Some want HIV because they think once they have it they can go on with a wild, uninhibited sex life without constant fears of the virus. Getting the bug opens the door to sexual nirvana, they say. Others can't stand the thought of being so unlike their HIV-positive lover…When a culture’s conflicting values (hedonistic self-satisfaction vs. risk avoidance vs. long-term planning vs. normative ethics vs. social status) leads to the surrender of all competing values to the hedonism value, there is a problem with that culture that can only lead to disaster. (This is one reason why mainstream America opposes gay marriage – rightly or wrongly, such persons don’t want to see every town in America become like the Castro district in San Francisco).
Condoms and safe sex are openly ridiculed on bug-chasing Web sites, with many bug chasers rebelling against what they see as the dogma of safe-sex education; constantly thinking about a deadly disease takes all the fun out of sex, they say, and condoms suck. Carlos agrees and says getting HIV will make safe sex a moot point. "It's about freedom," he says. "What else can happen to us after this? You can f*ck whoever you want, f*ck as much as you want, and nothing worse can happen to you. Nothing bad can happen after you get HIV."
By the late nineties, there were thousands of men living with H.I.V. who were vigorous, healthy, and eager to reclaim the type of life they thought they had lost. As they began to gain weight and feel better, many returned to the kinetic night life that had virtually disappeared at the height of the epidemic, including all-night “circuit parties,” which often include serial sexual encounters.Unprotected sex, and increasingly promiscuity, is becoming the norm, with proliferating avenues of sexual meetups available. The New Yorker piece reports on the following key variables occuring today:
In New York City, the rate of syphilis has increased by more than four hundred per cent in the past five years. Gay men account for virtually the entire rise…
Crystal first gained popularity in the gay community of San Francisco in the nineteen-nineties, where it became the preferred fuel for all-night parties and a necessity for sexual marathons. Its reputation quickly spread. Crystal methamphetamine is highly addictive, but its allure is not hard to understand; the drug removes inhibitions, bolsters confidence, supercharges the libido, and heightens the intensity of sex. “The difference between sex with crystal and sex without it is like the difference between Technicolor and black-and-white,” one man told me…
[T]he Internet has turned out to be a higher-risk environment than any bar or bathhouse—men who meet online are more likely to use the drug, more likely to be infected with H.I.V., and less likely to use condoms.
Fast forward to 2005 and we now have a “supervirus” strain of HIV, one resistant to all known medications, spreading in the large, liberal gay subcultures of NYC and SF.
But remember, to say that gay men disproportionately engage in promiscuous behavior, hedonistic behavior, or irresponsible behavior is a stereotype.
Among the primary reasons that gay marriage initiatives have failed in so many states, that is, why the American public is so overwhelmingly opposed to gay marriage, is a) the nature of the ultra-hedonistic and irresonsible SF subculture, and b) the extent to which such lifestyles are prevalent within the gay community as a whole. When a large section of a the homosexual community is of the loud, leftist, and extreme sort – the type of folks who take pride in further alienating themselves from mainstream society (e.g., those who disdain ‘breeders’) – they will, sui generis, further alienate themselves from mainstream society.
This is a shame, as it is taken as an unquestioned assumption that homosexuals are liberal and vote Democratic, when in fact 25% of homosexuals vote Republican. Though you’ll never hear it from the MSM, it is possible for someone to be gay (or completely tolerant of gays) and yet be opposed to gay marriage. In fact, there is a growing number of gay conservative web-sites and/or pundits appearing on the internet.
Though some may be in favor of gay marriage (as a sizable number of Republicans are), they describe themselves as conservative on the majority of other issues. In other words they aren’t “one issue” voters who, while agreeing with 95% of the conservative platform, vote Democratic because of one issue. Here are some of the more well-known of such conservative sites, in approximate order of apparent influence: