I can remember sitting in health class when I was 14, watching a video about AIDS. It was a humid 90 degrees outside, and there was no air conditioning in the building. An image of a man, no more than 100 pounds and covered in lesions, appeared on the screen, and I suddenly felt nauseated. I broke out into a sweat and watched it pool into a tiny puddle on the surface of my desk. I went to the boys’ room and stood at the sink, looking at myself in the mirror. Growing up in the ’90s, we were taught that sex equaled death. Specifically, gay sex equaled death. And to my fragile, impressionable young mind, that meant being gay equaled death, too. When you believe death and disease are your destiny, what’s to stop you from being promiscuous, doing drugs, or even taking your own life?
Of course, it gets better. And it did, at least for me. But as an adult, I encounter younger gay men who didn’t grow up seeing the things my generation saw. So much has changed in just a few short years. HIV is no longer a death sentence; it’s a “manageable condition.” And the number of gay men practicing unsafe sex, out of recklessness, complacency, or even deliberate self-injury, continues to grow. The CDC reports that infection rates among men who have sex with men, particularly blacks and Hispanics, are on the rise. READ MORE
Tag Archives: lgbt
Gay Sport Figures Among Olympics Torch-Bearers
Among the Olympics torch-bearers named this morning are gay figures from the sporting world.
7,300 torch-bearers were named this morning and will carry the flame for 70 days and 8,000 through the UK in July ahead of the opening of the Olympics on 27 July. Continue reading
Johnny Weir Will Return to the Ice, Tweets His Announcement
Not that I was holding my breath or anything, but I encouraging folks to do what they love, and do what they do well. Johnny Weir has been spread all over the media for every reason but being an olympic hopeful lately. He needs to channel those outfits and sass into his skates and I believe gold may be in his future. Focus Johnny, focus!!
With this above Tweet, figure skater Johnny Weir announced his return on competitive skating, with his goal to compete in the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Continue reading
Older Gay Men Can Boost Mental Health by Being Married
This may be a good incentive to stop being the bar slut (just sayin’) and keep one of those one night stands and make a long term relationship out of him. Enders
Older gay men could avoid mental health complications by being married, according to a study published in theAmerican Journal of Public Health.
Gay and bisexual men over the age of 50 report feeling stress from aging, discrimination based on their sexual orientation, and having lost many friends from the AIDS epidemic. Other age-related stress factors, such as financial status and independence, also affect their mental health. However, having a committed and legally recognized spouse or domestic partner has proven to be a mitigating factor in such stresses.“This study shines a light on the mental health of a generation of gay men who survived the early years of the AIDS crisis and came of age on the heels of the gay rights movement,” Williams Institute scholar and researcher Richard G. Wight, Ph.D., said in a statement Thursday. “Whether legal marriage benefits mental health within same-sex couples in the way it has been proven to benefit different-sex couples deserves much more empirical attention, particularly given that same-sex marriage is not available in most states and was only briefly available in California in 2008.”
The study suggests that public health agencies attempt more targeted mental health campaigns for gay and bisexual men over 50.
The Gay Male Couple’s Guide to Non-Monogamy
Mikey Rox and Everett Earl Morrow, both now 30, were committed to monogamy when they met and fell in love. That was five years ago. “After a couple instances of infidelity to which we both confessed, we decided it’s not realistic to expect either of us to never hook up with anyone else ever again,” says Rox, principal of Paper Rox Scissors Copy and Creative in Manhattan. The legally married couple has had an open relationship for the last two years. “Who wouldn’t want to be allowed to hook up with other guys and have their husband be OK with it?” he asks. “Isn’t that what most men dream of, and isn’t the limitation of sex with one partner in a marriage the reason why so many people cheat?” Adds Morrow, “As two men, sex isn’t particularly emotional for either of us. That enables us to separate our love for one another from the occasional physical attraction we may have for another guy.”
