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Is HIV/AIDS Really a Gay Disease?

09/08/09-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
HIV/AIDS is a disease which infects an estimated 33 million people in the world today. It is an automatic death sentence, even though that time can be stretched out. It also has the stigma of being a “gay disease.” This largely came about because HIV/AIDS was first isolated in the gay male community back in the 1980’s. According to some numbers that have cropped up (though they may be inaccurate) a higher percentage of gay men have HIV/AIDS than do straight men; however, a greater number of straight men have the disease than gay men do.

OK…According to the CDC’s 2007 numbers, male to male sexual contact accounts for half the new cases in the country, and a third are due to high risk heterosexual contact. The question that is not asked by the CDC (of course, this is the Bush CDC we’re talking about here) is this due to a greater tendency to be tested among the gay male community, or is it due to higher risk behaviors among gay men? They do not ask that even though they state that they believe that almost a quarter to a third of all HIV/AIDS infected people are unaware of their infection.

I use to live in Glynn County, Georgia where the HIV/AIDS was the highest in the state, or at least that is what everyone said. In truth, they may have been saying that because there is a secondary underlying attitude that HIV/AIDS is also a poor person’s disease, and a minority disease, and anything other than a disease that affects everyone. After all, HIV/AIDS hits those who are drug users, promiscuous, and all other sorts of horrible people who are not “our type”.

Thus there is the uncomfortable issue of the continued stigmatization of HIV/AIDS and its association with the LGBT Community. HIV/AIDS is not a gay disease. It strikes everyone. The earliest confirmed case of HIV/AIDS in the United States is now been pegged back to the 1950’s. There are estimates that it entered the US back in the 1920’s, but no one caught that it had because of the variety of symptoms and the lack of medical knowledge to find it.

Every time a politician wants to attract the LGBT Community to vote for them, the tendency is to include something under the LGBT rights section with regards to HIV/AIDs irregardless of the fact that it is infecting huge numbers of straight people of all races.

It is an uncomfortable question, really. Should we start to voice our displeasure with politicians for lumping HIV/AIDS into our issues? Is it time to put our foot down and declare that it is time to start seeing HIV/AIDS as being a world health issue, or even a national health issue?