Bridge race-sexuality gap to increase HIV prevention, activists say

The Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project has started AIDS2008.com, a blog showcasing the voices of the 2008 international AIDS conference.

HIV/AIDS activists are scrambling to get a hold of just what new infection figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) mean for America.

Although first reporting only 40,000 new infections annually, the numbers are more along the lines of 56,000. Members of the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP) say the U.S. needs to work harder to bridge the gaps between race and sexuality, if it hopes to decrease the threat to gay and bisexual men and men who have sex with men, many of whom are African-American or Latino.

“The new estimates confirm that a vast majority of new infections in the U.S. occur in gay and bisexual men, and that Blacks are significantly more heavily impacted than other racial/ethnic categories. However, the data fail to clearly link the two, perpetuating a longstanding, damaging polarization,” explained Walt Senterfitt, CHAMP board co-chair and an epidemiologist living with HIV who served as a Visiting Scientist at CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention. “We need CDC to clearly show the HIV incidence numbers in gay men and other MSM of color.”

“A substantial number of Black people infected every year are gay or bisexual, and a substantial proportion of gay and bisexual men infected are Black. In fact, the heaviest impact is at the nexus of the two - being both black and a man who has sex with men. Yet this population is significantly marginalized, even stigmatized within both larger populations of which it is an integral part. A national AIDS strategy must tackle this fundamental challenge,” he added.

Activists say that the CDC and other governmental health organizations aren’t responding appropriately to challenge the pervasive homophobia that often prevents gay/bisexual men and men who have sex with men from obtaining adequate HIV/AIDS testing and health care. They point to research on gay men who experience bullying and violence in adolescence and later have higher rates of drug use, intimate partner violence, and HIV/AIDS. According to the National Anti-Violence Project, there was a 24% increase last year in the number of victims reporting anti-LBGT violence.

“The rising incidence in our communities is a direct result of years of policies and programs that demonize and ignore the sexual health needs of gay men, especially African-American and Latino gay men who bear the brunt of the epidemic in the United States. Gay men of all colors face significant health disparities that directly impact the incidence and prevalence of HIV in their lives,” said Jim Pickett, Director of Advocacy at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. “We must prioritize a holistic, asset-based gay men’s health agenda that goes well beyond a ‘navel to knee’ focus. We must also address their physical, mental, emotional and spiritual health needs that, when neglected, foster conditions in which HIV thrives.”

Even in the more conservative Mexico, a country with far fewer resources than the U.S., national health officials have taken seriously the need to bring attention to homophobia and how it relates to medical care, HIV/AIDS testing rates and prevention. The national AIDS program of the Mexican government’s public health department has sponsored public campaigns against homophobia in subways and buses, television spots, school programs and worked with television and movie producers.

“If this socially conservative country, with far fewer resources than its wealthy neighbor to the north, can ambitiously confront homophobia with government sponsorship and funding, why can’t the United States?” asked Coco Jervis, CHAMP’s Director of Policy.

“CDC talks of the need to develop more and better prevention messages, including more prevention interventions for Black gay men and gay men of all races. But such strategies will never be sufficiently effective or taken up by those most at risk until - and unless - homophobia is directly confronted,” added Kenyon Farrow, National Public Education Director for Queers for Economic Justice.

“Instead, politicians of both parties and the Department of Health and Human Services have caved into pressure from right-wing politicians, squelching not only sexuality research but anti-homophobia and pro-sexual diversity messages in HIV prevention and general health promotion alike. Will our next administration buck this trend, or will it be more of the ‘business as usual’ that’s decimating my community?”

Posted in Health, LGBT, Politics, Sexuality, United States |