NEWSPAPER: “HIV INCREASES IN YOUNG GAY MEN”
As I rode the subway to work today, I happened to glance over at a young woman reading the paper near me. A headline on one of the interior pages proclaimed (in font approximately 1.5 inches tall) “HIV INCREASES IN YOUNG GAY MEN.” (I found this NY Times article, can’t be certain if it was the same paper I saw in the subway)
“Great,” I though.
Yet another instance in which gay people are associated with disease and irresponsibility. I wondered if the headline would confirm this woman’s presuppositions about gay people. I wondered if these would feed subconscious prejudices. I wondered if she was a medical health worker and new about how many other cases of HIV/AIDS there are.
In the US, HIV transmission involving male-male sexual contact made up less than half (47.48%) of new cases in 2005, according to the CDC. HIV infections are especially problematic in racial minorities. And in Africa, the disease is a widely heterosexual problem it is ravaging the nation. Where is the news reporting on that?
At the same time, an increase in new HIV infections amongst gay men while other categories are decreasing marks an important and disturbing trend. Maybe even a newsworthy one. Last year the LA Gay & Lesbian Center launched a 
campaign called “Own it, End it” proclaiming that “AIDS IS A GAY DISEASE”. It received a lot of flack from the LGBT community, but in a way, I understood the message. While acknowleding that HIV/AIDS affects everyone irrespective of race, gender, sexual orientation, or national heritage, the center also recognizes that HIV/AIDS has a significant presense in the gay community and that we, as a community, have it in our power to dramatically alter the course of this epidemic.
I hope that newspapers around the country continue to bring attention to the deseparate need for HIV/AIDS medication in Africa and the need to educate all Americans on the risks of the disease and how to prevent it. But at the same time, I hope that gay men can take themselves out of the headlines by simply refusing to allow themselves to become another statistic.
I can start with me.
About the Author: Brian
7 Responses to “NEWSPAPER: “HIV INCREASES IN YOUNG GAY MEN””
When it comes to the AIDS question, we don’t do ourselves any good saying that only 47% of new infections are male/male when about 4% of the populace is gay of some sort… we call that seriously disproportionate and indicative of a problem. Of course, not all male/male sexual contact actually involves “gay” people - I’d be very curious to know how many of those transmissions occurred in a prison context, for example. Still, best thing the gay community can do is, in addition to the emphasis on safer sex and personal responsibility, begin to establish a norm of monogamy, which would be best supported by the importation of the institution of marriage to the gay community.
By Casey on Sep 12, 2007
Well put Casey.
By Matt on Sep 12, 2007
Out of curiosity, how did HIV spread so greatly through the gay community that it is viewed as a “gay disease” ?
Is it the fact that protection against unwanted pregnancies isn’t an issue, so many couples don’t use any sort of protection? Or is there something else involved?
By Raspberry on Sep 12, 2007
Raspberry - the best explanation I’ve seen for that is in Gabriel Rotello’s book “Sexual Ecology.” Essentially, the introduction of the virus into a system of urban gay communities which included a small but significant number of promiscuous men (many of whom sleep with each other, particularly in anonymous settings) provided an engine for the disease’s expansion - anybody who came into contact with these largely infected “hot spots” could transport it to the next potential hotspot, where it quickly spread. Once these engines are created, even a drastic behavior change can’t completely eliminate them. Add to that the tendency of typically non-promiscuous gay individuals in the 1980s to visit these hotspots occasionally (bathhouses, etc) and the disease expands. The lack of marriage, which serves as a “dead end” to the transmission of the disease, exacerbates the problem - from the disease’s perspective, serial monogamy isn’t much better than an orgy. It doesn’t take a lot of partners (or a lot of promiscuous individuals), in a small population, to have the end result of an increasing infection rate.
By Casey on Sep 13, 2007
I think Casey hit the nail on the head when she pointed out that the self-identified gay population in the US is substantially smaller than the perceptage of male-male new HIV transmission cases. I believe it was this line of thought that led the LA Gay & Lesbian Center to launch it’s “AIDS is a gay disease. Own it. End it.” campaign. A very small percentage of Americans hold the power to eliminate close to fifty percent of all new cases. Imagine what it would do to the landscape of the disease if every queer person said “AIDS ends with me.”
Newspapers would have to find new things to report on, that’s for sure.
By Brian on Sep 13, 2007
HIV/AIDS is a curse for humankind, especially for gay men who against the law of nature
By Ibnu Rizal on Jan 22, 2008