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My first problem with the Original Post is the reference to "The Gay Community", as if it were some monolithic, contiguous group of people. It is NOT.
Oh, where was I going with this? Oh, yeah! FROM those Wrestlers/broke NFL stars with bad knees/Mr. Universe types, my friends learned all the techniques of getting-off without getting infected - with ANYTHING. And that sort of knowledge was spreading like wildfire throughout the Gay Mainstream (although possibly not among the "least fortunate and less white" among the "Gay Community" as a whole - assuming there is such a thing). Gay Sex - at least among 'mainstream' whites and Asians - was completely reinvented with the disease in mind.
This Safe Sex Mania was HORRIBLE news to the Tobacco Industry, the makers of Booze, the Drug Cartels, and the PHARMACEUTICAL INDUSTRY. As someone who profits from Pharmaceuticals, I can tell you that we do not want you to avoid getting diseases. If I were on the board of a company making an AIDS drug, I would (secretly) be horrified to hear that Gay men were inventing alternate techniques for interaction, which would make my expensive cures irrelevant.
Likewise, Big Tobacco was incensed to learn that one of its last remaining markets was drying-up, because smoking was seen as a 'co-factor' in AIDS susceptibility. Vodka-sellers were not amused by the notion that alcohol was being avoided as a 'co-factor'. Same with the powers behind illicit drugs. Beginning in the mid-Eighties, Gay men (the much-reviled high-achieving white/Asian 'Mainstream', anyway) were becoming pure as the driven snow (absolute paragons of health and fitness, in fact), and a lot of powerful interests were not pleased with the trend. Gays, in fact were leading the entire American Populace toward hyper-healthy ways of living. It was not good for business.
Big Tobacco was already hating white Americans, and scheming to replace them with colors theoretically more apt to smoke. Same with the Drug Cartels, and Big Pharma. But in the meantime, what to do?
Why not create a whole bunch of "Gay" magazines, to push booze, drugs, cigs, and unsafe sex?!!! "We'll use Bandwagon Effect to get those healthy middle class Gays back on the Unhealthy Lifestyles Bandwagon! Yeah! We'll need some sort of "urgent issue".... Hmmmm... AIDS is irrelevant, because they've been practicing safe sex for two solid decades. Homophobia has largely been conquered (until we can import some homophobes). Ok... what can we make into an issue? Oh! Gay Marriage! We'll splash Gay Marriage across the covers, to sell the magazines that will really exist, to push unhealthy lifestyles!"
One year later...
You walk into Books-a-Million, and the back wall, the wall where school principals and preachers from out in the boonies go for their super-softcore-porn, when they're up in the State Capital on business - well- that back wall suddenly has a wealth of snazzy new, glitzy-but-hastily-contrived "Gay" magazines, basically glorifying the wonderfulness of "barebacking", booze, cigs, and drugs! "Everybody's Doing It!!!" is the cumulative implicit message.
Mainstream Media is loathe to share this information, but the portion of the "Gay Community" who actually fell for the media-engineered "Return to Unhealthy Living" are not the White/Asian 'Mainstream' Gays. I've asked a few people whose business it is to know, and they say that the increase in unhealthy practices closely follows the decrease in whites as a percentage of the Gay Population.
The Face of Aids in America used to be white and middle class (if Big Media was painting an accurate picture). Today's infected group(s) have little or nothing in common with yesterday's victims. The old demographic did learn their lesson. And they have not forgotten that lesson. If there is really a new outbreak, it is not among the sort of people who were stricken in the Seventies and Eighties.
So, if you're going to accuse any groups, you should specify along racial lines - which would be racist and unwise. The various groups within the evanescent (and possibly even nonexistent) "Gay Community" are quite distinct from one another. Isolation and alienation are things with which Gay men learn to deal in elementary grades. So naturally, when groups of Gay men are analyzed, their various "Communities" are quite distinct from each other. You cannot blame Gays-as-a-whole, because there is no Gays-as-a-whole.
It's a sexual orientation, not an organization.
Oh, and when you get Shingles (it seems to happen to all of us, at some point, now), or if you rush for the Vitamin C when you get a cold, you should possibly reflect upon all the research that was done into viruses - particularly retroviruses - because of the AIDS Epidemic. Today, if you get Shingles, you can go and get a prescription to a drug developed as a weapon against AIDS. Previously, you would have suffered for years. Likewise, the knowledge of fighting viral infections with lifestyle changes, diet, and antioxidants, spread outward from Gay men who were trying anything and everything to survive the AIDS epidemic, in the Eighties. Some of the strategies they tried worked, and we all benefit from those advances in knowledge.
(A huge tip of my hat.)
Please take a bow GrandviewGloria, that is the best post I have ever read on any of the forums in city-data.
Moreover, you can color me absolutely stunned, because I believe everything that you said. And I say that feeling deeply, deeply saddened that I do believe you and believe that you do have the insight into this topic to accurately reflect things inside the "gay population" that you depicted and that I had no clue of and would never have guessed in a million years, some of which I consider to be beyond horrific -- the sad truth is that I can envision people (and firms) who would spend money with the end thought being that the money spent would encourage some men to undertake risky sexual behavior, because they hoped and thought that they would end-up selling more HIV/AIDS drugs.
Mankind's inhumanity towards man comes to mind, but I don't feel that adequately captures how incredibly evil people would have to be to conjure up a plan that had the intent to increase the AIDS/HIV infection rate and absolute numbers -- across all populations -- and then move-on to actually executing their plan; all of which would have to necessarily stem from their desire to profit more by making more people suffer (and in numerous ways) than would have otherwise been the case. The inherent evil there is simply mind-boggling to me.
As regards my referring to a "gay community" in my OP, I had no intention to erroneously depict reality in any way whatsoever. I certainly will defer to your obviously far greater insight.
Last edited by Oldhag1; 07-15-2014 at 08:53 PM..
Reason: Edited quote
My ex-wife has worked 37 years in clinical laboratory conditions, most in the field of bacteriolgy. It has n[been a well known fact with that profession for many years that the pores in latex condoms are so incredibly bigger that a virus that to pass through those pore it as if a virus passing through were a lemon as in passing through a basketball hoop.
One thing that contribute to the spread in the 70s and early 80s was the attitude that "It can'y happen to me I am not in NY, San Francisco Chicago. The other was the fact there was an element that significantly for all practical purposes glorified their own promiscuous behavior and thereby
helped to perpetuate this same behavior.
When the disease had been identified it was too late for a much greater number of people that would have been otherwise without this element of promiscuous licentiousness. What followed was normal disease vectoring based on bisexual behavior taking it across lines also based on the heterosexual males or bisexual males for the most part to female heterosexuals and the in some case to other males depending on the frequency of contact between regular partners after one had become infected. :Political correctness and not encouraging more responsible behavior among those prone to the promiscuous behavior heightened the threat.
the dependence on condoms that were and are not reliable unless things have changed, due to the natural pores in latex. Most medical people know this fact.
Prior to GRIDS ( the fear of PC police prevented more action for prevention while that name was used to a limited degree briefly) HIV or AIDS hepatitis WAS Aids of it's day in the 70s and even 60s with similar infection parameters and vectors. Then as now many activists blame the Gov't for no more proactive efforts to combat the spread and this + the promiscuity hastened the spread.
yes, and also, the act of anal sex has become extremely popular with hetero teens and young adults, but it is more conducive to spreading HIV than vaginal sex. Why? because unlike vaginal sex, anal sex sort of ruptures the colon walls microscopically so that the microscopic capillary blood vessels in the intestinal wall are exposed and open to picking the virus up from the semen immediately. It goes directly into the blood stream. This is one reason why it was gays getting so much of it from the start. The human colon is simply not constructed to have things inserted,as it causes a certain degree of damage; it is constructed for things to flow outward from it. Even minimally, microscopically, ruptured capillaries lining the intestinal wall are a direct conduit into the blood stream.
here's a great expose' book about what really goes on with the
Aids virus- from CDC research:
You have a point, but I really feel the need to say that this is too simple. It gives people a false sense of security. They think, "I don't do drugs. I don't have random unprotected sex". I'm safe
I sure thought I was safe. I was in the military. There was madiotry testing. I was married and monogamous.
At least, I thought I was. And I've got to tell you that in 24 years I have come across way too many people, male or female, who though they were safe too. A lot of them are dead now.
Yes, Bad behavior can lead to HIV. It can also happen to people who have done no wrong.
Until people really realize this, this disease won't go away. Until people realize this, I will always get people who wonder if I did drugs or slept around. People will continue to walk around thinking they are better than me because I must have done something wrong to get AIDS. And they will continue to think it can't possibly happen to them, until they end up in some waiting room with me.
Until people stop thinking like this I will continue to keep my HIV status quiet IRL
yes, i believe you. because i have read that the CDC research says you can get HIV from far more circumstances than just having sex with an infected person, drug use, etc.
How about the fact the HIV virus can stay alive for up to 2 weeks in a wet fluid. Up to a week in a dried body fluid. Up to a few hours In the air after a sneeze by an infected person. Can go thru a condom because the pores are bigger than the virus. Dr's wear 2 pairs of latex gloves to protect themselves in Operating Rooms.....etc
Speaking as a gay man 24 years of age, I agree with everything BugsyPal has said.
The much maligned bath-house/bar culture of the 60s-80s was the gay counterpart to the straight sexual revolution. I recall Hugh Hefner being quoted calling this period a "golden age" for straights, bookended by the sexual revolution/birth control pill and the onset of AIDS. No longer checked by police raids and prosecution, gay/bi men cut loose as straights did. Gay men had no fear of pregnancy and STDs were treatable or considered obvious (herpes flare-up) and thus avoidable. At least that's what my reading and talking with those alive during the period lead me to think.
My similarly aged peers grew up with HIV/AIDS as a controlled, if not beaten, disease. A positive diagnosis didn't kill or end your sex life. Unfortunately, this has led to an easily discernible complacency in my generation. If you click with/trust the person (that you met at on the internet or at a public function like pride), unprotected sex is on the cards. In the 1990s, being known as the guy in the area who had unprotected sex with strangers would lead to being sexually blacklisted.
From my limited personal experience, safer sex and sexual health practices correspond with education, social class, and progressive politics. The LGBT community at my elite undergrad institution with its decidedly upper and upper-middle class social milieu had very high standards with safer sex and STD testing. Young gay men in my home area (Long Island, NY) tend to put themselves at greater risk: more anonymous sex and more opportunities for unprotected with those who are closeted and infrequently or never tested. It's not a surprise, as my area is very conservative and Catholic, and many are afraid of ostracism (or worse) from their families or bosses.
The frightening problem is the increasing rates of infection amongst young black and Hispanic men. HIV is becoming less of a problem among middle class or higher whites and increasingly more of a problem for working or lower class black and hispanic men. The projections forecasting what HIV/AIDS prevalence might look like in 2020 or 2030, if you can find them, are terrifying.
I live in NYC the mecca of American HIV/AIDS virus besides San Francisco. In the eighties HIV started killing off gay men, intravenous drug users from heroin and prostitutes. These three groups were dying at an alarming rate because their was no medication to control the disease besides experimental cancer drug AZT. By the end of the decade in my city plenty of gay men died, drug users died and a good portion of sex workers died. In the 90s in NYC HIV/Aids was no longer a gay issue and has infiltrated the heterosexual population regardless of race and class. I even heard a story of a family friend of a friend who was married but a very handsome Latino man, a very good looking man and women liked him regardless if he was married. Story short he kept on sleeping around with so much women and some how he picked up the HIV and gave it to his wife who died some years back. I even knew of another woman I used to talk to, she real hot, but she was with her boyfriend who caught HIV, and she tried to commit suicide on certain occasions, strangely she never developed any symptoms in her blood, but her boyfriend continues to mess around with women in the area, and this was nearly a decade ago. From what I remember that HIV is not so much associated with gays but it has become increasingly being associated with the African American population especially amongst black women who are more likely to catch the virus than white or Hispanic women.
yes, i believe you. because i have read that the CDC research says you can get HIV from far more circumstances than just having sex with an infected person, drug use, etc.
How about the fact the HIV virus can stay alive for up to 2 weeks in a wet fluid. Up to a week in a dried body fluid. Up to a few hours In the air after a sneeze by an infected person. Can go thru a condom because the pores are bigger than the virus. Dr's wear 2 pairs of latex gloves to protect themselves in Operating Rooms.....etc
AND EVERYONE TAKE APPROPRIATE MEASURES, TIGHTEN UP YOUR PERSONAL HEALTH SECURITY, IT IS A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH.
Quote:
Originally Posted by 2bpurrfect
yes, and also, the act of anal sex has become extremely popular with hetero teens and young adults, but it is more conducive to spreading HIV than vaginal sex. Why? because unlike vaginal sex, anal sex sort of ruptures the colon walls microscopically so that the microscopic capillary blood vessels in the intestinal wall are exposed and open to picking the virus up from the semen immediately. It goes directly into the blood stream. This is one reason why it was gays getting so much of it from the start. The human colon is simply not constructed to have things inserted,as it causes a certain degree of damage; it is constructed for things to flow outward from it. Even minimally, microscopically, ruptured capillaries lining the intestinal wall are a direct conduit into the blood stream.
here's a great expose' book about what really goes on with the
Aids virus- from CDC research:
Agreed, but you know paranoia and pseudoscience sells. And I think that book he is promoting is not even about that. It's about the government keeping the "cure" a secret.
Do you even know what you are talking about?? The gay community suffered during the 1980's because an unknown virus came here from Africa that no one knew about. Because the gay community was centered in urban areas and very interconnected, they were among the first casualties. Gay activists pleaded with the Reagan/Bush Sr administration for more education and public awareness regarding the disease, which back then, did not even have a name. It was indicated at the time, quite clearly by activists, that if nothing was done this disease would easily spread as a pandemic, which it was in the process of doing. The virus itself was not even discovered until 1984, at least four years after the virus came to this country. The Reagan administration had considerable responsibility in allowing HIV to spread.
Rather than educate, Reagan and his constituents used this as an opportunity to preach this was a disease of degenerates, and that if the U.S. returned to the morals of the 1950's it would go away. The gay community, along with other minorities were seen as dispensable members of society. Margaret Heckler was the secretary of Health and Human Services and paid little service to it, however, she assured the American public that the nations blood supply was "100% safe, which it was not. The gay male community became the pioneers of HIV/AIDS education, most of the budget was thrown onto their backs, and began AIDS walks, and other fundraisers. Most of the activist information inspired, and became the templet used by today's organizers of breast cancer awareness, which had a significantly higher budget allotment than HIV ever had. Today, thanks to Obama HIV/AIDS is no longer a criteria for not being allowed to immigrate to the U.S. So, many of the new infections are coming from overseas, specifically Africa.
Today, there is little discussion of HIV/AIDS. Today's young people do not have the education necessary to understand and realize the seriousness of HIV. There is far more information on the importance of mammograms, and curbing obesity than info regarding the importance of safe sex.
Oh puhleeze. We heard nothing but "practice safe sex" from the early 1980's forward, from Reagan-era government public service campaigns no less, again and again.
Which begs the question of which sexual practices are inherently unsafe. Namely, sodomy.
The fact is that "if the U.S. returned to the morals of the 1950's", the predominant method of AIDS transmission *would have* gone away.
Who would not have known in 1969, the year of “Gay Liberation,” for example, that promiscuous anal sex was unsanitary for individuals and a potential danger to public health? Yet, "gay liberation" was defined by its Radical Left theorists, certainly not Reaganites, as just that: promiscuous anal sex. It was celebrated by these radicals as a challenge to the repressive “sex-negative” culture of what radical gay theorists still call “heteronormativity,” i.e., the heterosexual and monogamous norm. In the radical view, existing sexual norms reflected nothing about humanity’s biological experience (which heterosexual radicals had painfully learned from the Herpes epidemic a few years before this), but were merely "a social construction to preserve the privileges of a dominant group."
Yes, the Leftist radicals on universities really were peddling that crap. Not the Reagan Administration.
And when some gay men began to re-think their "bath house culture', they were *vilified* for doing so!
When Dr. Dan William, a gay specialist warned of the danger of continued promiscuity, he was publicly denounced as a “monogamist” in the gay press.
When gay playwright Larry Kramer issued a similar warning, he was accused in the New York Native gay newspaper of “gay homophobia and anti-eroticism.”
Meanwhile, at a public meeting in the year preceding the first AIDS cases, gay radical Edmund White, co-author of The Joy of Gay Sex, proposed that “gay men should wear their sexually transmitted diseases like red badges of courage in a war against a sex-negative society.”
Michael Callen, a gay youth present at the meeting, had already had 3,000 sexual partners and was shortly to come down with AIDS. When he heard White’s triumphant defiance of nature’s law, he remembers thinking: “Every time I get the clap I’m striking a blow for the sexual revolution.” (from Michael Callen's "Surviving AIDS")
In the early Eighties, the AIDS epidemic was still confined to just three cities with large homosexual communities. Aggressive public health methods might have prevented the epidemic’s outward spread. But every effort to take normal precautionary measures was thwarted in turn by the political juggernaut the gay liberation movement had managed to create. Under intense pressure from gay activists, for example, the director of public health of the City of San Francisco *refused* to close bathhouses, maintaining that they were valuable centers of “education” about AIDS, even though their only purpose was to facilitate anonymous, promiscuous sex, which was the "trapdoor to hell on earth", to quote the late Randy Shilts.
And it got worse. Not only were measures to prevent the geographical spread of AIDS thwarted by radical politics, but measures to prevent its spread into other communities were obstructed as well. Thus when officials tried to institute screening procedures for the nation’s blood banks and asked the gay community not to make donations while the epidemic persisted, gay political leaders opposed the procedures as infringing the “right” of homosexuals to give blood. The San Francisco Coordinating Committee of Gay and Lesbian Services, chaired by Pat Norman, a city official, issued a policy paper asserting that donor screening was “reminiscent of miscegenation blood laws that divided black blood from white” and “similar in concept to the World War II rounding up of Japanese-Americans in the western half of the country to minimize the possibility of espionage.”
The result of these radical "gay liberation"attitudes was to spread AIDS.
And those didn't come from Reagan or anyone who voted for him.
Last edited by NickB1967; 07-16-2014 at 11:18 AM..
Unprotected, anonymous anal sex practiced in basically public gay bathhouses could easily be Moderator cut: off topic led to the AIDS epidemic.
Face up to the truth. Gays were asked to STOP it for their own good...ignored all health authority suggestions and recommendations and then whined like little kids that the world was ignoring their plight.
Anal sex is practised by hetero people as well, don't you think that it would have spread widely among them too? For that reason.
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