Is The Gay Community Post-AIDS?

Great new article from Michael Harris in Walrus Magazine, which is much more serious that the name implies:

I’m the same age as the epidemic. By my first birthday, eight young gay guys in New York had developed purple tumours on their skin, which turned out to be a rare cancer called Kaposi’s sarcoma. Those boys had AIDS, though there wasn’t a name for it yet.

 That year, 1981, an unknowable number of men slept (shamefully or shamelessly) with each other and unwittingly consigned themselves to early deaths. That year, before the tears and the placards, before the suicides, the broken families, and the funerals, an inferno began its relentless unfolding. (One of the most insidious characteristics of HIV is that it can take years before its effects are felt, which leaves one plenty of time to unknowingly pass it along.) That year, my future best friends and I, seemingly far removed from AIDS and from each other, learned to crawl in the undestroyed homes of our parents.

I do sadly fear that the fear has gone out of AIDS. It would be wonderful if cold hard logic motivated every gay man to use a condom every time, but the human mind is often immune from logic. Fear, much as we all seek to avoid it, can be a rather powerful motivating force. Gay men in my generation no longer have that fear, and don't fully understand the possible consequences of playing Russian Roulette with sex - 'this hook up looks OK (and he said he's clean), so let's skip the condom', all to many think. 


No one should pine for the days  where the main weekend activity for gay men was attending funerals, but we must all fight against the complacency that has become endemic in our community.