Joe's POZ Blog

They started a new HIV prevention campaign in Los Angeles that included posters that said “HIV is a gay disease”. While I understand the need to reawaken the Gay community about HIV, I believe this type of campaign just fosters outdated beliefs about HIV and the connection to the Gay community. And because of this connection I maintain that many programs and even governments are under-serving their HIV populations often using the gay angle as a way to justify their actions.

We need to change the focus of HIV prevention and treatment to address the realities of HIV because if we do not start acting soon, I fear the overwhelming number of HIV infections will all but preclude any serious efforts at stemming infections, let alone reducing the infection rate. Some countries face the real possibility of imploding due to their HIV populations and inability to provide for their needs.

I believe that one of the main reasons why HIV prevention and treatment is under-funded is because of the link between HIV and being gay. For 25 years we have endured the supposed truth that HIV was a gay disease and that link is having devastating impacts on how HIV is perceived in many areas of the world. Too many countries use that connection to undermine their support of the HIV community.

There are still about 12 countries in the world, where being gay is seen as punishable by imprisonment or even death. Surely that must create a real schism between what the state may want to do, as opposed to the real needs of society. Far too many countries do not even provide medical access to much of their HIV population, so how can they ever hope to effectively address their needs? In many cultures being gay is seen as a very bad thing, even evil, but rather than argue about that viewpoint, we need to concentrate on separating the disease from the Gay community.

Even in America I find it hard to believe that the gay connection does not influence the level of funding for HIV prevention and treatment. Prejudice dies hard and we all know how much easier it is to ignore a segment of society when we can somehow “demonize” their actions. It is time for us to separate the reality of HIV from the perceptions that far too many people share.

It is time for us to stop linking HIV with any community or societal segment and redefine it for what it is: a disease of the immune system. We must reformulate how we deal with the challenges of HIV and stop segmenting its effects. We all know the truth about HIV: It is an equal-opportunity infection. It has no conscience, makes no judgments and if infected it will try to kill you. After 25 years of this madness, why would we want to link HIV with anything other than the disease it represents?

There are governments that deny equal rights for gays, let alone tolerance and far too often those perceptions affect the quality or even existence of HIV prevention or treatment services. I believe that in too many cultures, the intolerance of gays, when coupled with the seemingly endless stigma of HIV being viewed as a gay disease, makes it far too easy for governments to promote intolerance against both segments of society.

I don’t care what most of them say, I hear the words, so carefully chosen but I do not just listen to the words, I listen for intent. Few world leaders speak from their heart rather they promote “sound bites” or toe the government line on policy. If the local culture is encouraged by its leaders to view pos folks as some kind of vermin or worse, morally bankrupt, well you know how it goes: once you begin to demonize a segment of society, the easier it becomes to repress that segment.

We have leaders in Africa actually saying that HIV does not cause AIDS and that HIV can be treated through local remedies. Now, place yourself in a country where what you see and hear is filtered and after a while, just about anything will sound reasonable. If they convince their citizens that HIV is just not that important, why does it surprise anyone when those same governments then ignore their positive citizens? Add to the propaganda religious dogma and that gay disease thing and it becomes even easier to ignore an “inconvenient population”.

There are still countries in this world, which will murder their own citizens for the “crime” of being gay. Imagine what they might do, if the world was not looking and for far too long it has not bothered to look. I suspect the true numbers of deaths from HIV are probably understated by tens of millions, easy. It runs so rampant in some parts of the world that nobody could possibly keep count of all the deaths, nor do many people seem to care.

We need to start addressing the true impact of HIV and it has nothing to do with any particular community. HIV represents a plague that could dwarf the combined death tolls of plagues from our past. This year alone somewhere between 40 to 45 million people will die from HIV infection and the number of deaths has been pretty steady for far too many years. At that rate, we have long surpassed the 100 million who died from influenza in the early 1900s. At this rate it will not be too long before we pass the ONE-BILLIONTH death due to HIV mark.

1,000,000,000 (one billion) deaths to a preventable disease should not be an option to the world. Unfortunately it will surely be our legacy unless more is done to acknowledge the true costs of HIV and the world gets serious about prevention and treatment. HIV is a disease and we need to start treating and responding to that fact, unless we wish to face a very ugly world in the next decade.

One billion deaths from HIV: if that does not scare us into making some radical changes, I do not know what will.