GayNZ
Shaun Robinson
Original Article: bit.ly/1O0SnT2
Visiting American porn actor Blue Bailey is amongst those who advocate for more opportunities for at-risk gay and bi men to have anal sex without condoms, based on reducing the infectiveness of those with HIV and pre-priming HIV-negative people with medications to ward off infection. The pre-priming technique is known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.
“Blue Bailey seems to be a voice for the strand of American thinking that is militantly anti-condom, as if condoms are some kind of oppression of gay men,” says the NZAF’s Executive Director Shaun Robinson. “There are gay guys around the world who buy into this view of the world but they are a noisy minority. In New Zealand we have shown that guys will use condoms on a wide-spread scale and we have seen that this dramatically reduces HIV. Our HIV prevalence in the gay community is 6.5% compared to 25% in Mr Bailey’s California.
As for Bailey’s claim in an interview with GayNZ.com that promoting condom use shames and stigmatises gay men, Robinson says HIV and gay men’s sexual health “is not a product of oppression it is about simple biological risks – anal sex is eighteen time riskier than vaginal sex for HIV and has similar risks for syphilis, gonorrhea, etc. So gay men need to protect themselves just as women need to protect themselves from cervical cancer, it’s just a fact of life.”
Full text of article available at link below: bit.ly/1O0SnT2
