Those paragraphs suggest that Mr. Andriote was very well-educated, to say the least, about HIV transmission.

He says he was in journalism school in 86, which means he was in college in 84, when HIV was discovered and anal identified as the primary mode of male-male transmission.

So how did he, in 2005, get AIDS???

You have to wade through a number of paragraphs full of self-pity to get there, but then there's this:

[After the diagnosis,] When I went to my doctor's office later that afternoon for more blood work, he advised me that it was pointless to try to pinpoint exactly how "it" had happened; better to focus on dealing with this new reality, he told me. But that reality seemed surreal because I felt so well.

I realized I was experiencing the same denial I had heard about so many times. I had convinced myself that a genetic fluke had protected me against the virus in the 1980s, and that the low-risk sex I practiced would keep me uninfected.

[emphasis mine]

So:

1. His doctor tells him NOT to try to pinpoint how it happened.

Why?

Wouldn't you, even if you weren't a journalist, want to know WHAT YOU DID to get infected?

It's a rather important event.

And it's a big question.

2. "I had convinced myself that a genetic fluke had protected me against the virus in the 1980s, and that the low-risk sex I practiced would keep me uninfected."

Really?

What form of "low-risk sex" had he been practicing?

Don't his fellow gay men deserve to know?

Was he doing "PRA" -- "protected receptive anal" -- that is, bottoming with a top who wore a condom?

Certainly if he got infected despite using condoms, his fellow gay men deserve to know.

This is a VERY SERIOUS question.

The researchers who wrote the Buchbinder study, which we reported on last year, said that they were seeing a LOT of seroconversion among men who reported "PRA":

HIV seroincidence was 1.55 per 100 person-years (95% confidence interval: 1.23-1.95) over 18 months of follow-up. On multi-variable analysis using time-dependent covariates, independent risk factors for HIV seroconversion were increased number of reported HIV-negative male sex partners (adjusted odds ratio (AOR) = 1.14 per partner, population attributable risk (PAR) = 28%), nitrite inhalant use (AOR = 2.2, PAR = 28%), unprotected receptive anal sex with an HIV unknown serostatus partner (AOR = 2.7, PAR = 15%) or HIV-positive partner (AOR = 3.4, PAR = 12%), protected receptive anal sex with an HIV-positive partner (AOR = 2.2, PAR = 11%), lack of circumcision (AOR = 2.0, PAR = 10%), and receptive oral sex to ejaculation with an HIV-positive partner (AOR = 3.8, PAR = 7%). Having a large number of male sex partners, nitrite inhalant use, and engaging in receptive anal sex explained the majority of infections in this cohort and should be targeted in prevention strategies for MSM.

[emphases mine]

I know that's a lot of scientific jargon to wade through, but the point is that in Buchbinder, receptive anal WITH A CONDOM was a significant risk factor:

"While unprotected receptive anal (URA) was higher risk than protected receptive anal (PRA), even PRA was found to put MSM at significant risk."

Let me spell it out:

Anal WITH A CONDOM was just one percentage point less risky than barebacking.

Barebacking, the "population attributable risk" was 12%.

WITH A CONDOM, the "population attributable risk" was 11%.

That's why Buchbinder said: "even PRA [PROTECTED receptive anal] was found to put MSM at significant risk."

"SIGNIFICANT risk."

If the risk is SIGNIFICANT, you can't call it LOW risk, can you?

Mr. Andriote claims, in his piece, to be an HIV / AIDS journalist.

He MUST have known about Buchbinder, which had a tremendous effect in both the research community and the AIDS prevention community when it was released ONE YEAR AGO.

So, again, was Mr. Andriote doing PRA -- was he a bottom who got infected due to condom failure?

He has a responsibility to his fellow gay men to answer that question.

If he wasn't a bottom, was he a top?

If so, is he circumcised or uncircumcised?

These are vital issues right now in HIV prevention.

Was he doing oral?

Was he letting guys ejaculate in his mouth?

What's his definition of "low-risk?"

And why is he being so coy about it?

Why?

A reporter's job is to relay the facts of the case.

Nor would he be breaking any new ground.

It's common for people to talk about how they got infected.

We have a Media Watch page with a number of articles like that.

Including one from the NY Times and another from the Boston Globe.

So, why, again, is Mr. Andriote being so coy?

The gay male community has been told that "low-risk sex" is low-risk.

Is it?

Or isn't it?

Buchbinder said the risk is "significant."

Mr. Andriote's personal experience might elucidate that fact.

Why won't he talk about it?

Why doesn't he CARE about his fellow gay men?

He spends paragraphs telling us what a devoted friend he was to people who died.

Why can't he be a devoted friend to the living?

It's appalling.

But wait, there's more:

Then, a week later, I received more shocking news. My tests revealed a relatively low viral load, likely indicating a recent infection. But the T-cells, the white blood cells that HIV infects and destroys, were also very low -- only 198, compared with 600 to 1,200 in a healthy person. I knew what that meant. It was a fact I'd cited in so many stories. A T-cell count below 200 indicates a damaged immune system and risk of life-threatening infection. I knew that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers a T-cell count under 200 an AIDS diagnosis.

He says "tests revealed a relatively low viral low, likely indicating a recent infection."

Notice the word "likely."

Doesn't he KNOW when he got infected?

If he was sexually active, wasn't he getting tested once a year -- at least?

And if the infection was recent, how on earth had his T-cells gotten so low?

Because it normally takes YEARS for HIV to deplete those T-cells from 1,200 to 198.

On average six to seven years.

So what happened?

Is this another superbug?

Our intrepid gay journalist and AIDS reporter doesn't say.

But something is EXTREMELY WRONG here.

If he'd been engaging in "low-risk sex" -- by which he almost certainly means anal-with-a-condom -- for all these years, he knew he needed to be tested regularly.

Why wasn't he?

I wonder if his editor(s) asked him any of these questions?

Because his story doesn't add up.

He says he engaged in "low-risk" sex but he sero-converted anyway.

Is that true?

If so, there had to have been condom failure.

If it's not true -- he was barebacking and in fact bug-chasing.

Once again, he also says his T-cells were extremely low at diagnosis.

That makes almost no sense unless it's been years since his last HIV test.

A good editor would have demanded answers to those questions.

Because what we've seen, in this age of personal journalism, is people LYING CONSTANTLY about their stories to make them more palatable.

What seems likely about Mr. Andriote is that he barebacked for years, didn't get tested, and then became symptomatic and had to be tested.

And that he doesn't want to accept responsibility for what happened.

But if it's indeed the case that he was doing anal with a condom, and he seroconverted anyway; and that he was getting tested regularly but his T-cells fell within months of infection --

HIS PUBLIC DESERVES TO KNOW.

First of all, because the public has a right to know about condom failure and condom failure rates.

And second of all, because that rapid fall of T-cells suggests a new strain -- a superbug -- able to take the patient to frank AIDS in a matter of months.

That's PRECISELY what all the fuss and feathers was about in February of 2005.

A guy in NYC seroconverted and progressed to frank AIDS within months.

That's why all the talk of a SUPERBUG, a MUTANT and VERY DANGEROUS strain of HIV.

Is that what's going on with Andriote?

He doesn't say.

So this is a really bad piece of "journalism."

Because it tells us nothing about why this happened to Andriote.

Moreover, even if Andriote's being completely honest, what the piece reveals are those analist denials of personal responsibility which again, are appalling.

This man has not only known for 22 years how HIV is transmitted, he's spent his entire professional life writing about it.

Yet he won't tell us how he got infected.

As though what happened wasn't his fault.

But it was his fault.

He claims he was doing "low-risk sex."

IF IT GAVE HIM AIDS, IT WASN'T LOW RISK.

That's another nutty analist buttboy lie.

It's not low risk.

ACCORDING TO THE MOST RECENT AND MOST AUTHORITATIVE STUDY, IT'S ONE PERCENTAGE POINT LESS RISKY THAN BAREBACKING.

If I were a blasphemous man, I'd be letting loose with a string of cursewords worthy of Barnacle Bill the Sailor.

Because this is not just bad journalism, it's SHIT JOURNALISM --

specifically, SHIT SEX JOURNALISM.

SHIT SEX IS WHAT GAVE US THIS EPIDEMIC.

and SHIT SEX JOURNALISM IS WHAT'S PERPETUATING IT.

Bill Weintraub

© All material Copyright 2006 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.

Bill Weintraub

Re: Gay AIDS reporter gets infected; says he doesn't want to know why

5-19-2006

PS

These are some words from Robert Loring which he posted in the Good news for drug makers message thread

Robert Loring:

PEOPLE NEED TO GROW UP!! Unload the attitude and GROW UP!! Sadly, however, this is NOT the case with many "adults" today. Instead many still have the minds of children but the bodies of adult men and women. Growing up means taking RESPONSIBILITY for YOURSELF and for those you love. It's NOT about destroying those you love! It's NOT about harming those you love! Sex should be something that is pleasurable to BOTH people involved NOT something that is pleasurable to one and destructive or even deadly to the other. It should be mutually enjoyable and without harm to either partner. Anal intercourse causes harm!

The SAD fact is we live in an upside down, LOST society that is fixated with the ME. The attitude seems to be, "As long as I get what I want....as long as I feel good....screw the other person!" That is the WRONG attitude especially when it comes to someone you claim to "love." LOVE does NOT destroy! Love lifts up and Love creates!! Love does NOT do any harm! But, sadly, in our wayward modern society there are really very few people who really know anything about REAL love but they sure as fuck know a lot about SELFISHNESS.

Anal sex is dangerous NO MATTER what your sexual preference is! It's NOT a strictly gay issue, it's a PEOPLE issue! There are plenty of men who have anal sex with women and it's just as dangerous and destructive as gay men having anal sex with other men. The anus is for elimination not for penetration. It is the orifice of the body through which WASTE is ejected from the body. It is NOT intended for sexual pleasure! Adults who have any sense of self and other responsibility know this and their sense of LOVE and RESPECT for the person they are with keeps them from hurting that person. They know that LOVE is NOT about HURT. They know when someone is screaming it's an indication of PAIN not joy!!

Right.

What makes me so angry about an article like Andriote's is the complete failure to talk responsibly about sex, anal, and HIV.

Instead, it's what I call EBA -- everything but anal -- of which AIDS Inc and ANAL Inc are masters.

They talk about everything from homophobia to the spirituality of those who've died of AIDS without ever talking about the actual mode of transmission of MSM HIV:

Anal penetration.

Andriote presents himself as an AIDS expert.

Yet he got HIV.

HOW?

He says he was doing "low-risk sex."

IF IT GIVES YOU AIDS, IT'S NOT LOW RISK.

The analist use of language, as I've said before, is ORWELLIAN:

War is Peace

Ignorance is Strength

High-risk is Low-risk

IT'S NOT.

War is war.

Ignorance is ignorance.

High-risk is high-risk.

EVEN WITH A CONDOM, anal is HIGH-RISK.

Andriote doesn't want to say so.

Nor does he ever take responsiblity for what happened.

He says he was "in denial."

They all say that.

After 20 years spent reporting on AIDS, how much denial could he be in?

Every time he did anal, he knew the RISK.

But he won't say it.

He'll say, it was "low-risk sex."

Earth to Andriote:

It wasn't sex

And it wasn't low risk.

But you did it anyway.

You present yourself as a victim.

But you have no one to blame but yourself.

Thank you Robert.

Bill Weintraub

© All material Copyright 2006 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.

JM Andriote

Re: Gay AIDS reporter gets infected; says he doesn't want to know why

6-2-2006

Just who the fuck do you think you are, mister? How dare you trash my article and experience with such presumptions, assumptions and absolute utter ignorance about what I have or have not done sexually? Your personal agenda is showing in the obsessive way you trash me and my 20 years of work contributing to the public's knowledge about HIV-AIDS and seeking to increase the level of compassion in this world, particularly toward gay people. I am incredulous that the tripe you pass off as your opinions is allowed space on such an otherwise interesting website. Then again, I am not at all surprised given the bullshit that floats in cyberspace now that anyone is allowed to post an opinion, however ignorant and slanderous it may be.

John-Manuel Andriote

Bill Weintraub

Re: Gay AIDS reporter gets infected; says he doesn't want to know why

6-9-2006

This guy is blowing a lot of smoke.

And that's all he's doing.

He'll do and say anything to evade my questions.

Including making thinly veiled threats about slander.

Most journalists, which this man claims to be, don't like the terms "slander" and "libel" because they have a chilling effect upon free speech.

Mr Andriote doesn't care.

Once again, he'll do anything to evade those questions I've raised.

Including sneering at the idea that "anyone" -- he means me but by implication that's you and Chuck Tarver and Robert Loring and Mart Finn and Greg Milliken and Oscar Vallejo and Don Frazer and Logan McClintock and the other 3700 men who've posted on this board -- he sneers at the idea that "anyone" can post comments on the web.

Or speak their mind.

That's a remarkable stance for a journalist.

Who after all, in his professional life, is the beneficiary of and depends utterly upon Constitutional protections of freedom of speech.

Freedoms which he apparently would deny to others.

Mr Andriote is actually presenting here an old journalist's dictum, reworked:

"freedom of the press -- for those who own the presses"

What Mr Andriote would like is freedom of the press for people who get articles published in mainstream dailies.

Or maybe just freedom of the press for guys who've been to journalism school and say they have AIDS.

The rest of us are expected to read and swallow anything he writes -- uncritically and whole.

And not issue a word of dissent.

It's a truly Stalinist view not just of the press, but of the world -- and one, as I've said for years, that's typical of the gay male establishment, which seeks constantly to censor and silence opposing points of view.

Nevertheless, in my experience, when a man blows this much smoke, there's something he's afraid of.

I wonder what it is?

Now Andriote asks of me, for starters, who the fuck do you think you are?

Here's the short answer: Aside from being one of your readers -- and in America readers still do get to comment on what they've read -- I'm an openly gay and proud man who's been out and not just politically but sexually active for 34 years -- and who is HIV NEGATIVE.

And here's who you are Mr Andriote:

An openly gay man who, by his own self-description, is well versed in HIV issues, yet could not keep himself free of the virus.

And what's amazing about you is that you refuse to look at the behaviors which resulted in your acquiring this universally fatal pathogen.

Instead, you've set yourself up in this article as an exemplar of compassionate homosexuality who somehow or other just happened to turn poz.

That's exactly and precisely what Harvey Fierstein complained about in his NY Times op-ed three years ago: "positive role models" like JM Andriote.

He said, and he was right, that we have too many of them.

You've presented what happened as an inevitability -- like Brokeback.

Why bother, you claim your physician said, trying to pinpoint exactly how "it" happened?

That is exactly the WRONG message to send to other gay men.

There is NOTHING inevitable about HIV infection.

It is an EASILY avoided pathogen.

YOU didn't avoid it Mr Andriote.

And because you didn't, it is your responsiblity, as it is every gay man's, to explain to the community what you did to get this disease.

So that others don't make the same mistake.

Let's look more closely at Mr Andriote's behavior.

Mr Andriote wrote an article in which he described himself as a gay man who'd become infected with HIV and seemingly very rapidly progressed to frank AIDS.

At no place in his article did he suggest that he'd acquired HIV non-sexually -- through IV drug use, through a tainted blood transfusion, through a needle stick while he was a caregiver.

Rather, he directed attention specifically to his sexual behavior, and said that

I had convinced myself that a genetic fluke had protected me against the virus in the 1980s, and that the low-risk sex I practiced would keep me uninfected.

[emphasis mine]

That passage strongly suggests he was doing "unsafe sex" -- that is, anal without a condom -- in the 1980s;

and more recently -- time-line unknown -- practicing, as he says, "low-risk sex" -- whatever that may be.

Since he brought up the issue of sex and risk, I've turned a spotlight on his sexual behavior.

Which I as a concerned member of my community, a community which has been devastated by and is at terrible risk for HIV and other STD, have both a right and an obligation to do.

In my original post, I focused on the term "low-risk sex."

Why?

Because, as Mr. Andriote would know if he'd actually spent time reading my work or on this site; our Man2Man Alliance, my work, and our sites are very specifically concerned with sexual risk.

Indeed, for six years, I have CONSISTENTLY called for "gay men to make accurate and realistic assessments of pleasure and risk in the sex acts available to them."

Most of the time, I've actually used that exact phrase or a variant on it.

For example, in an op-ed published on 365Gay dot com on January 26, 2002, I said, "we want to see more equitable and realistic assessments of pleasure and risk about sex among men who have sex with men."

And, in an op-ed which appeared in the Washington Blade in October of 2003, I said,

..it's time gay men begin to make more realistic assessments of sexual pleasure and risk, and to acknowledge that anal sex is not the only, and indeed far from the best, way for two men to be gay.

"accurate, equitable, and realistic assessments of sexual pleasure and risk"

"accurate"

"realistic"

"equitable"

That is exactly what Mr. Andriote did NOT do, and now, surprise, surprise, he's HIV poz and has progressed to frank AIDS.

Mr. Andriote claims he was practicing "low-risk sex."

What does that mean?

He won't say.

If he was doing anal or oral to ejaculation, it wasn't low risk.

Even anal with a condom is NOT low risk.

The AIDS organizations generally refer to anal with a condom as "safer sex" -- that is, "safer" than without a condom -- but not low risk.

Because, to once again, as I often do, quote Dr. Stephen Goldstone of gayhealth dot com, an ardent supporter of anal, "Anal sex is the highest risk sex act that men who have sex with men can perform. Virtually every STD can pass between partners during anal sex, and for most, penetration isn't necessary and a condom may not protect you."

There's also of course the Surgeon General's statement on the FDA website:

The Surgeon General has said, "Condoms provide some protection, but anal intercourse is simply too dangerous to practice."

Condoms may be more likely to break during anal intercourse than during other types of sex because of the greater amount of friction and other stresses involved.

Even if the condom doesn't break, anal intercourse is very risky because it can cause tissue in the rectum to tear and bleed. These tears allow disease germs to pass more easily from one partner to the other.

"Condoms provide some protection, but anal intercourse is simply too dangerous to practice."

That's also why in my first post I cited Buchbinder et alia -- who are hardly the first to say this, just the most recent -- to the effect that receptive anal is the risk factor par excellence.

And there's also the report from the Cochrane Institute, issued in 2003: Condom effectiveness in reducing heterosexual HIV transmission (Cochrane Review) Weller S, Davis, K.

Which found that over a year's time, there was a condom failure rate of 20% among serodiscordant *heterosexual* couples.

Failure being defined as infection with HIV.

Since vaginal is lot easier on a condom than anal, it's reasonable to suppose that the failure rate is lot higher among male-male couples doing anal.

Do you think that Mr Andriote never encountered any of this information?

He says he's an HIV journalist.

It's not credible that he didn't know the actual risk.

Yet, get infected he did.

So: how did Mr Andriote get infected?

That's a legitimate question.

He claims he was doing some sort of sex which is "low-risk."

But if he got infected -- then it's not "low-risk," is it?

If he was doing anal, there are just three ways he'd be likely to seroconvert:

receptive anal without a condom -- very HIGH risk

receptive anal with a condom -- still very HIGH risk

insertive anal with or without a condom -- the risk is variable, but would be significantly higher if Mr. Andriote is uncircumcised or if he had a lesion on his penis

If he was doing oral, most likely someone would have had to ejaculate in his mouth.

And that's it.

That's it for the sexual transmission of HIV among men who have sex with men.

So which was it, Mr Andriote, and why be so coy about it?

As I've pointed out, most people aren't.

In both the NY Times and the Boston Globe pieces I cited in my first post, for example, the men who recounted the tales of their seroconversion were very open about it.

Erica Goode's reporting in the Times was noteworthy for being the first use of the term "anal sex" by a mainstream daily -- that was in 2001; and Seth "Twilightchild" Watkins, the "safer-sex educator" in the Times' piece, attributed his "lapse" specifically to having imbibed "too many Malibu pineapples."

Nate Longtin, in the Globe, said he failed to use condoms while in a casual relationship.

Both men had the decency to seek to educate their peers by their example -- of what not to do.

In another famous instance of AIDS journalism, Stephen Gendin and Kyle McDowell discussed in great detail, in POZ, how Stephen infected Kyle through barebacking.

That was way back in the 1990s.

The point is that talking about how you got infected not only does not break new ground, it's pretty much standard for this sort of piece.

Yet Mr Andriote won't do that.

Why?

See guys, I don't trust the anecdote with the doctor -- in which Mr Andriote claims his physician said "don't try to pinpoint how "it" happened."

Of course it's possible the doctor said that; but why would Andriote, an inquirer by profession, take that advice?

I suspect he's stuck that anecdote there in the article to throw the reader off the scent of the crucial question: what did JM Andriote DO to get HIV?

And that's not the only huge hole in his story.

Mr Andriote says that his T-cell count was extraordinarily low just weeks after his HIV diagnosis.

How did that happen?

Normally, it takes years after infection for T-cells to drop below 200.

In the case of my late lover, for example, it took at least six years.

There was a report last year, as I said in my original post, of an alleged "superstrain" in a patient in NYC which could move men from infection to frank AIDS in a number of months.

But Mr. Andriote did not suggest he'd been infected with such a strain.

Which he probably hasn't, since there've been no other credible reports of infection with that strain.

Thus the question:

Was Mr Andriote engaging in "low-risk sex" without regularly being tested?

If so, that's irresponsible.

Because, and nevermind Goldstone, Carmona, Buchbinder, and Cochrane, it's widely understood in the gay male community that if you're doing anal, you have to be tested -- regularly.

Indeed, it's common among concerned, HIV-aware gay men who are sexually active to be tested every six months.

Some guys get tested more often.

If not, at least once a year.

Did Mr Andriote not do that?

Has he been infected for years but not bothered to find out?

That's a fair and legitimate question, one which has been raised over and over recently as it's become clear that about 25% of Americans infected with HIV -- don't know it.

And are, as a consequence, infecting others.

That's why there've been calls, as we've reported on this board, for stepped-up and routine testing for HIV -- for everyone.

Was Mr Andriote not getting tested regularly -- and if so, may he have infected others?

He himself said that he was in denial:

I realized I was experiencing the same denial I had heard about so many times. I had convinced myself that a genetic fluke had protected me against the virus in the 1980s, and that the low-risk sex I practiced would keep me uninfected.

[emphases mine]

Did Andriote do that -- not get tested because he "had convinced himself" his "low-risk sex" would keep him uninfected?

It's possible.

If Andriote got infected through "low-risk sex," and if he's been infected for a while, and if he's continued to practice that same-said "low-risk sex" -- then he may have infected other men.

That's what Larry Kramer was talking about when he said, at NYC's Cooper Union in November 2004, that gay men have been murdering each other for 30 years.

Larry wasn't talking so much about purposeful homicide, as he was about a form of negligence.

Guys in willfull denial, guys who had, per Mr Andriote, "convinced themselves," engaging in anal penetration without worrying about the consequences to their partners.

Larry Kramer:

Does it occur to you that we brought this plague of aids upon ourselves? I know I am getting into dangerous waters here but it is time. With the cabal breathing even more murderously down our backs it is time. And you are still doing it. You are still murdering each other. Please stop with all the generalizations and avoidance excuses gays have used since the beginning to ditch this responsibility for this fact. From the very first moment we were told in 1981 that the suspected cause was a virus, gay men have refused to accept our responsibility for choosing not to listen, and, starting in 1984, when we were told it definitely was a virus, this behavior turned murderous.

Make whatever excuses you can to carry on living in your state of denial but this is the fact of the matter. I wish we could understand and take some responsibility for the fact that for some 30 years we have been murdering each other with great facility and that down deep inside of us, we knew what we were doing. Don't tell me you have never had sex without thinking down deep that there was more involved in what you were doing than just maintaining a hard-on.

[emphases mine]

• Kramer: "gay men have refused to accept our responsibility"

• Andriote: "I realized I was experiencing the same denial I had heard about so many times. I had convinced myself that a genetic fluke had protected me against the virus in the 1980s, and that the low-risk sex I practiced would keep me uninfected.

• Kramer: "Make whatever excuses you can to carry on living in your state of denial but this is the fact of the matter."

• Kramer: "I wish we could understand and take some responsibility for the fact that for some 30 years we have been murdering each other with great facility and that down deep inside of us, we knew what we were doing."

• Kramer: "this behavior turned murderous."

[emphases mine]

Has Andriote been part of what Larry Kramer has described as "murderous" behavior?

I don't know.

But, BY HIS OWN ADMISSION, he has done precisely what Larry described:

Made excuses to carry on living in his state of denial:

I realized I was experiencing the same denial I had heard about so many times. I had convinced myself that a genetic fluke had protected me against the virus in the 1980s, and that the low-risk sex I practiced would keep me uninfected.

Denial.

The excuses were "a genetic fluke" and "low-risk sex."

I repeat the question:

Has Andriote been part of what Larry has described as "murderous" behavior?

Here's my answer: I don't know.

But given the information Andriote's offered in this article, it's a FAIR question.

But one it would appear he doesn't want raised.

And that's the reason he used the word "slanderous" in his post and in an email to me.

He wants to shut me up.

I WILL NOT BE SILENCED.

He says I have an agenda.

That's correct, and it's no secret -- the more people who know, the better.

My goal is to break the deathgrip of anal penetration on the lives of gay and bi men.

To make anal penetration again what it once was -- a denigrated and fringe practice.

And in so doing to improve the health -- physical, psychological, and spiritual -- of the lives of all gay and bi men.

Including guys like JM Andriote.

That's my goal and I will not stop till I've achieved it.

I have posited that there exists what I call a dominant culture of anal penetration among gay men today, and that that culture guides and influences them in making choices about sex -- among other things.

And one of the ways I do my work is to look at the behavior of men within that culture -- which Andriote, who describes himself as a gay man, clearly is -- and to critique that behavior.

If Andriote didn't want his behavior critiqued -- guess what?

He shouldn't have written an article about it.

Once it's out there in print -- it's fair game.

And he knows that.

And I would add, I've treated him fairly.

Far more fairly, I assure you, than he'd ever treat me.

What I've done is look at his words, been punctilious in quoting him, and pointed out that his article raises far more questions than it answers.

Gendin, Watkins, Longtin -- these guys too went public with their seroconversions and I examined their behavior too.

So by the way did Dan Savage -- at least in the case of Watkins.

And he was not kind.

He excoriated Watkins for what he'd done.

As did the readers of POZ excoriate Stephen Gendin -- and to an extent Kyle McDowell also.

Sean Strub, publisher of POZ, was Stephen Gendin's best friend; but he ran a large number of reader letters which were harshly critical of Stephen.

Despite that history, which an HIV journalist should certainly know, Andriote thinks that because he says, "I have AIDS," he deserves nothing but sympathetic words and accolades -- and a free pass.

That his actions should not be open to question and reasonable inquiry.

NO.

There's a 900,000 pound gorilla standing not just in the middle of his article but of his life which he doesn't want to talk about: which is, how does an HIV journalist get AIDS in the year 2005?

HOW?

Andriote CHOSE to go public with his story and now he objects when I ask questions about it.

I'd ask questions of anyone who seroconverted in 2005 - 2006.

As would a lot of people these days.

There's an increasing impatience in the gay community with the high incidence of new infections and the irresponsible behavior behind them.

But Andriote by his own admission is not just anyone.

He's an HIV journalist.

What does it say about him -- and the CULTURE in which he lives, which is my primary concern -- that he got infected?

Nothing good.

The irony is that if our message of Fidelity and Frot -- and I would add, Masculinity -- had been given more credence by men like Andriote in the gay establishment, he most likely wouldn't have gotten infected.

And he wouldn't have to spend the rest of his life on antiretrovirals.

Yet he doesn't care.

He'd rather shoot the messenger than allow this message to go out.

And potentially save the lives of hundreds of thousands of men.

55 guys get infected in the US each and every day.

In the time since I started this work there've been 120,000 new HIV infections among American MSM.

Virtually all of whom are co-infected with anal HPV and about half of whom have the pre-cursors to anal cancer.

And that's the low figure.

Doesn't he care?

His behavior is selfish -- at the least.

And his continuing failure to tell us, in a credible way, how he got infected, suggests that he's irresponsible as well.

Because if his infection was due to condom failure -- the public has a right to know.

And if it was due to "unprotected" anal or oral -- the public has a right to know.

And if he got infected years ago and is just now finding out -- the public has a right to know that too.

But it had to happen somehow.

And sometime.

Didn't it, Mr Andriote?

Bill Weintraub

© All material Copyright 2006 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.

Greg Milliken

Re: Gay AIDS reporter gets infected; says he doesn't want to know why

6-12-2006

Mr. Andriote,

This world does not need compassion. It needs to stop spreading HIV among its members. Otherwise we're just killing ourselves, with compassion.

Regards,

Greg Milliken

Joe

Re: Gay AIDS reporter gets infected; says he doesn't want to know why

6-24-2006

I can't understand why Andriote didn't want to reveal how he contracted AIDS. Does he want compassion for his dangerous sexual behavior? As a black man, I'm aware how easy assuming a victim status is for people who've been oppressed. The oppressed are often demonized so that nothing they do escapes how they've been stereotyped. Hence, they become very sensitive. Their sensitivity to any opinion or criticism testifies to a poor self-identity that social rejection has relegated them to. And dare anyone from their group criticize them publicly; it's like airing out dirty laundry so that everyone sees the dirty drawers. Acceptance and tolerance mean to them accepting everything they do, and any criticism is deemed anti-them--e.g., racist, homophobic, sexist, etc.

Mr. Andriote isn't confused about his evasiveness. He knows his participating in sodomy resulted in his having AIDS; that wearing condoms in his so-called low risk sexual practices failed in protecting him from the STD; that to tell the truth, as I think he believes, is to fuel the religious right with arsenal in their anti-gay crusade. Were he to confess/acknowledge this truth about condoms is, I believe in his reasoning, to lose ground for justifying homosexuality to those who reject homosexuality.

There is hope for him though because he recognizes the validity of your site. Although he lashed out at you for criticizing his article, he probably was assured of the camaraderie he undoubtedly felt with the men who have written to the m2m site and regretted not knowing about the acceptance of frot by so many men. Perhaps his anger was his way of spanking himself with "if onlys."

By the way, I read your essay on sexual revolution. I like your ideas. I also agree with the article about the pointlessness of labels.

Joe

Bill Weintraub

Re: Gay AIDS reporter gets infected; says he doesn't want to know why

6-24-2006

Thank you Joe.

Since Joe submitted this post I've had yet another email from Andriote, which I'll comment on below.

Let's get to Joe's post first.

I can't understand why Andriote didn't want to reveal how he contracted AIDS. Does he want compassion for his dangerous sexual behavior?

Good question.

Our stance is that HIV is an easy pathogen to avoid.

And there's no reason for there to be even one more HIV infection -- anywhere -- anywhere on this earth.

Pres. Museveni of Uganda gave a speech at the 2004 Bangkok AIDS Conference.

He said that the condom is institutionalized mistrust.

Which is correct.

Specifically, he called for "optimal relationships based on love and trust instead of institutionalized mistrust which is what the condom is all about."

We agree.

And that's what we call for: "optimal relationships based on love and trust."

And for doing so, we're labeled as ogres.

I don't think so.

Our way would keep everyone free of HIV, including guys like Andriote.

Let's repeat that:

Our way would keep everyone free of HIV, including guys like Andriote.

Their pleasure in sex would improve, because sex would be mutually and directly genital for BOTH partners;

and their risk of HIV and other anally-transmitted diseases would plummet.

While the AIDS Inc / ANAL Inc way -- pushing condoms while supporting anal and promiscuity -- guarantees another 55 new American MSM HIV infections each and every day.

And for saying so, we've been attacked and pilloried for six long miserable years by men like Andriote, who themselves can NOT keep free of HIV.

We don't have HIV, and yet we're attacked by guys who have shown, by their behavior, that they do NOT know how to stay HIV-free.

It's disgusting.

Now, let's come back to Uganda, because most people don't really understand what happened there.

It's been distorted by partisanship.

But basically, Museveni mobilized the local people -- the ministers, the imams, the shamans / witchdoctors -- and originally it wasn't ABC.

Rather, it was "zero grazing" -- which meant, don't cheat on your wife.

"Don't graze" -- just be faithful.

So partner reduction was how Uganda achieved that steady drop in new infection rates and HIV prevalence.

Partner reduction will work with any STD -- but it's particularly effective with HIV -- because HIV's infectivity is low.

So when you look at it -- what a simple and elegant solution.

Suppose we'd done that here in America.

Mobilized the gay community not around "safer sex," but Fidelity and non-anal, Masculine, alternatives.

And suppose instead of "zero grazing," our slogan had been "zero tolerance" -- zero tolerance for HIV transmission.

Would we have an HIV prevalence of 25% in the gay male community today?

NO.

Chuck Tarver calls our failure in the 1980s to move the community away from anal and promiscuity a Missed Opportunity.

We cannot afford to miss an opportunity like that again.

Museveni has said that when he first heard about AIDS, he asked his medical people how it was transmitted.

And when he learned that it wasn't a mosquito or a water-borne parasite -- but just sex -- he said, "That's not so bad -- we can deal with that."

And he's right.

Yet he was booed at Bangkok.

It was awful.

Fact is, anyone can avoid HIV.

If African peasants -- who are among the poorest, least-educated, and least-medically-served people on earth -- can avoid HIV --

so can American gay men.

Who are among the richest, best-educated, and best-medically-served people on earth.

We're not doing anyone any favors by giving guys who turn poz a free pass.

Does he want compassion for his dangerous sexual behavior? As a black man, I'm aware how easy assuming a victim status is for people who've been oppressed.

Yes.

We reject the idea that gay people and people with AIDS are always victims.

It's not that simple.

The oppressed are often demonized so that nothing they do escapes how they've been stereotyped. Hence, they become very sensitive. Their sensitivity to any opinion or criticism testifies to a poor self identity that social rejection has relegated them to.

Yes, that's all true.

Gay men are often super-sensitive to criticism.

Which when married to the politics of identity, works to prevent any critique of gay male behavior.

But fact is, social tolerance of homosexuals has greatly increased.

Life is not the same as it was in 1986.

And we can't constantly excuse bad behavior now because people were bigoted back then.

And dare anyone from their group criticize them publicly; it like airing out dirty laundry so that everyone sees the dirty drawers.

Yes, that's part of it.

Many gay men view us as traitors for being critical of anal penetration and the high rates of disease and dysphoria anal has produced in the gay male community.

What should we be doing?

Celebrating that disease?

I think Andriote comes dangerously close to doing just that.

Acceptance and tolerance mean to them accepting everything they do, and any criticism is deemed anti-them--e.g., racist, homophobic, sexist, etc.

Yes, exactly.

There are two phrases in the gay community:

"Honor diversity."

"It's all sex and it's all good."

The truth is, however, that the community does not honor diversity.

As we can see from their treatment of us.

And it's not all sex and it's certainly not all good.

And being gay does not mean that you have to surrender your critical faculties.

In his latest email to me, Andriote claimed that I "disparaged gay men."

But in point of fact, I AM a gay man, an openly gay and proud man;

as are all the writers for this site who write under their own names:

Chuck Tarver, Mart Finn, Robert Loring, Logan McClintock, David McQuarrie, Greg Milliken, Oscar Vallejo -- we're all openly gay-identified men and proud to be gay.

Speaking just for myself, and as an openly gay and proud man who's been an out and acute observer of my community for thirty-four years, I am critical of certain aspects of gay male culture: which are the emphasis on anal penetration, promiscuity, and effeminacy.

And I am critical of those gay men who incessantly in my view pimp for that culture.

As I am critical of those gay men who spread HIV and other anally-vectored diseases.

Larry Kramer is critical of those men too.

Is Larry guilty of disparaging gay men?

Some people think he is.

I don't.

I think we have to be able to criticize people in our own community.

Again, the idea that we can't is truly Stalinist.

Henry Lewis Gates, Jr, the chair of the African-American Studies department at Harvard, writes of "oppositional subcultures" among Black teens.

Is Gates disparaging Black people when he criticizes thug culture?

Or is he attempting to help his community?

Again, let's get real:

Nothing is so disparaging of a gay man as giving him a fatal disease.

We don't do that.

We show gay and other "men who have sex with men" a super HOT way to have sex which avoids HIV and is very low risk for the other most common anally-vectored diseases.

What do our detractors do?

They stay with the same failed strategy of more condoms, more anal, more promiscuity.

Mr. Andriote isn't confused about his evasiveness. He knows his participating in sodomy resulted in his having AIDS, that wearing condoms in his so-called low risk sexual practices failed in protecting him from the STD, that to tell the truth, as I think he believes, is to fuel the religious right with arsenal in their anti-gay crusade. Were he to confess/acknowledge this truth about condoms is, I believe in his reasoning, to lose ground for justifying homosexuality to those who reject homosexuality.

Yes.

The irony is that the URL of his article was sent to me via Ted Green in a mass mailing from a staffer for a religious right organization with the subject line: "Another victim of the anti-abstinence campaign?"

So his article is already being used by the religious right for propaganda.

And why not?

From their point of view, here's what his article demonstrates:

1. That condom campaigns don't work -- a conclusion I agree with.

2. That gay men are unable to control their sexual impulses, and that the only solution is for them to stop having sex altogther -- a conclusion with which I do NOT agree.

Since it was completely predictable that his article would be used by the religious right in this way, why not just tell the truth?

"I contracted HIV, here's how it happened, I urge my fellow gay and bi men to learn from my example what NOT to do."

Interestingly, the religious right, at least so far, has not attempted to use our work for propaganda purposes because our work presents them with problems:

Here's what one prominent *religious conservative* told me:

The recent phenomenon [he means the Alliance] of the "reasoned and principled," gay activism, arguing for some kind of "centrist" position, such that there could be a "well-ordered" type of sexual activity between men, is in our minds a terrible mistake.

"A terrible mistake"

Of course it is -- in their minds.

If gay and bi men demonstrated that they could eliminate disease in their community through a degree of sexual continence and "well-ordered" relationships -- it would destroy many of the most often-used religious right arguments contra homosexuality.

So: we can't let fear of the religious right stifle open discussion within our own community.

The religious right will do what it's going to do; we need to do what we need to do to get our own house in order.

Also: Is the religious right always wrong?

Recently there was an article on condoms in an online Catholic magazine called Crisis.

It's a good article.

I doubt that Crisis is pro-gay -- to put it mildly.

But if it's a good article -- it's a good article.

I've castigated the religious right's homophobia for years and will continue to do so.

But if Jerry Falwell says something I agree with -- I'll say so too.

What's sad, in a sense, is that both the religious right and the gay movement started as grass-roots insurgencies.

Now, both are top-heavy with bloated establishments.

It's an irony, and as I say, sad.

There is hope for him though because he recognizes the validity of your site.

Not according to his last email, where he's in high dudgeon about all our imagined faults.

I don't care.

He's the one who's HIV positive.

He's the one who has frank AIDS.

He's the one who's made this particular mess of his life.

If he has the good sense to use our analysis to get out of that mess -- that's to the good.

If he doesn't, there's nothing I can do for him.

He claims that he visited this site years ago and liked it.

Who knows if that's true?

He didn't write me or post on the site about it -- so I have no way of knowing.

But even if what he says is true, he clearly didn't learn what the site is trying to convey.

If he had, he wouldn't have been infected.

Our message is not complex: Fidelity, Frot, and Masculinity.

Not complicated.

In addition, we had some dirty tricks this week -- maybe from his friends.

Whenever things get hot -- we get that sort of bad behavior from the analists.

Although he lashed out at you for criticizing his article, he probably was assured of the camaraderie he undoubtedly felt with the men who have written to the m2m site and regretted not knowing about the acceptance of frot by so many men. Perhaps his anger was his way of spanking himself with "if onlys."

Perhaps.

I think his expectation is that he'll be treated like a martyr and a victim by everyone and everywhere.

And I say -- NO.

He should be called to account.

By the way, I read your essay on sexual revolution. I like your ideas. I also agree with the article about the pointlessness of labels.

Yes -- we need a new sexual revolution which recognizes the essentially and mutually genital nature of healthy sex.

And yes -- we need to recognize that the gay-bi-straight labels which divide men are meaningless.

Joe, thank you again for your post.

You're a true Warrior.

Bill Weintraub

© All material Copyright 2006 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.

Bill Weintraub

Re: Gay AIDS reporter gets infected; says he doesn't want to know why

6/24/2006

As I said, I'm in receipt of yet another email from Mr. Andriote.

In which he pukes and whines and blows even more smoke.

Doesn't matter.

He's still evading the two central questions:

1. How did he get infected?

2. How long has he been infected -- and not known it?

Which brings up a third question: What does he have to hide?

Here's the central reality of this debate.

I'm negative.

He's not.

My HIV prevention strategy works.

His doesn't.

Let's take a look:

Andriote's opening salvo in his second email to me is "Who the fuck do you think you are? If you need a good psychiatrist, I can recommend one."

It's striking, once again with Andriote, how little aware he seems of the history both of gay people, who were constantly threatened with and forced to undergo psychiatric treatment, and of dissent.

Because it was very common in the Soviet Union, for example, for dissidents to be shipped off to mental institutions.

So again what Andriote is exhibiting is that Stalinist thinking common in the gay male establishment, which seeks to stifle and censor debate and dissent -- by any means.

Including one as historically repugnant to gay people as psychiatry.

And of course the use of these sorts of tactics -- censorship, imprisonment, forced pyschiatric treatment -- are all hallmarks of a dominant culture -- which is what analism is.

Here's a piece of activist wisdom courtesy of Natan Sharansky, the dissident Soviet Jew who spent 16 years in the Gulag for -- dissent:

"Dissent is always a function of the price of dissent."

The higher the price -- the fewer the dissidents.

So what a dominant and totalitarian culture like analism seeks to do is make the price of dissent so high -- that no one will dissent.

That's why Andriote threatens with words like slander and psychiatry.

Too bad.

I WILL NOT BE SILENCED.

Moreover, Andriote is the person who's seeing a psychiatrist, as he stated in his article:

In March, I asked my doctor for a sleeping pill for the insomnia that has been the main side effect of my meds so far. I also asked for a referral to a psychiatrist to find out why I'm always on the verge of tears. The psychiatrist said I'm feeling sad because my HIV diagnosis has challenged my understanding of who I am and my sense of where I'm going in life. He said I'm suffering, and it's natural to feel sad in the face of suffering.

"Suffering makes us sad."

Wow.

Dude.

That is DEEP.

I mean, that shrink must be some sort of major thinker.

Well, at least he didn't say that suffering makes us happy.

Now -- why did Mr. Andriote need the services of a psychiatrist?

Because he contracted a truly dangerous STD, HIV.

And how did he contract HIV?

Apparently through sex, but beyond that he won't say.

So we're back to the tautology of Mr. Andriote's Washington Post existence.

He's an HIV journalist who contracted an easily-avoided STD -- HIV / AIDS -- but won't examine how it happened.

Bizarre.

Maybe though that's why he's sad.

Because he did something that was incredibly stupid.

Or perhaps let someone do something to him that was incredibly stupid.

And ultimately violent.

And perhaps too he feels betrayed by his own culture.

That culture of anal and promiscuity which got him infected.

Was the sex consensual?

Did the other guy tell him he was poz?

Did the other guy use a condom?

Did the other guy lie to Andriote?

Because something else which can make us sad -- is being a victim of violence.

Has Mr. Andriote been a victim of violence?

In a generic sense, Yes.

Someone gave him HIV.

Someone maimed him for life.

No matter how you cut it, that's a violent act.

Again, that's why Larry Kramer speaks of gay men murdering each other.

Larry is aware of the VIOLENCE inherent in what's going down.

Mr. Andriote doesn't want to look at how he got HIV.

And by implication, who gave it to him.

But he needs to do that.

At some point, Mr Andriote didn't have HIV.

Then he had sex with someone who did have HIV, and who gave him HIV.

That person should be held accountable.

Next Andriote-ism: I'm "obsessed with his sex life."

No.

A large part of my work is devoted to the question of HIV transmission, and the various cultures which facilitate that transmission.

What concerns me -- and as I've made clear -- disgusts me, is his irresponsibility in writing an exceptionally self-serving article about his seroconversion which omits any discussion of how it happened.

Again, that makes it appear that if you're gay, HIV infection is an inevitability.

It's not.

HIV is a difficult pathogen to acquire.

And easy to avoid.

I'm 58, I've had a lot of sex with a lot of guys, I spent 12 years having really hot sex with a man who was poz and eventually died of AIDS, and I don't have HIV.

Easy to avoid.

Next up:

I'm "disparaging gay men."

Well, as I already said, I'm an openly gay and proud man.

Actually, what I'm doing is criticizing certain elements in gay male culture.

More to the point -- and how many times do I have to say this? -- nothing beats up gay men like HIV, anal HPV, hep C, LGV, and all the other anally-vectored diseases.

If Andriote -- and the rest of them -- was sincere about stopping "violence" against gay men, he would speak out against anal penetration:

the primary source of violence against gay men in America today.

I've done anti-violence work since 1979, I was a founding board member of the NYC Lesbian and Gay Anti-Violence Project, and I KNOW violence.

Anal penetration is VIOLENT.

Spreading HIV is violent.

Andriote's own article testifies to the violence HIV does to someone's life.

Was Andriote getting tested regularly?

How long has he had HIV?

Has he given it to someone else?

Does he know?

Our work here seeks to prevent the spread of HIV and other anally-vectored diseases, the single most violent and "disparaging" element in American gay male life today.

While increasing the sexual pleasure of men who have sex with men.

Who in this ongoing conversation is violent?

Bill Weintraub or the analists?

And who is genuinely pro-gay?

Next up:

Andriote says I'm running a cult.

Again, what's striking is how sloppy are both his thinking and his use of language.

In a cult there is, generally speaking, a single leader who claims to speak with Divine authority.

Not me.

I don't claim to speak with the voice of God or anyone else's voice except my own.

Indeed, although many of us in the Alliance are people of Faith, this is not a faith-based organization.

Rather, everything we say is factual.

FACT:

Frot is the only directly and mutually genital way for two guys to have sex.

FACT:

An anus is not a vagina.

FACT:

There's no genital tissue in the vagina.

FACT:

Anal penetration is the highest risk "sex" act two men can perform.

FACT:

There's never been a documented case of HIV transmission via Frot.

FACT:

Fidelity is the gold standard in human relationships.

FACT:

Men who have sex with men are MEN.

Those are all facts.

Also fact: I don't seek followers.

As men on this site will testify, I discourage "follower behavior."

The men on this site are here because they're passionate about Frot and sick of anal.

And effeminacy.

And promiscuity.

This is a genuine, passionate, grass-roots, dissident gay and bi movement -- a movement of men into Frot -- who reject anal.

You'd think the journalist in Andriote would be intrigued.

Nope.

The more fool he.

Also in fact, the site and the Alliance is a collaboration and an evolution.

It's true that our site is an advocacy site and that I control the editorial content; ultimately, after all, someone has to.

However, the fact is that my decisions are greatly influenced by our regular contributors -- the guys who've emailed me and posted for years.

And my thinking has changed over the years through my interaction with these men, whose posts you can read on this board and in Warriors Speak.

In particular, Fidelity and Masculinity have become far more important and prominent than they were early on.

In addition, we now pitch a much larger tent.

What started as a gay group is now an Alliance of gay, bi, and straight-identified men.

So: a group of guys who share some strongly-held beliefs about sex and love and what it means to be a man does not make a cult.

But again, it's typical of a majority and totalitarian culture that it will attempt to label a dissident group -- a cult.

Happens all over the world all the time.

What's more, if one wants to bandy about the word "cult," as Mr Andriote does, then one could certainly argue that analism itself is a cult -- a DEATH CULT.

Specifically, that certain elements in the gay male community have created a cult around HIV, and around the unnatural and deadly act which transmits it.

And rather than eliminate this disease from that community, which could easily be done, they turn a blind eye to the ever increasing numbers of gay men infected.

Is Andriote part of that cult?

Well, when you start talking about the positive or good aspects of HIV infection:

I now feel a sense of healing within myself, as if living with HIV has helped me finally know that I'm loved and cared for. I'm learning to be present to my own suffering, and not to detach from my sadness.

I think you're halfway there.

I nursed my late lover, pioneering gay journalist Brett Averill, for seven years.

Brett knew AIDS.

He edited and published most of the early AIDS writing, including that of Larry Kramer and Dr. Lawrence Mass.

And of course we lost virtually all of our friends to AIDS.

Once Brett was afflicted, he was noble in his suffering as he'd been in health.

However, he would NEVER have seen anything "good" or "positive" in his illness.

He understood that HIV was a vicious and brutal killer.

And he fought it with all his might for as long as he possibly could.

So I have a problem with Andriote's form of AIDS journalism.

As I know Brett did too.

Because he was opposed to romanticizing what is in reality a gruesome disease.

And what about dissent -- which at one time we in the gay community cherished:

Everything Andriote has said -- slander, psychiatry, you're anti-gay, this is a cult -- is SOOOOOOOOO predictable.

It's what the members of a dominant culture say when confronted with a group which effectively and irrefutably challenges their version of the "truth."

Andriote is wrong: what he calls "low-risk sex" was not low risk because it gave him HIV.

Andriote is wrong: I don't need a psychiatrist, but he has, by his own admission, needed one because he couldn't deal with the psychological fall-out from HIS HIV seroconversion.

Andriote is wrong: I'm not anti-gay, I'm PROUDLY AND OPENLY GAY. I love MEN, I love Masculinity, I've had two really terrific relationships with other MEN -- I'm GAY.

And in everything I've done as a gay man I've sought to improve the situation of my fellow gay men -- whether it was co-founding the Cambridge GAY Political Caucus and working successfully to elect a pro-GAY candidate; or trying to help the folks down in Dade when Anita attacked; or working for GAY Rights National Lobby to fight the Reagan-Thurmond "Family Protection Act"; or working to promote a self-defense course for Lesbians and GAY men and becoming a founding board member of the NYC Lesbian and GAY Anti-Violence Project; or speaking in favor of Domestic Patnerships for GAY people during SF's "Yes on S" campaign; or taking care of my GAY lover while he was ill; or advocating for guys into Frot, including GAY men into Frot and advocating Frot as a GAY-sex positive means of lowering HIV infection rates.

All those things have improved or attempted to improve the situation of men who love men.

And they're the acts of an openly GAY and PROUD MAN.

Andriote is wrong: This is not a cult. Rather, it's a large and growing grass-roots movement of men who reject anal, promiscuity, and effeminacy, and embrace Frot, Fidelity, and Masculinity.

Besides which, the true cult element in the gay world today is the HIV-ANAL-AIDS death cult.

So: I stand by what I've said about Andriote's article.

I regard it as self-serving and remarkably irresponsible in its failure to discuss HOW a man as conversant with HIV issues as Andriote presents himself as being would get HIV in the year 2005.

What I want guys reading this to understand is that HIV infection is NOT an inevitability.

Mr. Andriote did something to get AIDS -- something which he needn't have.

It's all well and good to talk about compassion for the sick.

But true compassion I maintain starts with helping men NOT get sick.

I wish that someone had shown my late lover that sort of compassion before he was infected.

It is in my view the height of hypocrisy to prop up and support the behaviors which transmit and spread diseases like HIV, and then piously proclaim that we must be compassionate towards the sick.

The religious right, in the persons of Rick and Kay Warren of a mega-church called Saddleback, have gotten in on this particular act, and you can be sure they'll milk it for all it's worth.

But that doesn't make them truly compassionate either.

Guys, I call upon you to fight back against those who would silence, censor, medicalize, and otherwise suppress your right to dissent from anal and analism.

Andriote to me: you find anal abhorrent.

That's right.

As does any person of good sense.

Anal penetration is a social evil and analism is the enemy of humanity.

Let's hope that someday even J-M Andriote can figure that out.

Let me make this clear: I regret that Mr. Andriote got HIV.

In that respect, I consider him a victim of the analist system -- which de facto encourages new HIV infections.

I by contrast do not want one more person to get HIV.

However, Andriote, having contracted HIV, and having decided to write about it for a major American newspaper, one read by policy makers in Washington DC, refused to say how it happened.

Thus failing in his responsibility to other gay and bi men to show them, by example, what NOT TO DO.

Stephen Gendin did it.

Seth Watkins did it.

Nate Longtin did it.

A host of other men in articles about meth for example have done it.

Why can't Andriote?

The other beef I have with Andriote is his utter contempt for the first amendment and for dissent within his own community.

Based upon his post and his emails, he'd shut down that dissent just as soon as he could.

So that only HE could be heard.

But that's not what America is about.

The country exists and depends upon the free exchange of ideas.

Which includes the RIGHT to comment upon newspaper articles.

He seems to think that's beyond the pale.

No.

Not unusual for a member of a dominant culture -- but not acceptable either.

Fact is, as I've said, if our message had been more widely disseminated, Mr. Andriote might not have gotten sick.

But now he is sick.

And nothing can change that.

Bill Weintraub

© All material Copyright 2006 by Bill Weintraub. All rights reserved.