Shibby! A Boy Meets Boy allusion!
jayjay
It IS a shame that peope associate being gay with being HIV positive or at risk for HIV. It’s the last thing the newly proud gay community needed.
Two things must be present for someone to be really at risk for HIV infection: 1. Risky behavior and 2. presence of the virus in the population. The fact is that the virus is way more present in the male gay community than in the straight community. That doesn’t mean that straight people can’t get it or that gay men who practice safe sex or monogamy with an uninfected partner ARE at risk. It is unfortunate that this disease (like many epidemics before it) is unfairly being blamed on an already marginalized communities.
So I know many gay men who are not really at risk. But I also know that 75% of the HIV/AIDS cases in my part of the country have occurred and continue to occur in gay men. So one of the risk factors is there. Warning a friend or loved one who is a gay man about HIV can often be an appropriate - even loving - thing to do.
Jill
If gay and AIDS were synonyms, wouldn’t more lesbians have it? When I ask religious types this question, it ends the conversation.
I’m a vegetarian. One person I work with blames all my physical maladies on “not eating meat.” Including the time I was damn near electrocuted by the defective copy machine.
(bolding mine)
This is Scott’s very first sentence from the OP of the other thread. I think we can safely assume reading comprehension issues. Asshats.
And, of course, spelling and coding are my own personal issues. Crap.
Well, yes–I mean, who’s going to argue against HIV prevention and education? Besides Fred Phelps and the GOP leadership, that is.
Certainly there is a need to wise up younger gay men about the risks of unsafe sex. In today’s Washington Blade, there is a front page article on a survey by the Whitman-Walker Clinic that the number of DC-area gay and bisexual who engaged in receptive anal sex without a condom rose slightly, from 19.4 percent in 2000 to 21 percent in 2001. Nobody questions that AIDS complacency is a problem.
My beef is the incessant insertion of AIDS into any SDMB conversation that touches, however tangentially, on gay male sexuality.
“I broke up with my boyfriend.” “Did he have AIDS?”
“I’m going to the Folsom Street Fair.” “Aren’t you worried about AIDS?”
“I think Maria Callas is utterly divine!” “Did she have AIDS?”
And so on.
In the US, gay men were hit first and hardest by this plague because anal sex is more conducive to transmission of HIV than vaginal or oral sex, and because in the heady flush of the liberated 70s, promiscuity was indulged in as a celebration of gay men’s newfound freedom to express their sexuality.
But over the course of the past 20 years, AIDS has become an overwhelmingly heterosexual scourge theroughout the world, most notably and horrifically in sub-Saharan Africa. AIDS is not a gay disease; it’s a viral infection that is spread through unprotected sex and exposure to infected blood. Microorganisms don’t check the sexual orientation of their victims.
I’m 40; I’ve been having sex with men since 1975. At first, I was spared infection through sheer luck. Later, after Luc Montagnier’s team at the Institute Pasteur identified HIV as the culprit and safer sex protocols were recommended, I stayed negative through being safe and protective of myself and my partners. I got back my latest HIV results two weeks ago, and I’m still negative.
The other gay male Dopers and I are well aware of safer sex guidelines, and for some dumbass beyatch to break into a conversation about one’s romantic life with “Ever heard about AIDS!!!” is offensive.
BTW, thanks to Canadian Dopers for the fine musical satire of pharmaceutical greed and AIDS scapegoating, Zero Patience. I watched it again last night, and I’m still humming the tunes. I am SO buying that if it is ever released on DVD.
[hijack]It’s a good movie that dispells the myth of Patient Zero, but as a composer of musicals, I find the music abhorrent. The naked aerobics scene was … um… kinda cool. 
[/hijack]
Yes, I practised safe sex last night. As I always do, and always will, until this scourge becomes a thing of the past, and we can all breathe again.
Also, no offense, but my OP in IMHO wasn’t about my romantic life, but my emotional condition…
- s.e.
Sheesh,Scott, it’s you and two hotties, emotional turmoil, and qustions of whether you should do 'em or not. “Romantic” is a euphemism sufficiently large to cover sex and emotions.
Anyway, big hugs to you.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by gobear *
Sheesh,Scott, it’s you and two hotties, emotional turmoil, and qustions of whether you should do 'em or not. “Romantic” is a euphemism sufficiently large to cover sex and emotions. **
OK, sorry, babe. 
I just personally tend to equate “romance” with “boyfriend,” not fuckbuddy and fucked emotions about someone else.
Back at ya! 
- s.e.
Um, stupid pointless sort of hijack here. gobear will probably hate me for this, but I can’t resist. It just struck me, as mentions of my birth year tend to do.
gobear has been shagging for as long as I’ve been alive.
Yeah, but I started young (I was 14, he was 21).
I had to wait until I was a ripe old 17.
But he was barely 16. And a hottie, at that. 
- s.e.
Thanks, JillGat, for the epidemiological background. I knew a fair part of that, though not the statistics, and it was what motivated my comments regarding the hypothetical young gay man in my earlier post.
For any of you who feel that I was “unnecessarily equating gay gex and AIDS” and are offended as a result, please read my earlier comments in conjunction with what JillGat said, not as a “being gay=having AIDS” bit of trollery, which I emphatically did not intend.
We have, however, gone far afield, partially due to my fault, from Gobear’s OR (original rant, replacing OP in Pit threads:)).
May I suggest that we discuss how to fight the ignorance of people who do make that equation?
Tihs has happened before: a gay person posts a thread in which he talks about having casual sex, someone says that that’s risky behavior, someone starts a Pit thread about people being anti-homosexual. While it may be true that these things would not be said to a straight person, it also may be false. If someone someone says “I’m gay, and I have casual sex” and someone else says “That’s kinda dangerous”, I think that you should give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were referring to the casual sex part, not the gay part. I find it strange that while gobear complains that threads in which someone mentions their homosexuality often get hijacked by the AIDS issue, the example he choose was one in which there was a reason other than homosexuality to be worried about AIDS.
The Ryan:
I’ll let someone else reply to your post. But as for my OP, I wasn’t implying that I’m going to go out and screw anyone I can find and have marathon fuck sessions. By casual sex, I meant relationships with the couple of other guys with whom I often sleep with - but do other things with as well. Sure, I’d love to be in an exclusive, monogamous relationship, but that isn’t always available. So in the meantime, I take all proper precautions. I will not be denied a healthy sex life just because I haven’t found “the one.” Whoever “the one” is, I haven’t met him yet. I’m not just going to wank until I meet him. There are things I just can’t do for/to myself that only someone else can.
Let me re-iterate that I’m well-educated on HIV and STD prevention, and I’m not stupid.
Once, I went home with someone who essentially tried to rape me, without a condom. (I’m a top, so I don’t like getting poked.) I had to physically force him off of me, and this took about twenty minutes. If I were not concerned with my well-being, would I have done so?
It’s a different world. Really, it is, and unfortunately most people don’t understand it.
- s.e.
[[Once, I went home with someone who essentially tried to rape me, without a condom. (I’m a top, so I don’t like getting poked.) I had to physically force him off of me, and this took about twenty minutes. If I were not concerned with my well-being, would I have done so?]]
Of course not. You obviously have very high standards when it comes to self-preservation.
How so? Scott Evil A) said from thje first sentence that he practiced safe sex, and B) said that he had two steady fuck buddies.
Dude, you are once again way off-base in your reply to a thread. Have you ever considered using GPS while posting?
It would probably be more effective for The Ryan to use a “ghost poster” who has fewer issues with false precision (read “hairsplitting”) with the English language. I’m starting to develop a mental boilerplate for his posts that reads kind of like Monty Python’s “Argument Clinic” sketch.
jayjay
I don’t know how to take that. I’ve gone home with many guys over the years (I have one here right now) but this was the only one who physically restrained me and wanted to poke me. It was a harrowing experience, and I’ve been more aware ever since. First of all, no one’s going to fuck me, because I don’t like it. Second, if someone tired to do so despite my protestations, especially if it involves physical force, as I mentioned in my last post, what am I to do but anything a woman would do were she in the same situation?
I fully realize that bringing guys home or going home with them can be risky. I have to trust my judgment, and if it goes bad, to do whatever possible to maintain my well-being.
-s.e.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have a late entry to the debate - The Ryan. Of course, now it won’t be a debate at all, but an endless morass of confusing tangents and arguments over the words ‘AIDS,’ ‘homosexual’ and ‘motherfucker’… aaaaaaaaaaaand they’re off!”
FUCK OFF YOU NONSENSICAL CHOAD. Everybody else knows exactly what gobear is talking about. If you want to attempt to derail this perfectly fine discussion with your idiocy, start another thread - don’t hijack this one.
matt, can I have Harley?
Esprix