Dying to Get Married

AlterNet: Fear, Loathing, and the AIDS Generation: By Kai Wright, The Nation.

This was an interesting article in AlterNet about gay men and our now ever increasing tendencies to catch, spread and ignore AIDS, syphilis and other diseases. The first point comes from Larry Kramer, the AIDS activist who wrote in his book "The Tragedy of Today's Gays" about how we are killing ourselves with unprotected sex. I would tend to agree, but I'm a bit less shrill about it and less quick to blame every single gay man. The real culprit, as it was in the past, is society.

Now I'm not completely blaming society on this one. I do have a lot of sympathy for anyone who catches an STD, but at the same time, every man in New York City knows that doing crystal meth and having group sex is probably going to give you AIDS. It's not a "Well maybe open anal fissures and six different guys' cum in my ass" will give me AIDS situation, it's a "You just got AIDS" situation. People know better.

And then there's the whole issue of barebacking. Which sounds more kinky than it is. Fucking without a condom and having cum in you ass I'm sure is just really really hot, but at the same time, is it really? I'm okay with the condom. It seems to me like it's not only safe but, just as unnervingly important to me, hygienic. Anal sex is not without it's flecks of leftovers and smells, so let's not get too hot and bothered about getting that actually stuck on your penis.

I'm sort of meandering though. The Wright article mentions two key points: gay sex is assumed to be unnecessary and the intimacy of barebacking is undervalued. Direct quote:

Odets argues that by refusing to acknowledge the utterly natural reasons why a gay man may long to eschew protection during an act in which vulnerability is so central, we establish an unattainable standard--protected sex forever, until, um, marriage?--and create stigma for those who can't live up to it. "That does just what it did to homosexuality--which is push people into the closet," he concludes. "The feelings about unprotected sex get acted out impulsively and more dangerously than they would have."

Too many HIV prevention programs, he argues, are rooted in the assumption that sex between men is just empty calories. Sure, we can have it, but it's not worth taking any chances. "Gay men are sort of loath to assert the importance of sex," Odets says. "Unprotected sex is important in a lot of ways," he insists. "Why isn't it obvious to people that someone coming inside you can be experienced as intimacy? It's obvious for heterosexual couples. But if gay sex is just this perverse recreation, then it's not worth any risk." [AlterNet]

The article goes on to discuss how cumming inside someone is very intimate and that the presumption that only tweaked out Chelsea queens are the ones having unprotected anal sex is wrong. I'd agree. I've met a few semi-regular 'mos who have barebacked with a close boyfriend. Both had been tested and both were monogamous and knew it was safe. But I couldn't disagree more. To me, you can only really establish this sort of sexual act in the relative safety of marriage or serious commitment. And I think every man needs to honestly sit back and consider a few things before they decide it's seriously committed. First of all, how many people has your partner had sex with? AIDS can take almost six months to show up on test. How long have you seriously dated? Sure you may have dated for the last 8 months, but was it just serious and monogamous in the last two? Are you completely sure he didn't have sex with anyone else why you were dating in the beginning? And keep in mind, would you tell them if you had? I would probably lie just to not upset anything that was just working out so well right now.

But the real problem is that gays are denied the protection of marriage. This isn't just the laws and rights, but the socially recognized and re-enforced notions that come with marriage. Most people are loathe to have sex with someone who is married and would be disappointed in a friend who cheated on their husband. But in the gay world, a world were commitments are largely a perpetual state of "boyfriend-hood," how strongly recognized are these on the outside. If gays and lesbians are denied the socially reinforced and culturally recognized unions, fidelity is harder to keep up. Guaranteeing that your partner is HIV-negative is harder to do. But more over, gay men are not encouraged in any significant way to seek out or enter monogamous, loving relationships.

In my thesis on long term gay couples, the one question that left these couples at a loss was "Were there any relationship role models for you?" In the media, in entertainment, there are a few if any gay and lesbian couple role models. There are no sitcoms about a gay couple dealing with life and love. There are few dramatic movies about same-sex couples falling in love (and Brokeback Mountain being the most obvious one now isn't exactly the best example of a couple dealing with their relationship in a constructive way). There are also very few gay couples in real life and even less who are open that we can emulate or at least see as viable option in our futures. A few people I interviewed for my thesis sometimes said their role models were their parents, albeit a little begrudgingly, and most said they were making it up as they went along. Unfortunately, not everyone is that resourceful. People fundamentally need role models. As children we imitate what we see in our world to make sense of it and to learn how to act in it. But without same-sex couple role models, without people to give us same-sex couple advice, we are left with nothing.

The people who cause gay and lesbians the greatest harm are conservatives, misguided Christians and a majority of US citizens. I don't in anyway discredit individual agency in this, that people make their own decisions that can lead to AIDS, but in a lot of ways our hands are tied. If we really want to fight AIDS and STD's, we need a society that encourages monogamous relationships, opposite-sex and same-sex. I know I'll get it from people who don't want to reinforce heterosexist norms, but I completely reject that argument. There is little that is heterosexist about two guys fucking each other the rest of their lives, safely and lovingly.