AFRO-NETS> Chilling Article from Rolling Stone Magazine (2)

[Gregg Gonsalves <Greggg@gmhc.org>]

Chilling Article from Rolling Stone Magazine (2)
------------------------------------------------

Lucinda:

The article has been widely criticized as being inaccurate and sev-
eral of the sources quoted in the article have said that they were 
either misquoted or their comments taken out of context. While there 
may be a few people in the USA that actively seek to get infected, 
the biggest problem is that many gay men are failing to use condoms 
after 20 years of the epidemic in our country -- prevention messages 
haven't reached them, or the "old" prevention messages are losing 
their power. That being said, the vast majority of gay men are prac-
ticing safer sex -- otherwise the epidemic would be much larger in 
our community. 

The biggest issues for HIV prevention in the USA are that it is 
grossly underfunded and the federal government under President Bush 
is attacking HIV prevention programs for gay men, African-Americans, 
and other "people of color" that happen to talk frankly about sex. 
The "religious right," the highly conservative and moralistic wing of 
Christianity in the US has convinced the President to push absti-
nence-only programs (no talk of condoms or safe sex allowed!), to 
question the effectiveness of condoms, when we all know condoms work 
and that abstinence alone without other options isn't an effective 
prevention message. We could use the support of our friends around 
the world to help us here. All the HIV/AIDS programs we have set up 
in the USA are in danger from a government that swings between ne-
glect and hostility on AIDS issues. 

Gregg Gonsalves
New York, NY, USA
mailto:Greggg@GMHC.org

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