Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (March 3, 1995)
ju s t o u t ▼ m a rc h 3 , 1 0 9 9 ▼ 17 Despite an array of outreach efforts, risk-taking behaviors among gay male communities are on the rise Story by Inga Sorensen • Photos by Linda Kliewer D It’s been roughly 15 years since the AIDS ata from an ongoing study involving epidemic began in the United States. Tens of 1,600 Portland men who identify as thousands of gay men have died of complications gay or bisexual show up to 30 percent from the disease, which ravages the immune sys are engaging in extremely high-risk tem, thousands more will continue todie each year. sex on a regular basis—this despite Three into thousand Oregonians have died of AIDS; the millions of dollars that have been poured gay men account for an estimated 80 percent of safe-sex education campaigns that clearly tel 1 them those deaths. if they have unprotected sex, they and their part Yet researchers are finding that neither that ners could die. painful reality nor an explicit safe-sex campaign “Despite all of our prevention efforts, studies are deterring large numbers of men from engaging indicate there is enough sexual risk-taking going in high-risk sex. Though many, if not most, men on to reproduce the AIDS epidemic generation who identify as gay or bisexual say they have been after generation,” says Ron Stall, an associate exposed to some type of HIV-prevention mate professor of epidemiology with the University of rial—a brochure, billboard or poster, for instance— California at San Francisco. With funding from the numerous studies show that population appears to National Institute of Mental Health, Stall has been be involved in risky sexual practices at higher rates tracking trends in sexual risk-taking behaviors in the mid-1990s than it was in the late-1980s. among gay and bisexual men in Portland and Stall is in the fourth year of his five-year study Tucson, Ariz. involving 2,600 men: 1,600 from Portland and “There isn’t a cure for AIDS, and the best thing 1,000 from Tucson. He selected the two cities we can do to protect ourselves is to practice safe because he found them “more representative of sex all the time,” he says. “It’s very difficult America, unlike a New York City or a San Fran because we are human, but, at this point, it’s all we have.” ............................. ........................... cisco.” He found his subjects by going to vanous gay bars around town and through a random tele phone survey. Of the Portland segment, 1,200 are part of the “bar sample”; the remaining 400 com prise the telephone or “household sample.” The samples consist of both men who claim they are seropositive and those who say they are seronegative. (Stall estimates 40 percent of gay men in Portland don’t actually know their status because they have never been tested or they have had unsafe sex since their last test.) Stall, who has been tracking his subjects since 1992, interviews the men via telephone or mail survey on an annual basis. He questions them about their sexual prac tices. If the men say they are HIV-positive, Stall asks them about the type of health care they are accessing. “What we found the first year is that one in three men in the bar sample said they had engaged in unprotected anal sex with a nonmonogamous partner during the past month. For the household sample, it was about one in six,” explains Stall, who was in Portland last month to share his most recent findings with the Cascade AIDS Project, Oregon’s largest AIDS service organization. “Results of three years of interviews with these men show that the rate—one in three for the bar sample and one in six for the household sample— has remained steady,” he says. It is also important to remember that for the purposes of his study Stall has defined high-risk sex perhaps in the most extreme context possible: unprotected anal sex with a nonmonogamous part ner within the past month. Other sexual prac tices— including oral sex without a condom— may increase one’s chances of contracting HIV. Thus, one could surmise that even greater levels of men are partaking in some form of risky behavior. “What’s also very disturbing is that compared to much of the nation, Portland has a nationally recognized CBO (community-based organiza tion— in this case, CAP] that has been conducting community outreach around HIV/AIDS issues for years,” Stall says. “It makes me wonder what’s going on in places that don’t have established CBOs or an organized gay community.” Even areas that have been saturated with “play Continued on next page