Subscribe to Breaking News
Loading ...World AIDS Day: A Dissent
Let me tell you three stories.
First story. One of my best friends, a middle-age man with whom I worked on AIDS issues in the 1980s, sent me an e-mail several months ago saying that he had recently tested positive for HIV.
He acknowledged that he was extremely embarrassed to be confessing this fact: The message we had all promoted then – as now – was to have only “safe sex” and to use “a condom every time.”“I must have neglected to use a condom,” he said simply.
Second story.
I was at my local grocery store during the late summer when I ran into a casual friend I’ve known from the bars, a man somewhere in his late 40s, I’d guess, and we stopped to chat. He said he recently found out that he was HIV-positive, which he confessed surprised him.
“I thought I was safe because I was exclusively a top,” he said. “But apparently not.”
I gathered that he was already taking an antiviral combination, which suggested that his T-cell count was low, so he may have been infected some time ago.
Third story. A good friend, an older man, told me that early this fall he had his first HIV test in several years and was surprised to learn that he was HIV-positive. Not only that but his T-cell count had sunk to the 100-150 range, clearly qualifying for an AIDS diagnosis.
“I did what I considered ’safe sex’ and assumed I was uninfected. I never had any symptoms that I recognized as being HIV-related,” he told me. “But then I noticed that I was getting tired easily and wanted to take naps throughout the day. I thought that was just a function of getting older, but evidently not.”
These men are all Americans, fellow Chicagoans. And, most of all, friends. World AIDS Day will be observed on December 1. Do I care about AIDS among people I do not know and will never see or meet?
Only marginally.
What I do care about is gay men in the U.S., in my city, in my neighborhood. In short, I care about my friends, present and potential. Anyone who cares as much about total strangers in foreign lands as he does his friends and people in his own community has a strange idea about the value of personal relationships.
I lived through the first wave of AIDS, 1981-1996. I lost a lot of friends during that time. Suddenly it feels as if I am beginning to live through a second wave of AIDS infections–not necessarily resulting in deaths this time, at least in the medium term, but decisively altering people’s lives.
When people’s T-cell levels decline to a certain point, they have to begin an anti-viral drug regimen that involves taking one to four drugs every day at the same time every day. If they travel, they have to pack their drugs and make sure nothing interferes with their drug regimen. They have to do this for the rest of their lives. And some of the drugs have inconvenient side effects, from nausea or wooziness to diarrhea to unpleasant dreams. But taking the drugs is better than not taking them.
It seems vitally important to remind people that AIDS is still a threatening presence in the gay community.
I have read estimates that 20 percent of those infected do not know it. I have seen no statistical support for that estimate and I am sure the number is far higher – 40 percent? 50 percent?
Recall that the Centers for Disease Control acknowledged not many months ago that for years it had under-estimated the number of people annually infected with HIV by more than 40 percent.
Every year, every day, young gay men come out and begin engaging in sex. They may think they are invulnerable, they may be heedless, or they may never see a safe-sex message or have had the term “safe sex” spelled out for them. When I have visited bathhouses or back-room bars, I have seen people of all ages and ethnicities engaging in unprotected sex.
Clearly safe-sex messages have lost their impact or are not reaching them in a persuasive fashion.
Many people seem to care more about AIDS abroad than in the U.S. President Bush has sponsored billions of dollars in funding to prevent AIDS in third-world countries, but said little abut AIDS in the U.S. Some evangelical churches are involved in helping to combat AIDS abroad, but show no interest in AIDS in the U.S.
It seems clear that they are interested in helping heterosexuals abroad, but want nothing to do with homosexuals in the U.S.
So it continues to be up to us.
*****
Some of Paul Varnell’s previous columns are posted at the Independent Gay
Forum. His e-mail address is Pvarnell(at)aol.com.
Paul, thank you for sharing your three stories. Living in SC I completely understand your frustration with Bush and the churches. This evening I will be giving a speech on the steps of the Capitol (Columbia, SC) and would like to add the last part of your column to my speech. I hope you do not mind. Thank you!
Fear-based messages only work so long, and they worked in the 80s and early 90s. They do not work now.
The problem is that structural issues in society which led to the first “wave” you lived through have not truly changed yet. Gay people are still subject to discrimination every day, and in fact are now suffering from campaigns to make sure that discrimination is explicitly legal. That kind of messaging can be boiled down to society telling gay people, “You are expendable — we don’t think you are worth as much as other people are.”
No matter how you fight it, that kind of society-wide message, over time, finds a home in a person. Its effect is that people don’t value themselves or others as much as they could — and so taking care of oneself long-term doesn’t seem to appeal when, in the short term, a person can find a distraction from all of that hell out there.
Prevention messages and interventions based on behavioral theory don’t fall on deaf ears entirely, but they work on very short timetables because the larger societal message of lesser worth overwhelms messages of personal value (which includes health).
Also, be reminded that gay people are not the only American sufferers with HIV who are neglected by the government’s shamefully short shrift on the issue. Black and Hispanic people have much higher rates of infection, too, though not nearly as high as gay men. Black gay men, at the intersection of populations devalued by the general public, suffer most acutely.
Paul,
I always get something from reading your columns. From this one, I got two things; the first is that our elected officials care little about people in this country – whether it is AIDS, health care, poverty, etc. The second is that even after our community has been devastated by this disease, after so many have died, there are still far too many men in denial about AIDS transmission. I was infected in 1984 and am now the only one of a large group of friends still living. As soon as we knew that AIDS was sexually transmitted, my late partner and I began practicing safe sex and informing potential sex partners of our status. As long as there are gay men willing to risk their lives and the lives of others, this disease will continue to claim more victims. The government has a great deal of responsibility in this matter, but so do gay men. How many wake up calls do we need?
There are even more dimensions to this problem.
Thanks to the spread of “abstinence only” education in many states, many young people are not getting any kind of safe sex message at all.
AIDS no longer grabs headlines, even in our community’s media. As much as I disliked how badly the mainstream media and the tabloids sensationalized and negatively portrayed AIDS (and therefore provoked violence and prejudice against gays), at least they made AIDS visible and scary for us. Between the absence of this and the success of AIDS drugs, AIDS no longer seems scary and is no longer in the forefront of our consciousness, and less awareness = unsafe sex.
The fact that we’re so focused on marriage equality, ENDA, DADT, hate crimes, etc. has also pushed AIDS not just to the back burner but off the stove.
Your three stories are all of men in their 40s or older who should know better. But there is also a huge amount of unsafe sex going on among younger gays. These people weren’t yet born or were small children during the “first wave.” They haven’t lived through seeing their friends get infected and die, so it’s not “real” for many of them yet.
Bareback porn is now readily available. Around 1990, when porn was produced by a relatively small number of companies, those companies heeded the pressure to stop producing, and therefore eroticizing, unsafe sex. Now, thanks to the internet and cheap technology for producing DVDs, there’s homegrown cottage-industry porn everywhere, and many of these purveyors know that the way to make a buck is to sell unsafe sex.
I’m afraid that the only thing that will wake people up is another wave of infections and deaths. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Almost all adults know how HIV is spread. Everyone. Failure to take precautions is in some part voluntary. Think about it. Teens are different. They may just not know better. No one desire to get sick. No one. It is a virus. Everyone should get tested. Everyone. We must all grow up. And, everyone should know about and use condoms.
Dave Hughes: “The fact that we’re so focused on marriage equality, ENDA, DADT, hate crimes, etc. has also pushed AIDS not just to the back burner but off the stove.”
Issues which address general rights for all LGBT people fully deserve to be front and center. HIV is in my experience a minor issue among lesbian. Moreover the issue of AIDS/HIV tends to blow back on lesbians and transgendered people not contributing in any significant fashion to the HIV problem.
I’ve given up. I’ve accepted that the human race is stupid. Its memory cells have been zapped.
During the first wave of AIDS, I lost over 200 close friends. Today, when people say “you have so many friends and do so much”, they are shocked when I tell them I really have only 2 close friends. The rest were dead in their 20’s and 30’s.
Now, when I get asked by an acquaintance to support their efforts to raise money in an AIDS ride or walk or whatever, I ask “why bother”.
I’ve found other outlets more deserving (and appreciative)of my contributions than the health and welfare causes of my GLBT community.
I think Elsie is on the right track. I don’t see it as stupidity as much as I see it as a new form of slow suicide.