Now to be fair to the Black AIDS "leadership," there have been protests against the people who are organizing these parties.

But the protest seems to have been touched off by the fact that the guy was making money off the parties.

How is that different from any bath-house and any bath-house owner?

Yes, it's true that some of these parties were billed as barebacking only, but -- this is not unusual behavior in the gay male community.

And I have to wonder: why is it okay when a white entrepeneur tolerates barebacking in his bath-houses -- but not okay when a Black entrepeneur tolerates barebacking in his apartment?

Where are the protests outside the bath-houses?

As I've said before a bath-house is basically a brothel, the owner is the pimp, and the beauty of it from his point of view is that the whores pay HIM!

He doesn't have to feed them or clothe them or anything.

It's pure profit.

Look:

Every week in economically disadvantaged neighborhoods, such as East New York, Crown Heights, and Spanish Harlem, promoters throw for-profit sex parties like this one, where condom use is left up to the participants. Attracting a largely black and Latino clientele with private e-mails and postings at sex hookup sites like Adam4Adam dot com and Web groups like Nubian Muscle, these savvy, albeit ethically challenged self-made entrepreneurs cash in on admission fees ranging from $5 to $25 while taking a decidedly laissez-faire attitude toward safe sex. Trading on the appeal of thug-life fantasies and questionable notions of "down low" identity politics, they turn their apartments into commercial pleasure domes, knowing that many gay men, regardless of ethnicity, will play unsafe if given the chance -- and if no one's looking.

How is that different from the guys who own the bath-houses?

Let's try it out:

"Every day and every night in gay bath-houses, in towns as diverse as Cleveland, San Jose, and Portland, promoters throw for-profit sex parties like this one, where condom use is left up to the participants.

"Attracting a largely gay clientele with advertising and postings at sex hookup sites, these savvy, albeit ethically challenged self-made entrepreneurs cash in on admission fees ranging from $5 to $25 while taking a decidedly laissez-faire attitude toward safe sex.

"Trading on the appeal of gay male fantasies and questionable notions of identity politics, they turn their buildings into commercial pleasure domes, knowing that many gay men, regardless of ethnicity, will play unsafe if given the chance -- and if no one's looking."

Once again I ask -- where are the protests outside the bath-houses?

Let's go back to The Advocate:

"This is a business enterprise that’s exploiting our community and putting people at risk," says veteran AIDS activist Phill Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute in Los Angeles. "They’re peddling death."

That's a real knee-slapper coming from Phill Wilson, who won't even talk to Chuck Tarver about non-anal alternatives.

Again, I have to ask, why is it bad if it's in someone's apartment, but okay if it's at the baths?

"This is a business enterprise that’s exploiting our community and putting people at risk. They’re peddling death."

We could say the same of those who own the bath-houses, who promote the circuit parties and raves, who run the analist websites.

I wonder if the Black AIDS Institute accepts contributions from bath-house owners?

I wonder.

Because for years the owner of one of the biggest bath-house chains was a huge contributor -- to anti-AIDS efforts!

Yet this is UC Berkeley epidemiologist James Chin on the role of the baths in spreading HIV:

Gradients of Sexual HIV Risk Behaviors

MSM

Highest -- "Bathhouse" type setting where large numbers of MSM have up to 10-20 sex contacts in a single day or night.

Coming back to The Advocate, there's this paragraph:

Barebacking is certainly nothing new, and it's certainly not limited to men of color. Since the early days of the AIDS epidemic, some gay men of all stripes have shunned condoms, whether at "conversion" parties as chronicled in the 2003 documentary The Gift, or simply because they don't like the feeling of wearing them.

Wow!

That's really misleading.

It's true that "Since the early days of the AIDS epidemic, some gay men of all stripes have shunned condoms";

but BAREBACKING as a social phenomenon took off in 1996 when HAART -- combination therapy -- came in and guys began taking a lot more risks, egged on by barebacking activists, the most famous of whom, Stephen Gendin, was best friends with Sean Strub, publisher of POZ, and who was lionized by POZ.

And wow! again.

Because if we're going to talk about "savvy, albeit ethically challenged self-made entrepreneurs" making money off the epidemic, POZ and its Community Prescription Service should go to the head of the line.

Mr. Kennedy's paragraph really reeks of the sort of cultural amnesia so common in the gay community.

Fact is, there's a difference between what happened between 1985 and 95, when HIV prevalence actually decreased -- slightly -- and what's happened since.

Then there's this:

While some AIDS advocates disagree, Evans says many of the men who attend these parties are on the down low and shun condoms because they associate using them with being unmasculine.

That's interesting.

In Africa, condoms are often associated with HIV / AIDS, and there's a folk belief that condoms cause AIDS.

As Dr. Edward C. Green has pointed out to me, that belief probably has its origins in the real-world fact that people who use condoms are more promiscuous and are indeed more likely therefore to contract HIV.

In America now, we're told, that guys on the down low -- that means men who have secret sex lives with other men -- associate condoms with being unmasculine.

In other words, they associate condoms with -- "gay."

I wonder why?

This is yet another twist of the screw, as it were, of the sexual revolution.

Because when I came out, condoms were associated with hapless "straight" guys who had to use them to prevent their girlfriends from getting pregnant.

At the time, gay men felt superior because they didn't have to use condoms, they could enjoy sex skin on skin.

Not any more.

Needless to say, there's NO mention of non-anal alternatives in this story, which features a lot of hand-wringing by Black gay activists like the ubiquitous Mr. Wilson of the Black AIDS Institute.

It's utterly goofy -- and I literally laughed aloud when I thought about it -- because these same men who are actually paying money to experience painful, stinking, shitty, unsafe anal penetration -- could be having incredibly HOT dick2dick MAN2MAN SEX without condoms and with virtually no risk of HIV -- for FREE -- IF someone in the Black gay leadership would bother to tell them about it.

Instead, there's nary a question raised about the anal itself.

Barebacking is condemned, and for-pay sex parties are condemned, though again, if one were to be fair, one would have to condemn all for-pay events at which "unsafe sex" occurs like circuit parties and raves.

The difference is that the entrepeneurs in one case are white and in the other Black.

Let's come back to this scene:

A young man with a do-rag tightly wrapped around the top of his head enters the room. He pushes another young man over on a makeshift bed and penetrates him -- without a condom -- for a good 10 minutes.

Would that be okay if the do-rag brother had worn a condom?

We're often told that Black men are fucked over by white society.

Yet in this story, the assumption is made that it's fine for one Black male to fuck another Black male royally -- so long as there's a condom.

Here's the truth:

Fucking that male, with or without a condom, humiliates and degrades him.

It destroys his masculinity.

When The Advocate gets around to talking about that, I'll post the whole story.

Bill Weintraub

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