US News: 50% Gays will be HIV+ by age 50

brazenalderpadrescorpio
reply to post by OrphanApology

 

There seems to be no type of protection against anal sex, but they should be willing to try other things that don't have such a high risk of transmission.

I'm sorry if this offends you, but that statement is one of the most uneducated things I have ever heard.

Speaking as a gay man in a stable relationship of 8 years with no end in sight, what physically happens in the bedroom is nobody's business.

The thing the gay community actually needs to work on is twofold; the promotion of safer sex practises and more positive monogamous relationship role models.

reply to post by brazenalderpadrescorpio


There's the same protection with anal sex as there is to vaginal sex in regard to HIV transmission:

-Testing before entering into a sexual relationship
-KY and a condom
-Don't share sex toys
-Truvada
-Lesbian sex(I just decided to throw that one in for #s and giggles)

To say there's no protection against transmission simply because it's the rear end leads me to believe you don't understand how STDs are passed.

reply to post by gardener


I wonder with all the education that kids of all ages are getting in school about sex and gay lifestyles being totally normal if there is any warnings about the possible consequences of man on man gay sex ?

I asssume Mark was referring to the disclaimer on most if not all US condom packaging that clearly indicates in writing for heterosexual intercourse only. Does anyone not notice it says that? I've never seen condoms packagings that say anything other than that, actually.

With gay marriage now legal in HALF the United States(based on where American population lives), what I'm seeing is homosexuals still tend to settle into monogamous relations around or past the age that is predicted by US news that half of them will be HIV+, and research into countries where gays have been allowed marriage for quite some time now, suggests the average gay marriage is extremely short lived:

www.boxturtlebulletin.com...

What does a homosexual marriage look like? Well, the longest term that we have available to look at is in the Netherlands.

Researchers found that the average “marriage” between two men lasts one and a half years. Furthermore, during that time, men have eight other partners per year.

Whoa.. if that's true, what is going on in our friends of a different fancy's minds - between currently 1/5 being HIV+ and the average relationships, even marriage, being short term minglings - what are they thinking with, their brain, or their.. sock?!

markosity1973

brazenalderpadrescorpio
reply to post by OrphanApology

 

There seems to be no type of protection against anal sex, but they should be willing to try other things that don't have such a high risk of transmission.

The thing the gay community actually needs to work on is twofold; the promotion of safer sex practises and more positive monogamous relationship role models.

I could not agree with that more. There really does not seem to be much promotion of the monogamous relationship in the gay community, as has always been the stereotype. Now of course it is a stereotype, there will be some truth to it spun and majorly exaggerated, obviously with exceptions......that being said, I know from personal experience that many young gay males are very, aggressively promiscuous. To the point where steady relationships are pretty rare. Now do you think that this is a combination of the high libido of young men mixed with their testosterone driven, male hardwired mind meeting others in this same state, and not being able to control their lust (as is often hard in your 20s) and just going for it as a man would? Or is there a dimension of peer/family/societal judgement that results subconsciously in a self imposed hatred and lack of worth that may lead to risky behaviors carried through your 20s or so?

Anyways, congratulations on your partners and yours happiness.

reply to post by Battleline


Yeah or they could just teach safe sex practices that include gay sex as well. You know that most sex education classes don't right?

If they go your route based on your reasoning maybe they will teach girls the dangers of heterosexual sex and what happens when they choose the heterosexual lifestyle as opposed to lesbian. Pregnancy, HIV, Gonorrhea, Syphilis.....oh...dear. All could be avoided by getting a girlfriend instead.

OrphanApology
reply to post by Battleline

 

Yeah or they could just teach safe sex practices that include gay sex as well. You know that most sex education classes don't right?

If they go your route based on your reasoning maybe they will teach girls the dangers of heterosexual sex and what happens when they choose the heterosexual lifestyle as opposed to lesbian. Pregnancy, HIV, Gonorrhea, Syphilis.....oh...dear. All could be avoided by getting a girlfriend instead.

"all could be avoided by getting a girlfriend instead " and you ridicule my reasoning ??

Great spin by the way.

if gay men and women are so cautious and get tested on a regular basis.
why didn't the the 30 people that this guy had sex with ask him for his health card saying he wasn't HIV positive.

HIV positive student filmed himself having unprotected sex with more than 30 PEOPLE he met online

i tell you why i think so, is the majority talk a good game, and 90% of it is BS. 30 people had unprotected sex with someone they didn't live with. tell me that is being responsible. this fits right in line with the gay people that i know, most of which are sluts and whore dogs.
there is one who is a helpless romantic that thinks one day he'll find true love, he's only lived with about ten ----- -------, and still looking is still looking for mr wrong.

reply to post by Battleline


Well, lesbians do have the lowest rate of STD transmission among all groups. So how is my reasoning ridiculous exactly? It's based on the same logic.

Gay youths should just "switch" to straight lifestyle because of dangers. With that reasoning straight young women should just "switch" to a lesbian lifestyle because of the dangers.

Tell me what I am missing.

The 'safe sex' ed has been going on for 30 years now since the US HIV Epidemic went public and clearly, it doesnt work.

It does in theory, but the long and the short of it is obviously night clubs and schools and gay parades handing out condoms isnt working now with 1 in 5 US gays HIV+.

The problem is clearly something deeper. To reiterate, the 'consumptive' lifestyle is something engrained in American culture, and rampantly growing. There's the obesity epidemic, the CO2 footprint, the amount we consume and waste, the cancer epidemic, the DUI epidemic, and I see no difference in the homosexual scene. It's about being free to do whatever you want, whatever you desire.

WANTS. DESIRES. In other countries you're not allowed to openly show such wants or desires. But in this country, it's the opposite! You are free to want, desire, all you want and be proud of it. This pride and arrogance is CONTAGIOUS. It has spawned a homosexual scene where promiscuity and unprotected, despite risky, are the norm. It's all part of the high of engaging in pleasure-quenching behaviors twofold. Just take a look at Craiglist. Theres no shortage of anonymous hotel hookups, nor 'wife's away, let's play'. This is what the sexual-oriented scene has become. This is what happens when you base your identity and lifestyle solely on what you're sexually attracted to. A culture of desire & indulgence.

reply to post by OrphanApology


I did not say anything about anyone switching lifestyles, my point was if children are going to be inundated with a sexual life style then they should also be told about the hazards of that life style...you said they weren't, you have answered my question.

How about a source to back up your opinion.

There was a Report a couple of years a go that MRSA killed more people than AIDS...

the LGBT community strives to insure proper education about HIV/AIDS,what people do with that is their own business and their own Risk. at times it can be such a Taboo topic that youth who are dealing with problems don't get the proper education or the proper access/coverage

Children are being blasted with the typical DICHOTOMY that US wreaks off. Ie' democrat vs republican, left vs right, black vs white, gay vs straight.

So on one hand you have the F-G-T word happens to be the #1 most popular insult kids use against each other, in America. On the other hand, you have this Pride activism so gay youth can embrace and flaunt their sexual identity and seemingly overcome all that oppression, these days.

CAVEAT EMPTOR: Being gay likely becomes their whole purpose in life then they join communities full of others who orient based on their sexual preference.. it's like a teen girl going to bars because she likes men. Seriously, that's not healthy nor is the current homosexual scene, as evidence by the HIV rates among them.

It's not the homosexuality that may lead children to make poor health choices in their teens & adulthood, but rather, the type of lustful, indulgent community that has been set up intrinsically because the members orient with each other based on their: sexual interests. What do you expect.

reply to post by Battleline


Well there are many sites that will place Bacterial Vaginosis and yeast infections as STDs, which they are not. Most sources also lump both lesbians and bisexual women together. However, for women that state to sleeping with women(lesbians as opposed to bisexual where phallus is involved) STDs are lower.

Here is one site that has good sources documented:

The incidence of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia among women who only have sex with women is rare[13] [11] [2]. Rates of herpes, HPV and HIV infection are also lower among women who have sex with women only[13].

www.genderandhealth.ca...

Sexual intercourse involving anything phallus carries a higher risk for STDs.

That puts bisexual women, gay men, bisexual men, and straight women at more risk than women who sleep with women exclusively.

I mean it makes sense just based on the sexual activities involved between two women that there would be less chance of spreading infections. Not rocket science.

reply to post by tothetenthpower


Every person admitted to a hospital in the United States is tested.

reply to post by OrphanApology


Again your spinning my question away with sex education, I am asking for a source that states that children are not being told the hazards of gay sex while they are being told how normal it is.

I know they are being told the hazards of hetro sex in sex education but why not the escalated chance of Aids with man on man sex ? You said that most sex ed class's don't, how do you know that ?

reply to post by Battleline


Well they don't teach anything gay sex related, at least where I am at, which is Texas. In fact in many schools they only teach abstinence(no sex before marriage, which of course doesn't apply to gay kids).

If they do include any other type of sex ed it is primarily hetero context condom use, ways to prevent pregnancy but in no way state anything related to gay sex education at all.

So what that does is it leaves a group of youths to find out everything from their peers(since most gay youths may not be out to family or if are at this point in lives are treated badly for it).

That means that come 18 when they go off to college, their first experience is a flood of oversexuality in the context of alcohol ridden bars and clubs. Instead having the normal dating experience of most teens, such as having a bf/gf most gay male youth's first relationships and sexual experiences happen amid alcohol and strobe lights.

www.abstinenceworks.org...

reply to post by OrphanApology


It is sad that the schools would present something as normal without a full context of the hazards.

I was afraid you were right, thank you for the source.

reply to post by markosity1973


You're picking and choosing aspects of my comment. Here's what I said in my last post: 'I think that the issue of sexual promiscuity should be addressed.' That is incidentally something you said in the post I'm replying to. If gay men know that they have a tendency towards promiscuity, then they should try things that are less risky when it comes to transmission. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.

The HIV/AIDS situation in South Africa is somewhat different in that we have an estimated 5.5 million people living with HIV/AIDS (I think the US has 1.1 million), and it's mainly a heterosexual epidemic, with black women at the highest risk.
After a long struggle against official denialism, the situation is looking better, with a massive reduction of mother-to-child transmissions.
However, it's interesting how winning certain battles in the fight against HIV can quickly lead to complacency and the misleading notion that things are now "resolved".
Currently it's really the sporadic lack of sufficient AIDS medication in some clinics, and the constant struggle to keep cheap generic drugs available that largely still keeps HIV/AIDS in the media.

I've been watching a lot of documentaries on HIV from various countries, such as the US, Britain and Germany, and there are some interesting differences and similarities.

There's certainly a new alarm over the gay infection rate in the US (which hasn't been mirrored by gay infections in, for example, Australia or some European countries).

In the US the African American community has raised similar concerns, accounting for 45 percent of new infections despite being 12 percent of the population.
There's a similar notion by some black HIV activists that the virus has been cast too much as a heterosexual developmental issue in highly affected parts of Southern and Eastern Africa (which accounts for 98 percent of global HIV/AIDS infections).
This left the gay HIV experience somewhat as a footnote in the wider "African" pandemic, and little attention was paid to what was happening in America's own backyard.

It also left disastrous US policies with little opposition, such as high incarceration rates (without condoms) due to the drug war in some communities, and the lack of needle exchanges.
PEPFAR meant that no US funds would be given to organizations that supported the decriminalization of prostitution in developing countries, and Brazil (which started making its own ARVs) therefore rejected it completely.

Concerns have also been raised about the disproportionate amount of money spent on defining HIV as a young person's disease, when the infection rates in Atlanta alone increased 94 percent for heterosexual people over 50.
www.blackvoicenews.com...

In that sense, the very fact that the dismal prognosis in the OP's article talks about people of 50 is interesting.
For the initial years of the epidemic it was largely a young person's disease.
This was the crux of AIDS - it killed productive young people and parents in the prime of their lives and careers.
In South Africa the first wave of AIDS in the 1990s meant that the average life expectancy fell from 65 to 48.
Although it was most often seen as a disease of poverty, it actually affected young professionals in nursing, education and the the clerks very hard.

I think what a lot of documentaries on the US are getting at is that there's still a lot of misunderstanding and sermonizing about HIV.
The apparent homophobia in some black churches has completely ignored the rise of infection rates amongst black women for example, which is regionally comparable between the US and southern Africa.
I'm sure it has also made an impact on gay men.
There is actually a link to a (Catholic) religious site that discussed these statistics, but there was so much of the usual anti-gay rhetoric, as well as somebody posting adverts for "magic cures" that I decided not to post it.

Nevertheless, not everything can be blamed on the religious abuse of a public health crisis to score political points (especially religious groups who have hardly done women in developing countries any favors with their pseudo-scientific views on condoms, especially within marriage).

While I can understand that people are social creatures, and life is a progression of influences and counter-influences, there have been times where gay communities went into a form of denial too, and the message of HIV-positive gay activists was ignored, or even met with hostility.
One thinks of the early attempts to close the bathhouses in US gay areas, and attempts to regulate the blood supply.
While nobody can dispute the fantastic work of gay HIV-positive activists, there were also times and examples of indifference, false accusations of homophobia, or sheer disbelief.
Not that going into denial was unique to gay people: many governments, churches and entire countries have gone into denial over HIV/AIDS at various points, thus allowing the virus to run its full course.

When I first tested positive as a gay male in SA, I thought my newly found sense of urgency could inspire more gay people to be tested.
This was sadly not the response, although I understand that many people were suddenly frightened, and they chose the false security of not knowing.

The problem is also with the nature of HIV information itself, which can lead to "AIDS fatigue" (too much and one is less interested), and balancing a message of hope with the possibly terrible outcomes of AIDS, and living on powerful medications with potential side-effects and no guarantees.
While associating HIV with death seemed to scare people unreasonably, campaigns that seemed akin to soft-porn and erotica are also controversial.

No matter what community, HIV/AIDS is always easy to displace as something that happens to "other people".
It's always that "slut" out there, although you can have unprotected penetrative sex once and get it.
The message that one needs to have loads of multiple partners to get HIV is also incorrect and stigmatizing.
Sure, that will definitely increase the chances, but all kinds of people hit smaller odds every day.
It's not a "type" of person who gets HIV; it could be anyone who had unprotected sex, even a decade ago.

I see some HIV-positive gay men in the US are now talking about the side-effects of their medications (such as constant nerve pain, incontinence and heart attacks), simply because they feel that the notion that AIDS is "manageable" since 1996 has been pushed to the extent that it made people careless and over-confident.

Generations going into their forties now will have never seen people with AIDS, who still exist in smaller numbers, but fall off the social radar. They are rarely shown in media.

A documentary from Britain called "HIV And Me" actually showed very strong stigmas against HIV-positive people, especially outside the gay community.
I was also shocked to see a gay friend from the UK, who thought my openness about being HIV-positive was too much, and he didn't understand our recent public activism in South Africa at all.
So there is a degree of denial and a fear that HIV-positive people make entire scenes look bad, or what I'd call "HIV-phobia" in various gay communities.

In that sense I can't help feeling that sections of some gay communities (as well as many others) need a swift kick in the behind, and they better start working on interventions instead of burying their heads in the sand, and pretending that all is well and hunky-dory.
I'd strongly support the gay HIV-activists in the OP's article.
We don't need a politically correct "gay inc." if the statistics are rising, and while gay orientation or sex didn't cause the virus, we sure as hell can construct and encourage forms of being gay that don't facilitate the spread of HIV.