Fear and Funding in NYC

[Guest guest]

The bronxbomber is dead-on correct and I share his feelings.

This horrible campaign was brought East after having been a failure and causing much outrage in San Francisco. The community there rose up and demanded that this misguided campaign be pulled. It was.

So why has it been resurrected in NY?

The real issues are this. The AIDS education establishment in NYC that comprises the City's Health Commissioner (most recently known for his hysterical campaign about a non existent "new deadly AIDS strain") and some well funded safe-sex organizations, have evidently lost influence over the gay community as evidenced by the increase of the incidence of syphilis and HIV.

Who said Fear Works and Who Gains by Fear

Not to sound cynical, because most people are drawn to the work against AIDS out of a deep desire to help suffering people'

( I was one of those who volunteered in 1981 to sell tickets on the street of New York for the first fund raiser for this new disease) , but the unspoken subtext is, if "they cannot contain AIDS, why go on funding them?"

The established AIDS service organizations along with the City Health Commissioner is out of ideas, so they fall back on what they know, a simple solution to a complex problem, fear.

Fear is their Holy Grail in trying to deal with these genuinely new phenomena: the influence of meth on unsafe sex and the vast DL sort of guy on guy sex that is the motor driving the current outbreaks of HIV and venereal disease.

If fear was the way to go, any demagogue could start a war on the basis of fear and get a nation behind them...Oh wait...How did that turn out for Bush? Not so well. Americas' fear was quickly, in a matter of months, dissipated after being hammered into the population 24/7.

Approval of the war continues to plummet monthly and the fear campaign is the butt of jokes on Leno. There is a lesson in this.

Fear Fails Fast

What those of us that were lucky (looking around, sometimes I think unlucky) enough to survive the last major outbreak of AIDS in the decade of the 80's, have learned is this: fear works in altering behavior but for only a short time and people become fear-exhausted while their need for sex takes over and drives them to ignore all safe sex guidelines.

Who is 'spreading' AIDS?

The folks at the 'HIV Stops With Me' campaign say that people who are Out and Open about being Gay and Poz are the driving force of the resurgent epidemic.

The posters all over my city, Los Angeles, and what I have seen in other cities, show visible and recognizable members of the gay community taking "The Pledge" that AIDS will die with them.

Leaving aside for the moment the distasteful macabre quality of this campaign, using 'Out and Open Gays' as their poster boys they fail to identify and address the 'Hidden and Shamed STR8 Down Low' men who's wives and girlfriends the statistics tell us are the ones that comprise the vast majority of the newly infected.

A Danger

This campaign can't help but have the unintended consequence of fingering the Out and Open Gay community as the culprits, victimizing the nation by spreading AIDS. This sets the political stage for attacks on the Gay community. I think this possibility being overlooked because it's almost too frightening a thought.

The move for HIV names registration taking place in NY and now California and a few other places is the opening shot of what could be a drive to sequester (jail) Open and Out Gay people. Can't happen here? I sure hope so, but my neighbor down the street who spent years in Manzanar camp knows better.

What should be done and for whom?

These are the people that need to be reached by patient and effective work, but the fear-stuck campaigns are totally failing in Safe sex and Risk Reduction education in favor of an easy way out to secure funding for their organizations.

Here in Los Angeles, there are people who have made a careered out of AIDS, like the discredited Weinstein of AIDS Healthcare Foundation. You recall how they joined the suit against Abbott to roll back the price increase of Norvir? As soon as Abbott offered them cash, they took the money and ran, abandoning the suit. Their priority was not to reverse the price increase, but to make fast cast. Disgusting.

The cynic in me sees these terrible campaigns as a way to justify the existence and generate funding for organizations bankrupt of good fresh ideas.

Answers? Some, but, more Questions.

We are facing new and difficult challenges with the ubiquity of meth and its influence on HIV transmission. We also have the phenomena of more men who are exploring Guy on Guy sex while being married or otherwise leading a STR8 life. Failed heavy-handed strategies wont give us an answer to these problems, I'm not sure that there is a magic bullet answer is out there. But I do know what has consistently worked in the past.

Unglamorous, slow and patient, truth-bases education once so successfully turned the tide in HIV transmission in this country, that it was even thought that AIDS would burn itself out. It is proven to work very well along with condom distribution programs in Africa.

That is what we have to promote. It will be difficult in the face of the Bush Administrations opposition to condoms and sex education, but that is the hard work that has to be done.

Those who run the simple-minded fear-based campaigns are negligent and not doing anyone any good.

Al Benson

www.albertbenson.com

PS

The web log I am working on to cover these issues will be up later this weekend. I will let you guys know when.--al

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great crisis, do nothing. - Dante This information is not to replace the advice of a physician or other health care professionals. Anyone intending on any dietary, drug or exercise changes to prevent or treat a specific disease or condition ought to consult with a health care professional.