COMMENT: POLITICAL CORRECTNESS – THE NEW RELIGION

Part two of Gary Leigh’s three-part report on HIV prevention. Here he explains why he thinks political correctness is damaging gay men’s health…

Defending GMFA’s stance not to run harder-hitting HIV campaigns, Head of Programmes Matthew Hodson said in September: “The GMSS (Gay Men’s Sex Survey) shows that there is almost universal agreement amongst gay men, irrespective of their age, that HIV is a serious medical condition. Therefore, campaigns that only tell everyone how serious HIV is would only be delivering a message that gay men already know.”

Hodson was referring to a 2006 GMSS statistic purporting that virtually all gay men of all ages (97 percent) perceive HIV to be a “serious medical condition”; a finding that seriously conflicts with the 27 percent of Soho Survey respondents who regard HIV as a manageable condition, and the 26 percent who regard it to be no more serious than catching any other STI. Only 45 percent in our survey correctly perceive HIV as a “serious terminal condition”. Certainly, if as many as 97 percent of gay men in 2006 really did regard HIV as a “serious medical condition” – i.e. that they were aware of the life-eroding implications of contracting HIV – then most would surely have made a greater effort to protect themselves during sex, which isn’t borne out by today’s HIV rates.

Finally, survey participants were asked what single factor is most contributing to the rise of barebacking. By a clear margin in nearly all age groups 21 percent said bareback porn; a significant finding given the deafening silence and indifference of the HIV sector on the subject. “I don’t like the thought of censorship, particularly that which discriminates against gay men,” GMFA’s Matthew Hodson said of bareback porn last year, in marked contrast to IML (International Mr. Leather) President Chuck Renslow who told the US gay media in August that vendors at the annual Chicago convention – at which barebacking is the practised norm among many attendees – would no longer be permitted to sell or distribute barebacking materials. “Too many in our community believe HIV/Aids is curable or manageable,” he said. “We believe that it is our duty to inform and educate. We have an entire generation who may not fully appreciate or comprehend the severity of the situation. Greed and avarice must not supersede the health of our community.”

Chuck Renslow

“Lack of free condom distribution” and “Boredom of safe sex/condoms” were each cited by 18 percent of respondents, obliterating the fallacy that “condom fatigue” is the overriding factor influencing gay men of all age groups into having unsafe sex. “The increase in sex-on-site premises” came 4th (16 percent), while “ineffective safe sex education” was itself considered to be a main factor in the rise of barebacking (13 percent), more so than “disinhibiting recreational drugs” (12 percent).

No matter how its devastating findings are interpreted or its “ambiguous” questions discredited by those in HIV prevention, I feel the Soho Live survey raises doubts over the success of UK HIV prevention strategies. Most of all it emphasises that if gay men’s health – particularly the urban scene-goer’s – is to be safeguarded into the next decade and HIV prevented from entrapping a new generation of gay men, blind faith and trust must stop being placed in the HIV charity sector which continues, year after year, to cling to the same out-of-touch policies. The unpalatable truth is that the sector is no nearer to delivering the solutions that are blindingly obvious to gay men on the street than when it started out because it has become the central problem, subverting and co-opting HIV prevention to the point where some of its methods may enable the virus’s spread.

Political correctness entered the mainstream psyche with good intent; to stamp out hate and ensure fairness for all. Its relentless, unrestrained march, however, has overstepped all reasonable boundaries into many areas of public life, inflicting ridiculous levels of paranoia and bureaucracy upon – and immeasurably weakening, destabilising and paralysing the democratic power structures of – once great institutions, not least the HIV charity sector whose central failing is its pervasive PC doctrine that a hardline approach to HIV prevention would run counter to its spin that HIV is a manageable condition and those infected can enjoy healthy, normal lifespans. As long ago as 1990 medical journalist Oliver Gillie, writing in The Independent, warned that the UK’s largest HIV charity, THT, was “rent with political discord and pursuing political correctness at the expense of medical accuracy, and sometimes common sense.”

What is so pernicious about political correctness “gone mad” is how it transforms into quasi-religious disciples those who kneel at its altar. For years gay men have been contending with the spread of not one but two viruses, HIV and PC. But as support for a return to hardline HIV prevention increases, a growing band of dissenting voices including TV doctors Chris Jessen and David Bull and author Paul Burston are finally being heard above the dismissive put-downs of some within the HIV sector.

In campaigning long and hard these past seven years for greater awareness around the unparalleled HIV-correlated health risks associated with crystal meth, and more recently in calling for harder-hitting HIV campaigns for no self-interest other than to protect the health and wellbeing of those I may never meet, I have rarely encountered anything so deeply disturbing as the ferocious amount of energy HIV sector personnel are willing to expend attacking, suppressing and dismissing all criticism of their approach, nor the manner by which they aggressively discredit all opposing viewpoints into submission.

The sector surpassed even itself in March 2008 – two days after Dr. Chris Jessen told The Metro “There hasn’t been a decent HIV campaign in years” – when Boyz journalist Paul Steinberg was invited to the annual CHAPS conference to deliver his well-researched case for harder-hitting HIV campaigns. In the event his speech was ambushed by a heckling, jeering mob of prominent HIV sector staffers, and when Steinberg dared to quote Dr. Jessen he was humiliatingly shouted down by one who screamed: “What does he know? He’s only a doctor!”

TOMORROW: Thoughts on the way forward if HIV prevention is to be revived…