Poor and Gay Aren't Mutually Exclusive Categories

By Diana Scholl

Housing Works

When it comes to addressing HIV and AIDS among gay men, there are a host of policy positions that need to be changed to create equality for gay men and men who have sex with men of all races . For example, we need to have comprehensive sexual health and awareness education which includes HIV prevention and treatment education both for students and those not currently in school HIV prevention education that teaches about safer sex for everyone — gay, straight and everything in-between-- in an open and accurate way. And there’s no way for us to have an effective National AIDS Strategy without acknowledging that all levels of government must do all that they can to end discrimination on the basis of who we have sex with.

But it’s impossible to demand that government address HIV among gay men without also demanding a critical examination of race and poverty.

A few not-so-fun facts:

• A black gay man is much more likely to get infected with HIV than a white gay man even if they’re both engaged in the same amount of “risky behavior”

• Black and Latino gay men are more likely to be diagnosed with AIDS and HIV concurrently and less likely to receive lifesaving antiretrovirals and continuing care than his white counterpart.

• 25 percent of gay teenagers are kicked out of their homes and become homeless, making them more likely to become infected with HIV than their non-homeless counterparts.

As Charles King said in a speech on World AIDS Day last year, “The reality is that AIDS is no longer so much a gay disease in the United States as it is a disease of race and poverty. And that brings to light a dirty secret about the organized and politically engaged gay community - that we are overwhelmingly white and reasonably well-off, and our movement is almost exclusively about rights for ourselves and people like us.”

To address both the needs of gay men and of everyone, we need targeted case management and housing to address as both prevention and health care measures. We need to implement targeted campaigns for prevention and getting people into care. We need the government to sponsor media campaigns that can’t be ignored. And of course, we need universal health care so no one falls through the cracks.

But above all, we must combat stigma and discrimination to get at the root of those problems that the government alone cannot solve.

The CDC’s rise in reported infections shows that 45 percent of new infections were among blacks, and 53 percent were among men who have sex with men (MSM). And too often we talk about AIDS as a disease affecting “black people” and “gay people” as though these are always mutually exclusive categories. But 63 percent of new infections among blacks occurred among men who have sex with men, most of them young men.

It’s impossible to talk about HIV and AIDS without talking about the intersection of race, gender, poverty and a litany of other issues, and it is important that the AIDS community and the gay community address these issues head on.

[Click here to read previous input into the 2009 Gay Men's Health Agenda. Please feel free to comment there - or you could send in a full post of your own here. We will be happy to publish it! The feedback we receive will be featured in the closing plenary of the upcoming National Gay Men's Health Summit and will be a means of moving the community forward in the new year around issues that are important to all of us.]