Bill Weintraub

Re: just musing

11-7-2006

Thanks Chuck

Chuck is the author of Musings of a Black Gay Man into Frot and of Fighting the Conformity That Kills.

And he is moderator of Black Dicks Rub Together, which was founded by the great Frot artist EROS V.

Along with Mart Finn of cocktocockstories.com, Chuck and I have been fighting side by side since January of 2001 to get recognition for Frot and to change the way AIDS Inc. approaches AIDS prevention.

With very little success.

In that time, we've been censored, reviled and attacked, and most of the mainstream gay male press and the nongay press have ignored us.

Also during that time, the prevalence of HIV / AIDS has increased dramatically both here and abroad; in the US alone we now have more people living with HIV than at any prior time in the epidemic -- at least 900,000, and maybe a million.

Of that number, about three-quarters are "men who have sex with men" -- we're talking probably 750,000 guys -- who got infected through anal "sex."

Which isn't really sex.

The Black community in American has been particularly hard hit by AIDS -- even today, as white men are living longer and longer with the disease, it remains the leading cause of death in Black men aged 22 to 44.

The response of white folks on the religious right has been to run off to Africa to minister to the AIDS afflicted, while ignoring the plight of Black people in America.

The reason being of course that in Africa, the disease is spread through heterosexual promiscuity, and for some reason hetero promiscuity is more acceptable than homo promiscuity.

The Bible doesn't differentiate between hetero and homo promiscuity -- it's all fornication and it's all sin -- but our many learned reverends and divines apparently do.

The ground at the foot of the Cross is supposed to be level -- but it isn't to them.

While the response of the traditional Black churches here in America has been to further condemn homosexuality and to oppose gay marriage.

Which means that the "same gender loving" men in their congregations lead ever more furtive and sexually secret lives.

But let's not waste too much time blaming this on the "religious right," which is neither religious nor right.

Fact is that HIV is a difficult pathogen to acquire, and AIDS an easy disease to avoid.

Unlike cancer or Alzheimer's, it is 100% preventable, and in the gay male community we've known how to prevent it since 1984 -- that is, for more than two decades.

Don't get fucked, don't get AIDS.

Don't stick your dick in a hole full of shit -- don't get AIDS.

Don't be promiscuous -- be faithful to one uninfected partner -- don't get AIDS.

But the AIDS establishment and the AIDS Service Organizations and the safer-sex boyz have believed that it's more important to preserve a culture of anal penetration and promiscuity than it is to save gay male lives.

That's the truth guys.

They've put a way of "life" -- ahead of being alive.

Think about that.

And think about who your friends are.