We gay men who
are HIV negative very often feel that way about our brethren who are HIV
positive. We treat them, collectively, as something we would cut away from
ourselves if we could.
From the time too
many of us become sexually active, we live in total fear of HIV. We don’t want it to be apart of
our lives, we trained ourselves to think that the men we slept with
“might have it.” Some of us make sure that friends had condoms before they left the
bar with anyone “we don’t know” and on the day after the night before asked them if they’d been “safe.” Do you
think you many of us reminded each other to get tested and would pester our friends if they were “overdue” because we want to live in a world of gay men who were HIV negative because gay men
with HIV were irresponsible, immoral and a threat to “the rest of us?”
I hope that eventually, many of
us will become of what a self-centered bigots
we are. The things we say, the attitudes reflected and the ways we behaved are still used to stigmatize gay men who are HIV positive. We all know what it feels like to have sex and asked ourselves, “should I be worried?” “What if I had it?” “What would I do?”.
I’d like to
think we will get better with
dealing with HIV but…When will we recognize the
hatefulness and the damage that stigma causes? I’ve seen it in the eyes of men, sensed the anxiety of knowing & not knowing yet…We should know better. HIV is a part of our lives because gay men who are
HIV positive are part of our lives. They are our chosen family
members and we owe it to one another to fight the general
bigotry against HIV that persists in gay culture and to accept that every one
of us is able to be with a man who makes us happy...regardless of his status.
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