After reading my post wondering why gay men continue to have unsafe sex, a reader wrote in:
I’m sure you know the power of words and how the choice of vocabulary can hide what people are really talking about. Are you pro-abortion or pro-choice, for example.
I applaud you for promoting monogamy. I would like you to go even further by not promoting licentious sexual activities as “playing”. How are gay people to be taken seriously when we treat what is potentially the most intimate expression of love between two people as a method of entertainment? Yes, many straight people do the same thing, but it seems to be almost taken-for-granted that all gay people have sex indiscriminately. Let’s not hide the facts by using euphemisms.
The writer, a gay man in his 40s, gave me his permission to reprint this.
I had read it on Friday just before I took the day off from going online. I printed it out and have pondered his words since then. I had wanted to add some wise and insightful comment of my own and may do that at a later date. For now, I will say, he’s got a point.
At first blush, it does not appear he answered the question I posed in the title of that post which I rephrase (as per his comments), “Why, knowing what we know about AIDS, do gay men continue to have unsafe sex?” But, in revisiting his words, in thinking about them, I think he may have answered it without even trying.
-Dan (aka GayPatriotWest): GayPatriotWest@aol.com