Petrelis Files

I AM THE HAPPY HOMOSEXUAL

Thanks to an April 18 news article by Charles Ornstein in the Los Angeles Times about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announcing their decision to shift gears with current HIV prevention programs and end workshops designed to avert new transmissions, I’ve experienced a profound feeling of happiness as a homosexual.

My happiness stems from the tone of the story and from a quote Ornstein got from the executive director of the National Association of People With AIDS, Terje Anderson, about the CDC shift.

"There ain't going to be any more safe-sex workshops. There ain't going to be any more public attitude campaigns around this,” he said. [1]

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation had a similar reaction to the CDC’s announcement. In their news release, the foundation stated: “Under this initiative, community-based organizations that are directly funded by the CDC will have to conduct programs from a list of specified activities related to this initiative. Some activities currently funded by the CDC, such as social marketing campaigns and workshops focused on risk reduction among those who are not infected, will be excluded from the list of activities.” [2]

To a small degree, Anderson and the foundation are overstating their argument. The CDC has not killed all safe sex workshops, just some of the more ineffective and offensive to gay men, in my opinions, workshops targeting men who have sex with men. But any move on the federal agency’s part to curtail HIV prevention efforts, such as those operated by the Stop AIDS Project of San Francisco, is a development I wholeheartedly endorse.

Shortly after the LA Times article ran, a San Francisco gay newspaper reported that while “the Stop AIDS Project has been participating for several years in a demonstration project funded by the federal government, the agency had been told funding for its Positive Force program would run out at the end of this year.” [3]

I don’t believe this is the death knell either for the Stop AIDS Project or such CDC demonstration projects, but the decision to no longer fund Positive Force nevertheless must be causing great consternation and worry for all HIV prevention organizations receiving federal grants.

For more than I decade I have scrutinized the federally funded community based organizations and efforts in San Francisco targeting gay and bisexual men and found them unappealing, sometimes appallingly derogatory to gay sensibilities, not to mention largely incapable of controlling and reducing new HIV infections. Friends who have attended Stop AIDS Project events and forums report that, on average, less than two dozen men show up to participate.

Seems to me the programs are predicated on two central themes: the male homosexual is diseased, or soon will be. Therefore, national and local public health officials believe they must create and maintain an HIV prevention industry, with no comparable such effort mounted for other preventable diseases that kill thousands of San Franciscans annually. The officials think without HIV bowling leagues, flirting and erotic writing seminars offered by several community based groups, social trips to the zoo, museums and cafes, classes in how to fist the anus, ballroom dance opportunities, continuous social marketing campaigns that flood bus shelters, appear in ads in gay rags, or hit the television and radio airwaves, and too many other ways of trying to halt HIV infections, then homosexuals will be gathering for sex and potentially spreading HIV and assorted other sexually transmitted diseases.

To me, such prevention silliness is not reaching those men at highest risk, nor has it reduced the level of infections significantly. Precious little research and data exists proving federally funded activities in San Francisco targeting the men who have sex with men community are meeting their intended goals.

But what offends me most is how the basic premise off these activities equates all homosexuals as either ill with infections, or has the potential of sharing and spreading diseases. The victimization of the modern homosexual in San Francisco gets a shot in the arm by the HIV prevention workshops, and the social marketing campaigns accompanying them.

It is impossible to avoid the social marketing campaigns that saturate every venue for gay men in San Francisco, not just the sex establishments, and I see these campaigns as intruding on gay spaces and our individual and collective lives. The dissenting justices in the Supreme Court’s Bowers vs. Hardwick ruling upholding sodomy statutes, said “this case is about ‘the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men,’ namely, ‘the right to be left alone.’” A right that is sorely lacking for gay men in San Francisco who are subjected to never-ending social marketing campaigns and sexually transmitted disease prevention.

The absence of the right to be left alone, especially for gay men cruising for sex, was gleefully reported in a November 9, 2000, article in the New York Times headlined, Group Roams Chat Room to Talk to Gay Men About AIDS.

This was the opening sentence: “Where men meet men for sex, health agencies are sure to follow.” [4]

I guess it was too much for the NY Times that just maybe, that all spaces where men gather to find other men for sex, including on the Web, should be respected and that health agencies might consider leaving us alone.

Every aspect of gay sexuality and queer culture has been co-opted by the CDC and their partners in the HIV prevention industry, for the purposes of disease prevention. Our lives and sexual fulfillment are viewed only through the prism of how to modify homosexual conduct, ostensibly for valid reasons, to avoid contracting or spreading diseases. However, the notion that gay is good, a slogan and philosophy promulgated by gay liberationists is not an integral component of CDC funded programs.

The first step on the long road to a resurgence of gay liberation and sexual fulfillment without the snooping eyes of the federal and local health authorities, is to end HIV prevention workshops that have not been shown as ineffective at halting new infections among men who have sex with men.

Let’s put the sex back in homosexuality, without massive spying and intrusive programming singling out gay men for federally subsidized anti-sex campaigns that are infected with a virulent strain of negativity towards gay sexuality and pleasure.

The happiness I feel regarding the changes in CDC funding decisions will only increase over the coming months, because I believe other additional changes from the federal government are on the horizon. I will do everything in my limited power as an AIDS activist to minimize CDC funded HIV prevention efforts directed at gay men, and help to restore abundant pride in our sexuality and sexual culture.

Sources:

1. www.latimes.com
2. http://www.sfaf.org/aboutsfaf/newsroom/cdc_testing.html
3. Bay Area Reporter, April 24, 2003; print edition
4. http://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/09/technology/09AIDS.html