Some people DID make the argument that HIV does not discriminate, which is an inaccurate argument that tries to fix the wrong problem.
There are many parallels between the civil rights movement of Black Americans and the civil rights movement of LGBT Americans, and I propose another: Sickle cell anemia is a disease that does discriminate, and it is wrongheaded to suggest that non-Blacks should blame Blacks for getting sick with it, or that God created it as punishment, or that it is OK to ignore it and not try to cure it because it is rare outside of the Black demographic, or that non-Blacks should be afraid of associating with Blacks even though this doesn’t risk transmission, or that the disease is what being Black is about.
People are for loving and working with and helping and appreciating. Diseases are for eliminating.
And, I guess I must admit, the Black civil rights movement is for emulating and making analogies. Hope nobody minds me jumping onto those coattails - that movement was the leader, is all.
No, it is not true. Monogamous heterosexuals who do not abuse IV drugs cannot get it.
Just like breast cancer is a disease of everybody.
The statement that the incidence of men who got HIV from heterosexual intercourse is “lower” is so serious an understatement as to verge on the deceptive.
This is a lot of words that boil down to “what I posted is absolutely correct”.
The Cecil column you linked to says otherwise - I don’t think that’s the best cite you could have used to try to make your point (and it’s from 1988, so it’s probably out of date).
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I found some better datafrom the CDC. The estimated per act probability of acquiring HIV from an infected source is
[ul][li]50/10,000 exposure for receptive anal intercourse [/li][li]6.5/10,000 for insertive anal intercourse [/li][li]10/10,000 for receptive penile-vaginal intercourse[/li][li]5/10,000 for insertive penile-vaginal intercourse[/ul][/li]
Well it looks like it’s ten times lower for a heterosexual man to get it from sex with a woman than from receptive anal intercourse. But the risk for insertive anal intercourse and for insertive penile-vaginal intercourse are very similar. So I don’t think it’s “deceptive” to say that it’s lower for heterosexual men. It’s either 10 times less, or about the same (depending whether the gay man is a top or a bottom). It’s not like it’s 100 or 1,000 times lower.
The following statement is absolutely, unequivocally true, and you will not be able to nitpick it away.
*
AIDS in America is now, has always been, and probably will remain, a disease primarily of gay men and IV drug abusers.*
Asimov had more than one sex partner. But (and I admit that I just skimmed that link) did he have sex with anyone other than Janet once he married her? Or was he monogamous with Janet from 1970 onwards?
In any case, he didn’t get HIV from extramarital sex. He got it from a blood transfusion, which is well-documented. He didn’t have sex with other men (that I know of) and he didn’t abuse IV drugs.
It is even possible to get it by being stabbed by a criminal with an HIV-tainted blood filled syringe. This is very rare, but I know a family who lost someone to this scenario, and I also know somebody who was stabbed in this fashion but did not develop HIV. Rare things do happen.
Well I had a young teenager in 1993 as a patient who was a hemophiliac and got it from tainted blood products so your statement is incorrect. I am aware we test blood much better now but there are people who got HIV through no falt of their own.
If you’d just said that the most common group to get infected is gay men I’d have absolutely no problem with it. It’s not a nitpick to point out that the only reason your statement is true is because you unnecessarily lump “gay men and IV drug abusers” together.
Considered separately, gay men are the largest group of new infections (61%), followed by heterosexual people (27%), and then IV drug users (11%). Even if you only count heterosexual women (19%), there are still more of them getting HIV than there are IV drug users getting it.
Why are you lumping the 1st and 3rd most common groups together and ignoring the 2nd most common group?
Because the women who got HIV got it primarily from intercourse with bisexual males or IV drug abusers.
You are trying very hard to slice the numbers to make it look like other than what it is - AIDS in America is now, has always been, and probably will remain, a disease primarily of gay men and IV drug abusers.
It seems disrespectful and callous to say it, but I feel it accelerated the social acceptance of homosexuality.
Reagan (and Nancy) didn’t want to acknowledge the disease until Rock Hudson was publicly strickened. Majority groups can be callous toward minority groups, but seeing them suffer hideously can provoke empathy. It also sparked unprecedented activism in the gay community, which may have been it’s most powerful effect.
I don’t think of AIDS as a blessing in disguise, anymore than the Jewish Holocaust was, but I believe it resulted in a quantum leap in understanding and sympathy for the gay community
Growing up when AIDS was first known, I’d say it hindered the cause. Society was already gradually becoming more and more open to the idea that being gay wasn’t bad, as part of a wider change in social norms regarding sex - homosexuality was legalised, for example - so it seems unlikely to me that having this association with gay sex and horrible death actually helped matters.
Are you assuming all those women were non-monogamous? Actually, I have no idea what your point is. Is anyone disagreeing that gay men make up larger numbers of new HIV cases? What relevance does it have to this thread?
It’s a thread about whether AIDS damaged or assisted the cause of LGBT rights in the United States. It’s relevant because AIDS ravaged the gay community while leaving heterosexuals relatively untouched. Heck, the disease was commonly called Gay Related Immune Deficiency until they settled on AIDS. I remember some people referring to it as the gay plague even.
I was a child in the 1980s. I remember some pretty hostile feelings towards homosexuals because of AIDS. There was a guy on my street with a bumper sticker depicting two men (stick figures) engaged in sex crossed out with the words “Stop AIDS” written next to them.
I don’t know whether AIDS ultimately helped the civil rights movement for LGBT people. I think it’s an interesting question though.