Menace to society II

When I wrote last week about risky sexual behaviors and HIV/AIDS, I suspectedthere would be name-calling and lots of finger-pointing. You did not disappoint. What struck me about your reactions was that few were from women, while the majority of letter-writers blamed women and the “black community.”

For those who did not read my April 23 column, “Menace to society,” a cautionary recap: “It is called the ’down low’ and, generally, here is how it works.Aman wantstohave sexual relations withanother man. So, on such occasions, the two winkateach other in the supermarket, during worship services or, say, at spaghetti night at their children’s school, and then decide to ’hook up.’ Afterward, they go back to whatever lifestyle and relationships they were engaged in. For some, that lifestyle is utterly homosexual. For too many, that lifestyle is bisexual. Either way, HIV/AIDS remains a menace to our society.”

I also cited alarming HIV/AIDS statistics, such as the fact that an estimated 5,500 women are newly infected each day. I concluded by calling for everyone’s undivided attention to arrest this menacing development.

Yet, instead of focusing on solutions to my troubling message, many of you preferred to shoot down the messenger and point fingers — at other women and me. “Leon,” for example, is in serious denial, saying women are “supposedly infected” by bisexuals who transmit the disease, and he accused me of continuing “a long tradition” of blaming HIV/AIDS on men who “share intimate connections with other men.”

Is that what sex is now being called? Sharing “intimate connections”? Talk about denial.

A writer named John said, “If gay men and lesbians were treated with respect, given the same rights as everyone else, then maybe men wouldn’t be ’hiding’ behind women in a false marriage.”

Whether men are “hiding” behind women or a bolted closet isn’t the problem. In fact, the problem isn’t where they hide or whether they are in a “false marriage” or no marriage at all. The problem stems from what people do, not where they do it. It doesn’t matter whether a heroin junkie is shooting up with a dirty needle in her bedroom or a drug den. The problem is behavior. Risky behavior. Risky behavior that has led to a public-health crisis on this and other continents. To deny those facts exacerbates the problem.

Another man who e-mailed me and described himself as a “gay professional black man” who was “outed” by a black woman, said he kept his homosexuality on the “down low” because “I thought I had to project a certain image.” He pointed more than one finger at racism, saying there is a great “divide” among white and black homosexuals and that “[white] married men have been frequenting the parks in VA [Virginia] and surrounding rest stops for years, but now they have [the TV shows] ’Queer Eye’ and ’Will and Grace’ and everything is fine.”

His premise points up the problem. Nothing is fine — and the fact that 5,500 women are newly infected with HIV/AIDS each and every day God sends our way underscores that fact. These infected women, especially those who are married and of child-bearing age, run the risk of passing their illness on to current and future generations.

Two years ago, I held in my arms a darling little girl. She was HIV-infected because her father infected her mom. And by the way, that little girl’s mother was not only pregnant, but nursing her newborn son.

How long must this go on? How long are we going to continue peeping inside and outside of the closet before we acknowledge what we have wrought?

As desiring creatures, spontaneity often gets the best of us. Quiet as it is kept, however, risky behavior is risky behavior — whether carried out by a man or woman, or a boy or girl.

And to “Leon,” I say this: As part of the “mainstream media,” I will continue to use the tools at my disposal to heal and help, by calling situations as I see them. But when people insist on condoning risky behavior and encouraging others to do the same, then expect me to occasionally blow closet doors off the hinges.

As I said last week, the public-health crisis caused by HIV/AIDS can only be arrested by our undivided attention — regardless of race, gender, religion or lifestyle. The question for the vast majority of adult Americans is not, “Who or what is to blame?” We know the answers and have known them for years.

The burning question is: Is each of us doing our part to stop further infections?