Why I, as a gay man, think this is morally wrong
by Andrew Pierce, Mailonline:
At the end of a pre-release screening of an award-winning film about the Aids epidemic in San Francisco in the 1980s, there was a stunned silence. It was only broken by a few muffled sobs.
The movie, We Were Here, featured the stories of people who watched their friends and lovers suffer agonising deaths.
They had contracted Aids after being infected by the HIV virus. In total, about half of the Californian city’s gay male population were infected and more than 19,000 died by the end of 2009.
Organised by the Terrence Higgins Trust, the first charity set up in Britain in response to HIV, those in the London audience for the screening were mainly 20 and 30-something gay men.
During a discussion afterwards, they were asked how many practised safe-sex. Fewer than half said they did.
This was deeply shocking. Had they not learnt the lessons of that terrible time in the 1980s when a mixture of naivete and irresponsible risk-taking led to so many Aids-related deaths among the gay community?
Thankfully, the development of antiretroviral drugs since the 1980s has led to a dramatic fall in the number of Aids deaths.
But, most worryingly, it has created a reckless mindset among many gay people that makes them think that they can indulge in any kind of sexual behaviour and without putting their health at risk.
One of the effects of this is that, increasingly, they are indulging in unprotected sex and then expecting the NHS to prescribe them a drug that is designed to prevent them from getting HIV.
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