Former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett, author of the Book of Virtues, contrasted tobacco use with promiscuous homosexuality: “So what does smoking do to your life?... Smoking takes six to seven years off your life. Very important, very serious; we should address that. Promiscuous male homosexuality takes maybe 20 to 30 years off your life.” He goes on to point out that we need to be honest about the dangers of this lifestyle: “One of the difficulties in this whole issue is that people have been less than candid, have been afraid to talk frankly about the costs of the promiscuous homosexual lifestyle… The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta have pointed out in interviews (through the interview process) that a typical, active male homosexual might have two or three hundred partners a year… The biggest problem faced by promiscuous homosexuals in this country is devastation. It’s not discrimination; it’s devastation. It’s death. It’s disaster (Transcript of an interview with Bill Bennett on location in Washington D.C., January 1998) (James Kennedy and Jerry Newcombe).