Is AIDS a "Gay" Disease? | Human Life Internatnal

Contents:

• IS AIDS A “GAY” DISEASE?
• WHY ARE GAY MEN MORE AT RISK FOR HIV?
• 1980S. HIV/AIDS: WHY WAS AIDS LLED ‘THE GAY PLAGUE’?
• AIDS: STILL A GAY DISEASE AMERI
• HIV AND ALL GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN
• DISCRIMATN AND HOMOPHOBIA FUEL THE HIV EPIMIC GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN
• HIV AND AIN AMERIN GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN

IS AIDS A “GAY” DISEASE?

Organized “gays” have blocked blood screeng for HIV, fought the closg of homosexual bathho, advoted for the legalizatn of both male and female prostutn, shut down ntact tracg and sexual partner notifitn, opposed crimalizg the liberate fectn of another person wh HIV-AIDS, and promoted the e of ndoms, which have a six to eight percent failure rate.

WHY ARE GAY MEN MORE AT RISK FOR HIV?

To show how out of touch the mastream media is wh realy, Newsweek Magaze, which has featured AIDS on s ver no fewer than twenty tim, laid the blame for the AIDS epimic at the feet of “homophobia and relig lears steeped moralistic doctre who have supprsed hont nversatn about how to stop . In perhaps the most extreme statement of self-excal, Harry Hay, founr of the first homophile anizatn the Uned Stat (the Mattache Society), acced nservativ of velopg and spreadg the AIDS vis. All of this shows the power of the homosexual lobby as greedily gobbl up every penny n get s hands on for s very small percentage of the populatn, thereby privg lns of others of badly-need assistance.

[4] Acrdg to the Natnal Gay Task Force, screeng donated blood for HIV is “spegoatg” and “stigmatizg” [Journal of the Amerin Medil Associatn, Febary 4, 1983; New Dimensns Magaze, March 1990].

1980S. HIV/AIDS: WHY WAS AIDS LLED ‘THE GAY PLAGUE’?

READ MORE: Panmics That Changed History: A TimeleThe AIDS Epimic Aris Though HIV arrived the Uned Stat around 1970, didn’t e to the public’s attentn until the early 1981, the Centers for Disease Control and Preventn (CDC) published a report about five prevly healthy homosexual men beg fected wh Pnmocystis pnmonia, which is ed by the normally harmls fung Pnmocystis jirovecii. Bee the disease appeared to affect mostly homosexual men, officials ially lled gay-related immune ficiency, or the CDC disvered all major rout of the disease’s transmissn—as well as that female partners of AIDS-posive men uld be fected— 1983, the public nsired AIDS a gay disease.

The FDA would revise s l 2015 to allow gay men to give blood if they’ve been celibate for a year, though blood banks routely tt blood for the end of 1985, there were more than 20, 000 reported s of AIDS, wh at least one se every regn of the is Developed In 1987, the first antiretroviral meditn for HIV, azidothymide (AZT), beme available.

AIDS: STILL A GAY DISEASE AMERI

HIV/AIDS the 1990s and 2000s In 1991, the red ribbon beme an ternatnal symbol of AIDS that year, basketball player Magic Johnson announced he had HIV, helpg to further brg awarens to the issue and dispel the stereotype of beg a gay disease.

Outsi the Uned Stat, sex between men acunts for as much as 25 percent of all HIV fectns parts of Lat Ameri, wh rat nearly as high Asia, and not as high Ai where HIV much more strongly affects Internatnal Lbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Intersex Associatn (ILGA) 2010 reported that 77 untri ntue to outlaw same-sex relatns, cludg five that impose the ath penalty on cizens for beg gay (Iran, Mrania, Sdi Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen, pl some parts of Nigeria and Somalia). Acrdg to Gee Ayala, executive officer for the Global Fom on MSM and HIV (MSMGF), prentatns addrsg the HIV panmic disproportnate affect on gay and bisexual men around the world acunted for a mcule two percent of the entire program at the Eighteenth Internatnal AIDS Conference (lled AIDS 2010) Vienna. In Augt 2010, Dunn Osborne reported Gay Cy News that New York Cy health partment data dite MSM the cy ntue to have a very high rate of new HIV fectn and efforts to get more HIV-posive men onto treatment may be failg.

HIV AND ALL GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN

The bure reported that 2008, 1, 751 of the 4, 022 new HIV-posive diagnos the cy were gay/bi men, further swellg the ranks of the 106, 590 New Yorkers (more than 34, 000 of them gay and bi men) livg wh HIV. "New York physician and Gay Men's Health Crisis -founr Larry Mass offered his own take on what GMHC is llg "an urgent prry, " the worseng HIV epimic among gay and bisexual men New York Cy. He remend a stronger 'HIV preventn nscns' and believ regulatn, ially self-regulatn, is need gay sex also suggted that tnal posters about post-exposure prophylaxis, or PEP, would let gay men know that a thirty-day urse of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) has been shown to block HIV fectn if begun wh 72 hours of exposure.

"We need our current gay men's health crisis to be out the open, " he wrote, "warts and all, the way was the heyday of Larry Kramer's activism, however nvenient that might seem given our current high-profile battl for equaly.

The -founr of GMHC and father of ACT UP, the man who beme the angry voice of a gentle but ightened people the darkt of the plague years, told me his Washgton Square apartment -- a sacred space gay Amerin history -- on a swelterg day July 2010 that he'd recently had "a lot of teractn wh Dr. She said 's "shockg and outrageo" that Ain-Amerin gay and bisexual men particular are so heavily affected by HIV, and that anizatns the gay muny haven't seemed to re, judgg by the agendas they set and the prri they her way of lookg at thgs is shaped by the fact that a uple of floors below her office, the Center's health clic each month tak re of 2, 500 people wh HIV, and tts another 1, 000 for the vis. Maybe 's the "throwaway" kids -- mostly gay teenage boys, kicked out of or nng away om their hom for beg gay, at high risk for HIV fectn om olr men who promise love or pay them to have unprotected sex -- the center's homels shelter a short elevator ri down om where she works.

DISCRIMATN AND HOMOPHOBIA FUEL THE HIV EPIMIC GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN

Origally intified as a “gay disease” bee gay men were one of the primary groups afflicted, HIV and the syndrome , Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, were unknown 1981 but had bee hoehold terms and the number one threat to public health by the late 1980s.

For several years after the Center for Disease Control first realized that the illns croppg up muni around the untry were all the work of the same vis, the Amerin ernment did ltle to addrs the epimic, a failure to act that many attribute to the fact that HIV/AIDS was primarily affectg gay men, traveno dg ers, immigrants and racial activists, medil profsnals, artists and a number of people wh AIDS who went public wh their diagnos spe the stigma surroundg the disease eventually spurred a massive rponse om the U.

HIV AND AIN AMERIN GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN

A Gay Men's Crisis1980April 24 – The CDC receiv a report on Ken Horne, a gay man livg San Francis who is sufferg om Kaposi’s Sara, a rare and unually aggrsive ncer lked wh weakened immuny. ” Although the headle would soon be proven false, his report that a number of gay men have been admted to New York Cy tensive re un wh severely promised immune systems is the first article to mentn what soon be known as 5, 1981 – The CDC publish an article scribg five s of a rare lung fectn young, otherwise healthy gay men Los Angel, two of whom have died and three of whom die a short time after. This article is often ced as the official begng of the AIDS 1981 – An LGBT newspaper San Francis, The Bay Area Reporter, wr about “Gay Men’s Pnmonia” and urg gay men experiencg shortns of breath to see a doctor.

The New York Tim article “Rare Cancer Seen 41 Homosexuals” leads to the g of the term “gay ncer” to scribe Kaposi’s 11, 1981 – Wrer and film producer Larry Kramer hosts a fundraiser his New York Cy apartment, at which Dr. &nbsp;</em>May 11 – In an article tled “New Homosexual Disorr Worri Health Officials, ” the New York Tim first publish the phrase Gay-Related Immune Deficiency, or GRID, ntributg to the wispread misnceptn that AIDS only affects gay men.

January 7 – The CDC reports the first s of AIDS 4 – The CDC publish an article sayg that AIDS is most prevalent “among gay men wh multiple sexual partners, people who ject dgs, Haians, and people wh hemophilia. She and a lleague eventually receive the Nobel Prize for their 25 – The New York Tim publish s first ont-page article on 12 – At the Natnal AIDS Fom Denver, 11 gay men wh AIDS take over the stage. Misnceptns around the study (and a misreadg of Patient O”) give rise to the myth of Patient Zero, a promiscuo or even malic gay man who sgle-handly and knowgly touched off the AIDS panmic the Uned 23 – The Department of Health and Human Servic announc the disvery of a retrovis they ll HTLV-III, the e of AIDS.

Food and Dg Admistratn licens the first blood tt for HIV, and blood banks beg screeng the untry’s blood 22 – The Normal Heart, an tobgraphil play about the early days of the crisis by Larry Kramer, opens 25 – Rock Hudson, a legendary actor om the Goln Age of Hollywood whose homosexualy was an open secret the dtry, announc he has AIDS. The book receiv ltle mastream attentn at publitn, but go down history as a watershed moment gay MORE: How AIDS Activists Used ‘Die-Ins’ to Demand Attentn to the Growg Epimic1987Ann E Zelle/Getty ImagThe AIDS Memorial Quilt featured the nam of 1, 920 people who died of AIDS-related illns when was first displayed 1987—the number eventually grew to over 10, 000.

A gay in and the first rock star known to have died of HIV/AIDS, his ath sets of outpourgs of grief around the world, as many the AIDS activist muny exprs their gratu that he ma his diagnosis public.