Posted on 08/01/2003 3:18:47 AM PDT by ejdrapes
The Aids awareness industry has turned the virus into a fun, sexy disease There are too many positive gay role models. In fighting the Aids crisis over the past 20 years, we have done everything possible to dispel the negative connotations that come with having HIV. After all, it has been our brothers and sisters, our boyfriends and girlfriends, and ourselves, who have been discriminated against because of a virus. So we produced advertising, created enlightenment programmes, spent endless hours making certain that having Aids or being HIV positive was nothing to be ashamed of. We did a great job — maybe too great a job. After all the effort exerted to convince the world that Aids is not a gay disease, we now have a generation embracing Aids as its gay birthright. According to figures just released by America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, the number of new Aids cases increased last year for the first time in a decade. Four Americans now become infected with the disease every hour. Many of our young men see infection as a rite of passage, an inevitable coming of age. I hear of them seeking the disease as an entrée into the cool, queer inner circle that being negative denies them. In our effort to remove the stigma of having Aids, have we created a culture of disease? We all see the advertisements for HIV drugs. They illustrate hot, muscular men living life to the fullest thanks to modern science. Other advertisements show couples holding hands, sending the message that the road to true love and happiness is being HIV positive. Is that message: You’re going to be OK (which is terrific)? Or is it: You want to be special? Get Aids. HIV equals popularity and acceptance (which would be tragic)? My heart goes out to all those people who have the infection. But while I pledge my energies and resources to the fight for a cure, quality care and justice, I still think we need to examine what we are teaching our gay, lesbian, transgender, bisexual and straight youth. In my opinion, the messages that the drug companies are spreading are lies. The truth is that Aids is not fun. It is not sexy, or manageable. Aids is a debilitating, deforming, terminal and incurable disease. HIV drugs can bring on heart, kidney and liver disease, as well as a host of daily discomforts. Unlike the photographs in the advertisements we see, most of my friends who are on drug cocktails are not having the times of their lives. They spend mornings in the bathroom throwing up or suffering from diarrhoea. They spend afternoons attending doctors’ appointments, clinics and pharmacies. They spend endless evenings planning their estates and trying to make ends meet because they are not well enough to support themselves and their new drug habit. And those are just the friends for whom the drugs work: for many women the cocktails are nothing but a drain on finances, internal organs and stamina. Even if the drugs were as effective as advertised, should we be creating a community of drug dependency? We have done a terrific job in removing the stigma of having Aids. But in doing so we have failed to eliminate the disease. HIV is an almost completely avoidable infection. You need to be compliant in some very specific behaviours to be at risk. In fact, if every person now infected vowed that the disease ended with him, we could wipe out the ballooning number of new infections. Instead, we have sold our next generation into drug slavery and their destiny to medical researchers because we would rather treat each other as sexual objects than as family. Thanks to the drug companies that have made billions of dollars off us, and to the medical community that has gained a captive audience to fill appointment books, and to Aids charities that have become a career for many, we have created an industry of disease that would crumble if Aids were cured in our community. I am calling for us to take back our lives and culture and to stop spreading the virus. I am calling for us to resist the normalisation of disease and once again to embrace health. I am calling for an end to the false advertising for drugs and for us to stop minimising the infection with cute little names such as “the gift” or “the bug”. I want to see an advertisement campaign showing a sexy man saying: I do not have HIV. I do not want to waste my life and resources on drugs. I am taking charge of my body, my health and my destiny. I am a negative gay role model. The author won the 2003 Tony Award for his performance in Hairspray. His best-known Hollywood role was in Torch Song Trilogy
harvey fierstein
If we cut off the funding, we make HIV a much scarier prospect, which will encourage safe behavior. (I am not suggesting we stop HIV+ people with money from buying their own drugs, but there shouldn't be a cent from our government or from insurance companies going towards people with new infections).
Let the rich Hollywood liberals pick up the tab for the meds, they've got the money. They should be EXPECTED to give to these sort of charities.
Excusez-moi, Broadway boy -- the drug companies that you are slapping around are the same ones that the leaders of your subculture previously were criticizing because they were taking too much time developing AIDS drugs. Then, the complaints were that the drugs were too expensive (think maybe excelerating development might have had something to do with the cost, Harv?), and they alleged that the pharmaceutical firms were callous profiteers.
Now, you say that they are falsely portraying HIV and AIDS, and are 'spreading lies' to gay youth. Consider this: the drug companies aren't charities, they are in business, and big business. They don't get a return on their investment in YOUR health until they start selling the medicine. And to sell the medicine, they have to know their market. And homosexual society is their market. And what sells in the gay community? Sex, sex, and more sex.
That's why AIDS awareness campaigns created from within the subculture have featured beautiful, sexy men and women, mostly in various stages of undress (or completely undressed) and often in intimate embraces and provocative poses -- because your leaders said that "sex-negative" information would be eschewed by your people, and they would learn nothing while continuing the same death-dealing sexual activities.
Those of us who insisted that trying to pretend there was something "safe" about encouraging more exposure to possibly infected sexual partners rather than emphasizing the danger of a lifestyle built around casual and/or anonymous sex were laughed at, and insulted as being hostile toward sex in general and gays and lesbians in particular.
So it is amusing to me that at long last, you realize that there is no virtue in portraying life as HIV positive or with AIDS as sort of like having chronic allergies requiring a couple of pills a day. Too bad you didn't agree with us earlier, when so many of you died because you didn't want to sacrifice stud life in exchange for your long-term health.
It's silly that you are griping about ads for drugs showing healthy people. Isn't the idea of taking drugs to be healthy? So why would any company want to put an emaciated, dry-skinned man on an ad for a medication that is supposed to relieve his pain?
Showing the disease as it really is isn't any drug company's responsibility, it is yours. They aren't responsible for the romanticization of HIV/AIDS, guys like you are. The companies' marketing mirrors your community. If your community changes and becomes more responsible and restrained about sex, the marketing will follow suit.
But until that time occurs, stop whining.
I think he's saying the same thing.
Well, heck, the disease is a civil right now - protected minority status and everything.
What was that that someone said? "Subsidize something and don't be surprised when you get a lot of it."
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