In a recent radio broadcast and article coordinated with Focus on the Family, Exodus exgay lobbyist Randy Thomas falsely accused the “gay community” of failing to take action against the abuse of an anti-HIV medication called tenofovir among the “many people” who seek out rave parties as the “only option” to “fulfill a void in their hearts.”
In the space of one broadcast, Thomas and Focus:
- exaggerate gay interest in raves
- insult the self-esteem of non-fundamentalists
- accuse the “community” of failing “to listen to reason”
- accuse gay people, as a class, of a singular “mindset” of “justifying risky behavior”
None of these accusations is substantiated. Sadly, Thomas seems to have been projecting his own failure to investigate, and to listen, onto others: Thomas failed to tell his audience the specific extent of the problem, which is very limited, and Thomas lied about the response of gay organizations and experts, whose actions to publicize and warn against the abuse may have exceeded the actual scope of the problem.
Let’s take an honest look at the scope of the problem, and what has actually been done about it.
Listeners should have grown suspicious when Thomas and Focus failed to cite the basis for their claims: A CDC report that 7 percent of uninfected gay men surveyed at four gay-pride events had misused HIV meds as a form of disease prevention and 20 percent knew someone else who had. In other words, 93 percent of those surveyed at a huge party celebrating gay identity and sexuality were not misusing drugs as a form of HIV prevention, and 80 percent did not know anyone else who had misused HIV drugs. Furthermore, pride-event attendees are not representative of the “gay community”: Pride-goers tend to be disproportionately urban, male, young, unattached — and looking to party.
Despite the limited extent of the problem, a Google search by Ex-Gay Watch finds numerous gay health advocates and gay media taking action and advocating healthier behavior. Among them:
- GayHealth.org
- 365gay.com
- Gay Today
- Express Gay News (South Florida)
- Columnist Rex Wockner
A search of blogs finds the following gay blogs protesting tenofovir abuse:
Simply put, the “gay community” (if such a thing exists) was already acting to combat HIV-drug misuse — and apparently the problem was less extensive than Thomas and Focus wanted to believe — or wanted listeners to believe.
However one defines “gay community,” Exodus and Focus on the Family dishonestly transformed a fringe problem that responsible leaders had been addressing, into a sweeping smear — and a false claim to a moral high ground. Furthermore, in discouraging condom use and sex education as a matter of established policy, Exodus and Focus have promoted the spread of HIV, even as they falsely accuse others of inaction.
I may be hearing the wrong tone, but your article seems similar to “not all of us are doing it” so it’s therefor not bad. Since it is “them” who do and not the rest of the good, wholesome gay community that is being unfairly targeted.
I would suggest instead of giving per centages of who is and who isn’t taking anti HIV medication, broken down across a demographic of “gay community” vs. “party boy” why not take a stand against medical practitioners prescribing medication that is untested, not recommended, and has never been advocated for HIV negative men to take as a pre exposure prophalaxysis?
The insisnuation that those who are speaking out against it are doing so out a knee jerk reaction to some neo con article, is insulting. I have written about, and continue to write about HIV and it’s prevention and medical management, and I don’t predicate my topic on the politics of it.
Steve O’Brien, MPH, PhD candidate HIV clinical management
Posted by: Steve at January 7, 2006 09:07 AM
No Steve, I think the tone was “don’t say we’re all doing this and none of us oppossing it when that isn’t the case” – don’t grossly mischaracterize gays as Exodus commonly does.
If Mike wasn’t opposing the practice he wouldn’t be quoting various gay sources opposing it. I don’t see anything in Mike’s post that insinuates those speaking out gainst this practice are doing so out of a knee-jerk response to any neo-con article – the gay organizations opposing it Mike listed certainly wouldn’t be.
I’m happy to take a stand against doctors prescribing tenofovir for HIV-negative men — and more generally against doctors prescribing medication that is untested and not recommended for the purpose prescribed.
Also, I’m not suggesting that the gay media are speaking as a knee-jerk reaction at all. I’m glad they’re speaking out against a serious problem — but a problem that is not as widespread as antigay activists claim, and which is being responsibly addressed by the “gay community.”
Do you have any suggestions on how to encourage doctors — and additional gay groups and experts — to take a stronger stand?
Steve,
It may be that you are unfamiliar with Randy Thomas’ propaganda and are not aware of what Mike was addressing. His criticism, as I understand it, had nothing to do with gay media, gay persons, party boys, or anything else. It had to do with wild distortion of fact as presented by Thomas.
Additionally, unlike you and Mike, I do not oppose those members of the medical profession who make tenofovir available to that tiny segment of the population that misuse it.
Although a “party boy” mentality may in some people prove to be a lifetime experience (though such lifetimes tend not to be very long), it is not uncommon for gay men to outgrow this mentality. I have many friends who were party boys and, sadly, some who still are.
As long as the pillars of society scream “you are evil”, there will be gay men who escape those screams by the use of drugs and partying. And drugs clearly reduce inhibitions and the ability to put priority on consequences.
As long as the pillars of society refuse to recognize healthy committed relationships between gay people, there will be gay men for whom these relationships are unknown or for which they feel unworthy.
When you combine the two, you are going to get risky sex. We can campaign against it (and we do) but some folks are so damaged that it is difficult work and can take a while. What is truly amazing is the way the gay community has been able to break out of that lifestyle to the extent it has, considering that each year contributes more kids fresh from growing up in “it’s an abomination, gay men don’t know how to love” households.
The truth is, risks will be taken, with or without any form of prophylactic drug. If tenofovir keeps some of them from seroconverting during the time it takes for these guys to work out their party days, I’m all for it.
My only concern is that we do not yet know if it is effective. And a “responsible” mindset says “don’t prescribe it unless you know it’s going to work. People may falsely rely on it.” Or perhaps the “proper” way to think is “we need to stop the unsafe sex, not just encourage using a drug which may have long-term negative consequences.”
And while that it true, I think it is irrelevant to the guy who through the use of the drug did not become positive. If tenofovir is not at all effective in reducing the odds of infection, then spread the word and the problem will stop itself. However, even if tenofovir is only sometimes partially effective, seroconversions may be prevented that we all know would otherwise occur.
If we really want to get incensed, rather that focus on this misuse of a drug perhaps the proper focus is on the voices that tell these kids that their only choice is between either denying who they are or wild promiscuous unsafe sex. Voices like those of Randy Thomas.
Unfortunately, regardless of the drug’s initial effectiveness, misuse of tenofovir is likely to encourage the development of strains of HIV — and other viruses — that are resistant to tenofovir and similar drugs.
So even if misuse of the drug were to prolong some individual lives, it coult put a much greater number of lives at risk.
Mike said:
Unfortunately, regardless of the drug’s initial effectiveness, misuse of tenofovir is likely to encourage the development of strains of HIV — and other viruses — that are resistant to tenofovir and similar drugs.
This could be said of any of the anti-virals used to treat HIV, couldn’t it? I guess the bottom line is that Rx medication should be taken with medical supervision, no matter what it is for. However the original premise of the post, that FOTF and others are using this issue dishonestly, appears to be true. I’ve already heard a soundbite or two on regular news media about it.
David
Timothy Kincaid at January 7, 2006 05:11 PM
I agree with most of this comment, except the portion that reads
…My only concern is that we do not yet know if it is effective. And a “responsible” mindset says “don’t prescribe it unless you know it’s going to work…..
The problem is that medicine is not a science, it is an art. It is an art based on science, but there is a difference. When a physician prescribes a medicine, he really doesn’t know whether or not it is going to “work” to alleviated the symptoms, or whether or not side effects from the medicine might effect other issues that the patient might have. That is one reason why doctors oftentimes prescribe things, and, if they don’t work, they prescribe other things to see if they work. That is not unheard of. And, to let you know, that is not negligence. The human body is an extremely complex machine, whose inner workings still are not well understood.
The encoding of the human genome is still not understood. Several years after it was supposedly decoded. There appears to be several levels of encoding that have to be decoded to understand it. There are insufficient numbers of genes in the native human genome to provide for the number of genes required to encode all of the proteins that are required to construct the human body, and it appears that there are several other levels of encoding.