Q out- 

established 1986 Vol. XX, No. 2 March 2005

  etter

ere is much worry, anxiety and
fascination with the news from
New York City about a gay man
who was found to be infected with a
”strain of HIV that is both resistant to
most of the AIDS drugs available and

full—blown AIDS in a short period of
time. . A

Health officials, activists, and
the press are communicating not just.
the information about this case, but
also their own feelings of fear and
‘hopelessness. Feelings of fear and
hopelessness are understandable in this
situation. We areisimply scared and
discouraged by the destructiveness of
HIV and the destructiveness of gay
oppression.-

HIV in the gay men's commu-
nity would be relatively easy to deal
with if it weren't for gay oppression.
The effect of "gay oppression isito cre-
ate not just external barriers (stigma,
lack of resources, culturally incompe-
tent messages), but also internal barri-
ers. Gay men. are told over and over
again — in direct, extreme ways, in
subtler slap—in—the—face-ways — that
God hates us, that we aren't worthy of
full citizenship, that we are the sludgy,
slimy dirt at the bottom of the ocean
floor, that we stink. I

But these are messages com-
ing from the outside, right? Where this
becomes an internal battle is that on
some level we believe these messages.

As much as we deny it, we
simply haven't done the workas a
community to recover from these mes-
sages. We can have_ gay pride marches
every weekend from June to August,
but if we go out after those marches,

‘ get high on crystal meth and have
unprotected sex with each other, how
proud are we really? We act as though
some temporary escape from our worst

quite aggressive, moving from HIV to _

s guest editorial

We Deserve  

feelings about the oppression is all we

‘ deserve.

We deserve better. We deserve
better treatment from ourselves, we
deserve better treatment from each
other, and we deserve better treatment
from the broader community.

_ We deserve all the resources
necessary to fight these battles. We .
deserve to be cherished even when we
are lost in addiction and unsafe behav-
ior. We should not be the scapegoatsi
for AIDS or the target of society's con-
fusion and bias about sex and drugs. V

In the throes of desperate feel-
ings, people with degrees and titles

Our greatest hope,

 

lies in the creation of a caring society,
where people aren't made to feel.so
bad in the first place. That has to be
our goal. The work necessary to create
that society will require many things
of us‘. We will have to organize. We
will have to fight. We will have to face
our fears anddare to be hopeful. We
will have to feel good about ourselves
in the face of the oppression. We have

. to do it eyen if we feel we can't. We

have to do it even though we don't
know how. We have to do it simply
because we're worth it, and we deserve
nothing less. V

Glenn Johnson

Glenn Johnson is a gay activist who
lives in Greenfield, MA and works in
Brattleboro,‘ VT. He can be reached at

. mrglenn2u@yahoo.com.

long-term, lies

in the creation of a caring society,
where people aren't made to feel 
so bad in the first place.
That has tobe our goal.

and influence are calling for every-
thing from HIV counselingand testing
for every American to vigilante groups
interrupting sex. parties.

An HIV prevention program
borne of desperation is not likely to be
effective. Effective HIV prevention
comes about when people are able to
reach the individuals taking the risk —
reach them where they are hurting and

. acting out their hurt. And, nothing is

more repellant to someone feeling bad
enoughto have risky sex than the mis-
guided actions of someone acting out
their own fears and urgency. '

Our greatest hope, long-term,

Production Notes: There was so
much going on this month that we had

_ to shufile the layout and hold two of

our regular items: The Rest of Our
World and Tongue in Cheek will reap-
pear in April. — Ed. ‘