The issue is whether homosexuals are infringing upon anybody else's rights.
You might want to read this from Time magazine about the impact of gay behavior on public health. You are saying that this does not infringe on other's rights? Let me guess -- you believe that cigarette smoking definitely does infringe on other's rights.
Tuesday, Jun. 05, 2001
Viewpoint: AIDS at 20
John Cloud on what the latest statistics mean for young gay men
BY JOHN CLOUD
AIDS will turn 20 this week — at least, our awareness of it will, since it was June 5,
1981, when the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention first published a report
about five gay men in Los Angeles with a strange illness. Last week the CDC drew
attention to a new study, and many reporters focused on its most shocking,
depressing finding — that nearly 15% of young black gay men are contracting HIV
every year. One-third of black gays ages 23 to 29 are already infected in the six
cities where the study was conducted. If these rates of infection continue, they could
gobble up an entire community in a matter of years.
But to focus only on the tragedy stalking black gay men is to miss the larger story.
Many young gays of all races have become complacent about HIV. The CDC
survey showed that 4.4% of gay men in their 20s are being infected each year--about
twice the incidence of infection in gay men overall as measured by other studies.
These figures aren't perfectly reliable; so many gay men hide their sexual orientation
that finding a representative pool is basically impossible.
But you don't need a degree in epidemiology to sense the change in gay culture. No,
the corner bathhouse hasn't reopened, but gay men often chat--online and in
bars--about unprotected sex. More fantasize about having it than have it, but we've
been talking about it so much we had to appropriate a pithy catchphrase a few years
ago: "barebacking." You can find a barebacking partner in most cities without much
trouble on the Internet.
It's not just HIV that we could be spreading. National rates of syphilis transmission
are at their lowest in 60 years. But in February the CDC released a report
documenting 130 syphilis cases in Southern California, up from 100 the year before.
Sixty-six of the new cases occurred in men who had had sex with another man at
least once (presumably most of the 66 are gay). And only 20% of those men
reported using a condom the last time they had sex.
There are many reasons young gay men are having unprotected sex, but I think the
most pertinent is that we've never had to visit a friend in the hospital disfigured by
Kaposi's sarcoma. Like many other gay men around my age (30), I have never
known anyone who was ill with AIDS. The last time I was in the hospital was when
I had my tonsils out. If I had been born 10 years earlier, I probably would know the
names of the admitting nurses at New York City's St. Vincent's hospital.
It's also worth noting that gays are coming out so much younger. Openly gay boys
can be found in high schools across the U.S.; they are bound to be as reckless as any
other horny teenager. Why not? They have grown up in a time when pharmaceutical
firms seem to have no shortage of HIV wonder drugs, when Bill Gates is spending
$100 million to find a cure, when a Republican President names an openly gay man to
run the White House Office of National AIDS Policy. Getting HIV seems not so
much a death sentence as an annoying pill-taking regimen. The gay press is filled
with delightful ads for HIV medications that depict healthy, happy-looking guys who
seem too busy racing the Iditarod to be sick. Last month the fda actually had to order
drugmakers to tone down the upbeat ads for HIV drugs--and remind readers that, oh,
yeah, HIV is lethal.
Young gay men should take more responsibility for their health, but until this week,
the government wasn't doing much to sound the alarm. Congress allocates more than
$7 billion a year for AIDS treatment. But HIV-prevention efforts have never been
sufficient. It took until this year--20 years into the epidemic--for the CDC to come up
with its first comprehensive plan to change sexual behavior, through education and
counseling, among those already infected. AIDS activists estimate that it would cost
$1.3 billion to implement that plan, while the current budget for prevention is only
$844 million. That money is often distributed to local officials who refuse to spend it
on ads explicit enough to be effective.
Last week it seemed tempting to see AIDS as a pathology we could confine to the
inner city. We can't. To be sure, HIV-prevention strategies must be culturally
targeted, and the CDC must find a way to get through to black men who don't see
themselves as part of the gay community. But the CDC may also have to start anew
with gay America as a whole, since some of us weren't around the first time HIV
started killing us. |
