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"It's disingenuous to compare the risk homos incur of being infected with the AIDS virus with the risk of getting in an accident on a motorcycle. As it's been manifested, homosexual irresponsibility and outright contempt for society has resulted in AIDS spreading into the hetero community. Persons riding without a helmet will risk hurting only theirselves."

Tell that to family members who have lost loved ones, or have had them permanently disabled. Or for that matter to the taxpayers who often end picking up the tab for the care of those injured by such behavior – it can and occasionally does cause causes enormous emotional and financial damage to families and society.

The way I see it engaging in either unsafe sex (straight or gay) and participating in high-risk sports without reasonable protective gear have at least two things in common: depending on your circumstances either be extremely inconsiderate and selfish acts, and the people engaging in both often have at lot of same ways of rationalizing this fact away.

How do I know this?

Because I used to do the same, and spent a lot of time in the company of others like myself - when I was a young man I loved to look down at the ground from a hang-glider or feel the wind I my hair on a motorcycle, I’m married to a woman who was an avid on and off road rider, and when we were young we had plenty of rationalizations for taking these sorts of risks irrespective of the emotional, financial and occasionally physical harm they might cause others.

Now that I’m older, and some of my friends and acquaintances are dead or maimed, they don’t seem so reasonable.

And this isn’t primarily the result of an intellectual understanding, it’s an emotional shift, and nobody argued me into it (or could have) - like a lot of people who used to enjoy such risks there just came a day when I put a foot on the kick-starter and realized that what I was feeling was at least as much apprehension as anticipation – that maybe it was just not worth it.

Now, I don’t go around telling other people to not to fly, or to wear a helmet if they ride.

Because I know that they are making a decision that appears at the time – to them - rational for their circumstances.

That with maturity and experience, many of them will come to perceive the balance of risk and satisfaction differently.

But that some of them never will: that as long as they are able they will be getting on their bike after a few beers or launching into really marginal conditions.

And I don’t see the evidence that that there is something fundamentally different about the mental state of someone who engages in consensual unsafe sex and someone who engages in other forms of high-risk behavior, it seems to me even in the most extreme cases - gays who deliberately court the risk of infection - has plenty of parallels in my experience, for example the “suicidal” risk taking some hang gliders.

That it's all just crazy human risk-taking behavior, straight or gay.