Researchers: Young Gay Men Getting HIV from Significant Others

[w8liftinglady]

http://www.edgedallas.com/news/aids///120366/researchers:_young_gay_men_getting_hiv_from_significant_others

Researchers have hit upon what they say is an overlooked risk factor for HIV: serious relationships.

The anti-gay narrative is that gay men are not interested in serious, long-term partnership with one other person. That myth helps drive anti-gay efforts to keep sexual minorities out of venerable social institutions such as marriage and the military, but they can also provide a distorted idea of HIV risk factors to gays themselves.

Gay men who enter into relationships may be prone to drop their guard, engaging in unsafe sex practices without knowing their HIV status out of a belief that being in a committed partnership automatically protects them from the virus, a June 2 Medilexicon posting said.

The problem is that an estimated 80% of young, HIV-positive gay men do not know their status -- and that means they aren’t getting the treatment they need to preserve their own health and cut the risk of HIV transmission to others, the article noted.

"Being in a serious relationship provides a number of mental and physical health benefits, but it also increases behaviors that put you at risk for HIV transmission," Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine’s Brian Mustanski said. "Men who believe a relationship is serious mistakenly think they don’t need to protect themselves."

[Cronus Protagonist]

1. Young gay men are using negative test results as an endorsement to have unsafe sex

It works like this:

Boy1 meets Boy2, Boy1 and Boy2 decide to get tested. Both boys have negative test results. Yay! Unsafe sex for US!

Later, Boy2 meets Boy3 while drunk or whatever, has unprotected sex. Boy2 can't tell Boy1 because Boy1 would be rightly outraged. And to keep the secret going, Boy2 keeps having unprotected sex with Boy1 so that Boy1 has no idea Boy2 slipped up. Much later, Boy2 finds out he has HIV and so does Boy1, or vice-versa.

This is a problem I recently discussed with an HIV counselor at an HIV testing center while I was getting the results of my own tests. The counselor says what they teach is "risk management", and they discuss this sort of thing and what to do about it. The problem is, there isn't really much that can be done about it, other than recommending that Boy1 and Boy2 always use condoms while they are together, negative tests or not. The problem is that Boy1 and Boy2 both want to have unprotected sex, and also want to believe that they are negative, but succumb to the pressures towards secrecy about outside sexual encounters that any couple are under.

It's sad, but I always tell my friends to always use condoms anyway, all the time each and every time due to this common situation, but they don't want to think that their boyfriend might cheat on them, so they continue with unsafe sex, and thereby, unfortunately, put themselves in danger.

They won't listen; denial is strong with the idealistic young ones.

[closeupready]

2. I object to this post on several levels.

First of all, I know "unsafe sex" is the commonly-accepted way to refer to sex without condoms, but 'safe sex' could also be known as 'sex lite', since no organism known to science has evolved naturally to incorporate condoms in the act of sexual intercourse, and the latex barrier dulls the experience for both partners. Thus, if we are going to be realistic, we need to understand and accept that what living, breathing, functioning mammals are seeking romantically from others of their species is something which can almost never be achieved without the act of unsafe sex.

Of course, every member of a consenting couple needs to make the decision for themselves, but for you to suggest that negative HIV test results from both partners should be disregarded is essentially prescribing fear, and given how unrealistic that suggestion is practically for a lot of people, I think it's counterproductive to the aim of reducing HIV infections.

[TheWraith]

3. A friend of mine was in this situation.

He has a serious boyfriend. A year or so ago, my friend got rushed to the hospital just this side of falling over dead due to a runaway HIV infection that he had no clue he even had. If I remember the stats right, his white cell count was 14, and his viral load was at several million. I'm not a medical specialist, but I gather that that's bad.

In any event, he recovered, but I do wonder what the consequences to his boyfriend were.