There's a politically-correct silence concerning the apparent collapse of the Dept. of Public Health's STD control efforts, especially concerning HIV/AIDS and other diseases highly correlated with homosexual sex practices. There's also been little public discussion of the now abandoned effort to control STDs in the heterosexual population at the time a couple applies for a marriage license.
Until January 2005, a couple could not marry without a physician's certificate of health verifying that each person was free of certain STDs. But this part of the marriage statutes (MGL Ch. 207, Sec. 28A) was overturned when Gov. Romney signed into law House Bill #75 on Oct. 29, 2004. Why did Romney do this? Wasn't the marriage health certificate an important part of controlling the STD epidemic? (Remember too, the DPH is under Gov. Romney's authority.)
Do we need to connect the dots? If marriage licenses were still denied to homosexual males with STDs monitored by the DPH, how many of them would still be able to "marry"? Does anyone know of some other reason the health certificate requirement was done away with?
See this page from the Division of Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD), part of the DPH's Bureau of Communicable Disease Control: http://www.mass.gov/dph/cdc/std/divstd.htm . The two info alerts below -- one on waiving the marriage health certificate, the other on STD issues in the "men who have sex with men" population --are ironically juxtaposed on that same page.
Marriage Information
News Alert: Information to all physicians regarding the January 28, 2005 effective date of the repeal of medical certificate requirements for marriage licenses.... All couples that file a Notice of Intention to Marry on or after January 28, 2005, no longer must obtain a medical certificate.
Clinical Advisories:
--Lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV) presenting as inflammatory bowel disease or proctitis, January 2005 (PDF 159k) MS Word
--Infectious Syphilis Among Men who have Sex with Men (MSM)
--Increasing Number of Cases Caused by Quinolone Resistant Neisseria gonorrhoeae
