Right after the holidays, a young friend of mine decided to get tested for the first time. The test said he was positive. As I watched what he went through, I got a single searing snapshot of how deeply one person can be impacted by the heavy AIDS propaganda that bombards us every day.
Despite the gay world's love of film, despite mystique around books adapted for the screen, not much gay-themed U.S. fiction or nonfiction has made it into the rolling credits. Homophobia still rules some of American society but the lack of gay representation is more complex than that.
A new TV ad claims that HIV-positive gay and bi men can stop the AIDS epidemic. Really? Even as millions are dying all over the world from AIDS, mainly heterosexual women and children? What's behind these ads?
A life-and-death question is in the air, about medicine and money. In the current academic atmosphere, some scientists can reap huge profits and power doing dubious medical research. Along the way, not only can "scientific truth" be skewed, but people's lives and health can be destroyed.
The United States is underwriting more international AIDS funding than any other country on earth -- an effort directed at billions of heterosexuals in hundreds of countries. Yet many Americans are still stubbornly, defensively, grimly trying to keep that moralistic homosexual spin on AIDS at home, even as the CDC estimates that nearly 50 percent of all new infections are now related to injection drug use.
What happens if the World Bank, in its paternalistic meddling, makes the distribution of AIDS drugs a condition for giving out third world loans? If a country questions conventional AIDS wisdom, will it be embargoed? Nuked?
An epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases has been building since the '60s, and Americans are being led to believe that its the fault of gay men -- a statistically ridiculous assertion.
"A dispute that exploded in mid-January shows some deadly questions about AIDS and free speech. Two organizations, the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Center and ACT UP Hollywood, have locked horns over ACT UP's position that HIV itself does not cause AIDS."
