In Seattle, WA., Oliver Moreno, a male prostitute, has been arrested for knowingly spreading HIV to tricks who hired him and exposing them to the virus that causes AIDS. Reportedly, the tricks asked Moreno if he was "clean," and Moreno replied he was.
In a country that festishizes making crimes out of any and everything for reasons that need intense discussion, I guess it is not surprising that HIV should become a crime to feed our prison industry. It's perfect. It is a disease believed to haunt gay men, whom the country is kept at constant unease about because we are trying to destroy Marriage and disrupt its combat forces. So, yes: if you can no longer jail them for being queer, HIV works perfectly well.
And, there are always prisons and jails to be filled somewhere in this decadent country.
Additionally, the continued spread of HIV almost 30 years after it emerged as a gay cancer is baffling. It is only equally baffling to the scientific community's paltry offerings in response. (This is not meant to indict the many doctors, nurses, health clinic workers, sex workers, and researchers who want to see an end to this epidemic, but the initial direction HIV research was driven unilaterally is also up for intense discussion).
An online contact, a fellow gay man equally concerned about the continued spread overall and among gay men asks: "Why do you think HIV prevention efforts failed so miserably?"
The answers are multi-tiered and refute some common assumptions and myths about HIV/AIDS prevention. It is worth summarizing.
For one, "HIV prevention efforts"assumes it has been the intent to stave off the spread of HIV. I am old enough to remember that US President Ronald Reagan never spoke of it, and given the proportion infected given our supposed 7% of the population, there was very, very little hue and cry, even from liberal circles. People were simply allowed to die.
My alma mater, Washington Univ [St Louis] was the second university in the country to install condom machines in the bathrooms throughout the campus. This was 1986 or so. It caused an uproar from predictable circles, and quietly the machines were removed. Again: 1986, almost 10 years before the miraculous "retrovirals" when many gay men went from infection to death in a matter of months. 1986, when death came quickly. And who cared?
Second, it was controversially the main aim of the HIV/AIDS activists - AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) and the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) - to bring more and more medicines in the pipeline. This demand was not unreasonable, but it did not go without criticism from the ranks of activists (and many in the scientific community).
I joined Queer Nation/San Francisco in 1990. ACT UP/SF was already huge, and our QN meetings got up to 500 lgbtq's. A vocal minority of us questioned the reasonableness of asking for a Marshall Plan of MEDICATIONS for HIV rather than look at sociological factors, like poverty and employment, as some pointed to how and where this plague seemed to be fast spreading. We were frightened this was some social purification scheme, given Reagan's silence. Given the values of our establishment, how could we be wrong? And we were ignored. Meds make money. Poverty costs. There are many, global examples of this paradigm, including in Central Africa, were old diseases aren't profitable. AIDS, Inc., is.
Third, the sex message has continuously been nuanced from one dimensional to flat, but it is still a message to a marginalized community. Marginalized communities are historically removed from humanity even by liberal circles and expected to make water into wine, rouse themselves from deep poverty and get on their bicycles to find jobs [as one Thatcher crony dictated] as if we function in some Twilight Zone awaiting white papers and health department edicts to inspire us.
In the real world, look at anti-drug, anti-early pregnancy, anti-std campaigns and see where they have succeeded and failed and emerges a pattern a high school student could discern. Our establishment will not.
Where there is affluence, where there is a perceivable pathway "up" behaviors can be [self-]modified. This is usually, but not always, among whites with obvious exceptions. Anti-early pregnancy campaigns, for example, have worked best when women were given access to higher education, equal employment, Title IX, and breaking the glass ceilings: they themselves will hold off having children [and marrying or not] later (and I am not at all saying marriage/single motherhood is a good or bad thing, just stating what I understand to be the facts).
Nevertheless, the early "Safe Sex" message to gay men was on par with JUST SAY NO, a harsh command you'd give to a farm animal. Not to accept in full this message drew any respectable gay man into question. The harshness of the message was observed by HIV activists. We protested the framing of this message and were accused of making excuses for "reckless behavior", etc. We stated this message would never - and has never - been directed at straight men.
At some point in the mid-90's the medical community got less myopic, and "safer" sex was born. It was a far cry from the Safe Sex message from my doctor telling me to use a plastic sandwich bag on my partner and to keep my tongue in my mouth when kissing [1989].
"Safer" sex still ignores the human impulse and social conditions we urged be attended. So, predictably, HIV is reportedly fast growing among women of color, and gay men of color: marginalized communities within a marginalized community. Should this really be a surprise? What other indices do we know about these - our! - communities? And why are these indices ignored from my beginnings with Queer Nation to this hour?
I "know" exactly who Oliver Moreno is. He is an un-/under-employed queer of color whose had little or very poor schooling and is only meant to be a source of cheap labor for or capitalist economy. He can rent his body picking grapes, stocking a shelf at Wal-Mart, or turning a trick.
The men who believed he was "clean" are the same men who believe he is a loyal Wal-Mart associate.
AIDS Wiki & Celia Farber * Out of Control: AIDS and the corruption of medical science * HIV treatment response and prognosis ... * Peter Duesberg
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