmission, as syphilis is more common among people with multiple partners.” The study also noted that in 2019 the global “incidence of active syphilis” for prostitutes was 10.8%.
But the emphasis on drugs, counseling, treatment, and use of “protection” does not address the primary cause of the infections and fails to arrive at a conclusive solution.
Top health authorities have acknowledged that the only way to avoid STDs like syphilis is in following, essentially, the sexual moral ethics espoused by Christianity: i.e., either abstinence before marriage or committed monogamy.
The National Coalition of STD directors affirms that the “only 100% effective way to prevent the transmission of STDs is abstinence.” Likewise, the CDC states that the “only way to completely avoid syphilis is [abstinence],” and “(a)nother option is to be in a long-term mutually monogamous relationship with a partner who does not have syphilis.”
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According to CDC data, an estimated 20 million new cases of sexually transmitted diseases are reported in the U.S. per year. A decade ago, the CDC estimated that 110 million people in the U.S. were reportedly infected with an STD at any given time, about 20 percent of whom were teenagers and young men and women between the ages of 15 and 24.
The staggering numbers come as mainstream secular culture continues to celebrate promiscuity and divergent LGBT sexual behavior. Even small children are being actively encouraged to explore sexuality, including divergent LGBT identities, via social media and school curricula. Conservative-minded parents, lawmakers, and school boards have responded by working to pull sexually explicit and pro-LGBT curricula and materials from classrooms and school libraries, among other actions aimed at the protection of children’s health and innocence.