Minnesota Republican Candidate Warns of the Danger of Semen

Bob Frey. Thinks enzymes in
semen causes AIDS

Bob Frey, who is running for the Minnesota legislature, has come up with an explanation of how AIDS happens. It’s so completely ignorant that anyone who ever attempted (and clearly failed) to teach Mr. Frey science should be ashamed. Or in need of a stiff drink. Or both.

The Minneapolis Post reports that Frey did not get his party’s endorsement, nor did his rival in the primaries. He claims to be devoted to keeping government accountable and limited. Then there’s that sodomy thing.

Frey said of the gay rights movement

Its not about the gay agenda but about the science and financial impact of that agenda. It’s more about sodomy than about pigeonholing a lifestyle.

And of the financial impact, he says,

It’s about sodomy. It’s huge amounts of money. AIDS is a long-term illness, causing pain, suffering, death, a long-term illness that’s very expensive to treat.

There are times when I want to take off my descriptivist hat and have a nice, long prescriptivist chat about the meaning of the word sodomy. Short version: it’s everything except masturbation and penis-in-vagina. Here, I can even be descriptivist, since historically people have been prosecuted for sodomy for a number of things that aren’t anal sex. Oral sex, for one. Yup, every blow job is an act of sodomy.

Okay, but in Frey’s mind, it’s all about the butt sex. And he says that anal sex causes AIDS.

When you have egg and sperm that meet in conception, theres an enzyme in the front that burns through the egg. The enzyme burns through so the DNA can enter the egg. If the sperm is deposited anally, it’s the enzyme that causes the immune system to fail. That’s why the term is AIDS — acquired immunodeficiency syndrome.

How long ago was it determined that HIV was the causative factor in AIDS? With all this, we have this guy suggesting that the enzymes that penetrate the wall of the egg (not really burning through) are going to burn through the rectal lining and…I’m not sure what he thinks the enzymes do next.

Frey’s son testified along the same lines during the Minnesota legislatures’s hearings on same-sex marriage, so it would seem that ignorance and AIDS denialism run in the family. So, if you’re engaging in sex with a member of the Frey family, please do not accidentally ejaculate on them. Who knows what they’d do over the fears of those powerful enzymes in semen.

Update: A noted scientist wrote to me:

I think you are not taking his statement literally enough. He said the enzymes are "burning through" tissues. That means they have tiny little blowtorches that they only break out in the case of butt sex.

So how do we extinguish those "tiny little blowtorches"?