The Issues:
HIV/AIDS
Eye of the Storm
The following article, by Equality Maryland volunteer Kip Castner, is reprinted with permission of Gay Life.
I could not be more elated by the extraordinary gains we are making in the pursuit of equality. Without question, these are astonishing times for our community. In the new millennium, we have witnessed a sharp acceleration in the pace at which we are succeeding in our pursuit of equality. As a natural byproduct of our progress, there is a commensurate spike in the attention paid to our community. Given the mainstream media's interest in controversy, this coverage comes "fair and balanced" with a surge in the breadth and intensity of voice being given to hatred. Our opponents are panicked, and the marriage issue has raised their rhetoric to a feverish pitch. I am concerned that in the glare of this spotlight, some among us are getting burned.
Every one of our recent victories has been accompanied by a horrific public display of hatred. The Episcopal Church elected an openly gay Bishop, and all over the world other members of that tradition issued very public statements about how they were going to carve them out of their church: our opponents moved swiftly to convey that the legitimacy that had been bestowed on our community by that election would be revoked. When the Supreme Court finally decriminalized sodomy, Pat Robertson responded with a national call for prayer for the Court's majority. Gay marriage continues to be a hot topic on the news. Along with the good news from San Francisco and Sandoval County, New Mexico have been endless diatribes about the end of civilization. Even our President uses language like "threat" to describe our pursuit of equality: in describing the need to act to "defend the sanctity of marriage," he implies that we are filthy. When Maryland's House Judiciary Committee announced that they were not recommending the two anti-gay marriage bills, Delegate Emmett Burns responded on television: "...but don't think you can sashay into court demanding recognition for your marriages from other states." Sashay into court. I do not make it up.
Our agitating for our rights has gotten a lot of dirt out. In fact, itÕs all over the place. When I see this hatred I feel disappointed and angry. These are the feelings provoked for me today, living as I am in a level of comfort in my own skin that was both hard-won, but also blessed and hastened by the acceptance of parents and friends. But I recognize that ten years ago, exposure to this same barrage of rhetoric would have hurt me, provoking feelings of isolation and shame. The concept of self-acceptance being a journey is a very common narrative for members of the GLBT community. I am concerned about how those members of our community just starting out on that journey are coping with this national purging.
In the last few years, we have seen the rapid diffusion of crystal methamphetamine use among gay and bisexual men. Crystal gives its user the feeling of power, a hollow but alluring rush for men who believe that their sexuality compromises their masculinity. Crystal users have also been found to be far more likely than nonusers to have unprotected sex. In the last few years, we have also seen a dramatic spike in syphilis among gay and bisexual men. The recent rise in syphilis among gay men is cause for concern, not just because it reveals unprotected sex, but also because having lesions and other symptoms itself makes it many times easier to acquire and transmit HIV. (When the body is infected with a sexually transmitted disease, the immune system responds by sending its fighter T cells to the site. These T cells are the same ones that HIV infects. Having open sores with T cells present makes you that much more susceptible to getting HIV. It's like walking around naked in winter.) Unsurprisingly, the proportion of new cases of HIV resulting from men who have sex with men (MSM) has increased in Maryland every year since 2001.
As the 1990s came to a close, there were plenty of theories as to why gay men were taking more sexual risks: HIV is no longer a death sentence in the era of highly active anti-retroviral therapy; gay men's perception of the severity of HIV infection has decreased; young gay men have not experienced the decline and loss of members of their peer group; young men perceive HIV as a problem of older generations; safer sex "fatigue" among MSM who had been practicing safer sex for decades; the failure of HIV prevention programming to account for the complicated decision making that goes on in sexual behavior; and a decline in social pressure to use condoms.
I would like to add another for the new millenium: that as we await the verdicts of various institutions outside of ourselves -- legislative bodies, courts, government agencies -- all around us is the heightened perception that our collective destiny is in the hands of powerful others. It is unremarkable to me that in this soil, a drug that makes its user feel invincible would find its roots.
I encourage members of our community to talk about how they are feeling about the changes going on in our culture. And I strongly encourage members of our community to be a part of making those changes happen. It has been my privilege to work with members of our community who have made their voices heard in Maryland politics on issues of civil marriage, hate crimes, and medical decision-making. The testimony of these men and women play a powerful role in leading decision makers to vote the right way. Members of the GLBT community who tell their stories are the sparks that ignite moments of understanding and consciousness among legislators who are not already supportive. I used to think we needed to help members of our community unlearn their internalized homophobia, so we could make them comfortable being politically active. Listening to people who took political action for the first time, I realized I had that reasoning exactly wrong. I now believe that taking political action moves you, measurably, away from internalized homophobia. First-time participants in the political process reported that the experience moved them a significant step in their journey of self-acceptance. Indeed, there are few things as empowering as making your voice heard on behalf of yourself and your community.
I suspect that when we look back at this period in our history, the increases in our risk taking -- as measured by our temporarily declining scores in the health statistics -- will be linked to the extraordinary social and political upheaval taking place simultaneously. While we push the whole community forward, we must be careful not to leave anyone behind.
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