Who wants to live forever?

I got into an argument with a friend on MSN about the question of HIV in the gay community, and the fetischization of bare-backing among many gay men. Ironically enough, and this is true, Queen’s ‘Who wants to live forever’ was playing on spotify at the time.

As has been reported on this blog earlier London’s club scene is a dangerous place if you’re unwary. One in seven men you meet is going to be HIV positive.

So, if you go out and try to find a man for the night, I might feel like Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry movies, pointing a gun at you with one round in the chamber. I can make a little speech there:

– I know what you’re thinking. "Did he wear a condom last time or not? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is HIV, the most devastating disease to have ever hit the gay community, the bubonic plague of queers, and would blow your life clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

After fighting the disease for thirty years it is easy to understand why people are battle weary, and why many people have given in, but it is very hard to understand why the Russian roulette of bare-backing have come to be fetischized by elements in the gay community.

It is also hard to understand why serious participants in the community are not railing against this fetischization, but keep quiet about it and even ignore it. It is hard to understand why clubs and venues cash in on it.

It is a lie that the disease is manageable. It is not. It is a virus, and there is no cure, and even though the medication for now keeps it in check viral particles in the body survive. The modern medicines bring down HIV particles to less than half a million particles in a full grown man, of to less than 75 copies per milliliter of blood.

If those viral particles spread resistance to the medication will spread. If the resistance spread we will get back to how it was in the early nineties and late eighties, where every gay man will bury two or three of their friend per month. Have you seen movies of the bubonic plague of the middle ages? That’s how it was back then.

Do we want those days back? If not, it is time for pressure to be put on the fetischization of bare-backing. It is a too dangerous a practice to be ignored, and turned a blind eye to.

Slutty men, parents, comings out and slash and burn in Nottingham

• The guys over at AfterElton.com pointed out an interesting thing in a their agony aunt-column ‘Pigeon Guts’. The question was about slutty gay men and barebacking. Barebacking is a filthy thing that’s come into the community over the last years, maybe as a backlash to the safe sex culture we had in the midst of the AIDS-crisis during the 80s and early nineties.And it is a good point, because HIV and AIDS are still a very real danger in the community. Just a few days ago it was revealed that 1 in 7 gay men on the London club scene carries the virus. To throw in a fetisch about barebacking is a disaster. The producers of adult entertainment are taking a huge gamble with people’s lives, and that goes from venues like Gay.com to Saunas to outright porn.

• Before the states even have marriage equality, they are gearing up for the next fight, which is gay adoptions. I’m not at all sure about the prospect for gay marriage across the pond, and think the fight there will continue for a long while yet. Hopefully the States will join the 21st century and get gay marriages.

• Former child star Sara Gilbert, who played in Roseanne and Will & Grace has come out of the closet.

• Over here in the UK it is slash and burn time as it comes to budgets, and one of the groups to feel the pinch is Council for Equality and Human Rights, Nottingham and Notts. It didn’t fulfill its role, and will see its funding of £300,000 axed over the next three years.

One in seven club gays in London has HIV

A sample done on the capital’s gay scene revealed a markedly higher prevalence of HIV than officially thought. The study sampled 1251 gay men at bars, clubs and saunas, and 12,5% of the sampled were revealed to have HIV.

This is much higher than the Health Protection Agency estimated for gay men in London in general. However, the sample did not of course include gay men that didn’t regularly visit the venues sampled.

Caution needs to be taken in using the number ‘1 in 7’ as a general estimation. Not all gay men visit the scene. However, for those that do, the numbers come as a stark reminder that HIV is still out there.

Today, HIV is more of a chronic disease than a killer ravaging through the demographic. However, HIV should not be considered just as ‘manageable’. It will still upturn lives, and if left untreated you still get to the AIDS stage eventually.

Many assumptions are also made about HIV, assumptions based in ignorance, such as ‘that you can see if someone has HIV’. The only way to protect oneself from HIV is to use condoms when having sex with someone.