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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 5, 1997)
34 T Septem ber 5. 1997 ▼ just out VIEW FROM HERE Oh dear, Mr. Gendin Recent articles point up lapses in our commitment to staying safe Are the new treatments inspiring a dangerous complacency? . T by Paul Harris read a couple o f articles recently that I The July 8, 1997, edition o f the Advocate was found disturbing. One was published in given over to The Return of Our Bad Habits. In POZ, the other in the Advocate. The POZ one article, David Heitz tells of “Bill,” a high- article was written by Stephen Gendin, an ranking official in one o f the country’s largest executive vice-president of POZ Publish AIDS service organizations, who after an episode ing and also co-founder (with Sean Strub) o f o the f unsafe sex tested positive. In another article, Community Prescription Service. Advertisements John G allagher quotes Paul W isotzky, chairman for the latter business feature G endin’s picture o f the board o f the San Francisco AIDS Founda prominently, as a result o f which he is undoubt tion, who seeks to explain the behavior of gay edly one o f the most w ell-know n figures in the men: “A condom is loaded with so many em o HIV/AIDS world. tional issues about intimacy and the starvation for In his article, “Riding Bareback: Skin-on-skin intimacy. A condom presents a metaphorical bar sex— been there, done that, want m ore” [June rier that is powerful and understandable in a 1997], he writes about how he has had unpro community devastated by loss.” tected sex with another HIV-positive male and One of the factors that undoubtedly is coming how it was for him “em pow ering, not guilt-inspir into play is the fact that with the enormous ad ing.” He writes, “T here’s even something em vances in AIDS medications, people— both HIV powering about the idea o f shari ng someone else’s positive and negative— no longer have quite the H IV .... I could taunt it, challenge it by taking it same fear o f the virus. Yet the reality is that for into my body without being further hurt.” many people the much-touted “cocktail” does not My first reaction was one o f absolute horror work. As I write this, somebody in my circle is in that a magazine like POZ, which has done so the last days of his life, and by the time you read much good over the years in seeking to inform and this he may be dead. educate its readers about HIV and AIDS, should All the evidence shows that the virus mutates, publish such a dangerous piece. Ironically, in that there are different strains o f it, and that people G endin’s bio statem ent on the Community Pre who have been exposed to the fewest strains seem I Portland's only independent noncommercial listener-sponsored community radio station . listen Tuesdays a t 6pm 92.7 Columbia fiorire scription Service W eb site, it is proudly pointed out that in 1994 he founded the AIDS Prevention Action League to address the increasing HIV transmission rates am ong gay men. The biogra phy also states, “ HIV positive since 1986, Stephen has worked countless hours to educate, prevent further HIV transm ission, and help those fighting and living with H IV /A ID S.” My next reaction after discovering such bla tant hypocrisy was that someone needs to rewrite his bio. Then I thought again: Gendin does the HIV community a service by raising a subject that many o f us would prefer not to discuss. I suspect that most gay men, if they were honest with themselves let alone others, would like to return to the days o f carefree sexuality, where condoms were used strictly by heterosexuals— and then for the purpose o f avoiding pregnancy. They would love to return to the days where the worst thing that could happen when you had sex with another man was contracting an inconvenient social disease. The reality today, o f course, is very different. AIDS is not an inconvenient social disease. My form er lover did not die o f a m inor social disease. The legions o f gay men and others whom we have lost in the carnage this disease has wreaked did | not die o f anything remotely social. to do best. In addition, people can pass on to others their version of the virus, including their resis tance to some o f the life-saving drugs currently being prescribed. This poses a special threat to couples who are both HIV-positive and who be lieve that, so long as they are monogamous, unsafe sex is not going to do them any further harm. Perhaps they, like Gendin, see something romantic about giving someone they purport to love another strain o f the virus, which may kill them. There is nothing romantic about yet another person in his or her 20s or 30s dying decades before they should. We seem to be so close to, if not finding an answer to AIDS, at least being able to control it. For many o f us AIDS has been a long war that we have waged; it has cost us and the gay movement dearly. We are tired and fed up with AIDS. Every time we have sex, the condom is a reminder of AIDS. How much easier to pretend that it doesn’t exist. But now is not the time to let up. G endin’s advertisement, which I am sure most o f us have seen, claims, “I run my prescription service like my life depends on it. Because it does.” W ell, Mr. Gendin, I would like to suggest that you conduct your sex life as if your life depended on it. Because it does.