Category: AIDS Related Essays

Known by various names: Hydro, Crank, Sparkle, Speed, Tina, Crystal, the use of methamphetamine by gay men to facilitate and enhance sexual pleasure seems to be a real driver in the recent upsurge in new HIV infections locally and nationally.

Alcohol abuse and alcoholism are unfortunately widespread problems in the gay male community. Though gay space is much more diverse and readily available, certainly in large urban centers than 25 or 30 years ago, the gay bar remains an integral

Larry Kramer, the founder of the AIDS activist group, ACT-UP, used the quote above in a recent piece he wrote for the New York Times. As he does so well, Kramer was reminding us of the obscene reality that life

Here is a sick idea for Reality TV: take ten gay men various ages and races that are all HIV negative, but wish to receive the “gift” of HIV and see who can get infected first! The lurid appeal of

George Bush surprised a lot of people in his 2003 State of the Union message when he called for congress to commit $15 billion over five years to fight AIDS in Africa. This actually represents $10 billion over what was

A real crisis facing many people with HIV in the USA in the coming year will be access to the medicines that have revolutionized the treatment of HIV. Access to HIV medicines, based on a shallow and nearsighted analysis, is

Listening to certain gay pundits and many public health officials around the country you could be led to believe that safe sex for gay men is a relic of the 90’s. It does seem that transmission of HIV is on

The recent international conference on AIDS held in Barcelona generated very little to be enthusiastic about on the AIDS front particularly for those parts of the world much more impacted than the USA and Western Europe. One particular piece of

It is the fall of 2001 and we are reeling from the recent terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. We also are twenty or so years into the AIDS epidemic in the United States. As it turns out it

There was skit on Saturday Night Live a while back that in very biting fashion parodied a commercial for adult diapers. The product being promoted in the piece was a diaper named “Oops, I Crapped My Pants”. The political incorrectness of satirizing