Smells like racism, Savage.

Smells like racism, Savage.

Smells like racism, Savage.

I the bigger picture, why would The Powers That Be in this high school act any different from other American who are part of their own power/authority structure... screw over people you don't agree with, issue an apology after the damage is real, then still get your way... works for the GWBush administration, so why not some small-time school district... TPTB didn't give a shit about the homosexual students last week, and unless they had a brain transplant over the weekend, they still don't give a shit about them this week.

Win-Win for those empowered, shit-end of the stick for everyone else. The message being sent: "don't be different. Or you WILL suffer by me".

On the Down Low: A Journey into the Lives of 'Straight' Black Men Who Sleep with Men--that's J.L. King's book about the DL.

Beyond the Down Low: Sex, Lies, and Denial in Black America--it's Keith Boykin's book, written partly in response to King's, also about the DL. You might wanna read it, BD.

The down low problem is significantly worse in the African-American community. Pointing out that fact is hardly racism. If anything, it's racist to ignore the problem, let asshole homobigots continue to scare black homos into the closet, and continue to see HIV infections climb in the African-American community.

what evidence do you have that the "down low" is "worse" in the African-American community? Can you define "worse"?

From the Washington Post:

U.S. HIV Cases Soaring Among Black Women Social Factors Make Group Vulnerable

By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 7, 2005; Page A01

He was, Precious Jackson said, a very fine black man. He was 6 feet 2 inches tall with an almond-milk complexion, dreamy dark eyes and a deep voice. During their nearly two years together in Los Angeles, he was the sunshine of her life, even though he had a habit of landing in jail and refused to use a condom when they made love.

"I didn't ask him any questions," Jackson said in a recent interview. "I didn't ask him about his sexual history. I asked him if he had been tested, and he said one test came back positive but another one came back negative. I was excited to have this man in my life, because I felt I needed this man to validate who I was."

The man is now Jackson's ex-lover, but the two are forever attached by the AIDS virus she contracted from him, becoming, in the process, a part of the nation's fastest-growing group of people with HIV -- black women.

From BlackWomensHealth.com:

AIDS and African American Women

African American communities are being ravaged and attacked by an epidemic of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). At issue is our lifestyle. Although a number of AIDS cases can be attributed to Injection Drug Use (IDU), too many of us – whether gay, straight, male or female – continue to have unprotected sex with multiple partners or people we barely know.

The AIDS rate among Black women is three times as high as that among Latino women and 18 times as high as that among White women. Today Black women make up more than half of all women who have died of AIDS.

African Americans make up 13 percent of the population, yet we now account for 41 percent of all AIDS cases in the United States. The Harvard AIDS Institute estimates that by the year 2000 more than half of all our country’s AIDS cases will be within the African American community.

A "subculture"? Please. If so, then it's no more or less a subculture than white men who do the same thing.

From the Washington Post:

U.S. HIV Cases Soaring Among Black Women Social Factors Make Group Vulnerable

By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 7, 2005; Page A01

He was, Precious Jackson said, a very fine black man. He was 6 feet 2 inches tall with an almond-milk complexion, dreamy dark eyes and a deep voice. During their nearly two years together in Los Angeles, he was the sunshine of her life, even though he had a habit of landing in jail and refused to use a condom when they made love.

"I didn't ask him any questions," Jackson said in a recent interview. "I didn't ask him about his sexual history. I asked him if he had been tested, and he said one test came back positive but another one came back negative. I was excited to have this man in my life, because I felt I needed this man to validate who I was."

The man is now Jackson's ex-lover, but the two are forever attached by the AIDS virus she contracted from him, becoming, in the process, a part of the nation's fastest-growing group of people with HIV -- black women.

From BlackWomensHealth.com:

AIDS and African American Women

African American communities are being ravaged and attacked by an epidemic of AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). At issue is our lifestyle. Although a number of AIDS cases can be attributed to Injection Drug Use (IDU), too many of us – whether gay, straight, male or female – continue to have unprotected sex with multiple partners or people we barely know.

The AIDS rate among Black women is three times as high as that among Latino women and 18 times as high as that among White women. Today Black women make up more than half of all women who have died of AIDS.

African Americans make up 13 percent of the population, yet we now account for 41 percent of all AIDS cases in the United States. The Harvard AIDS Institute estimates that by the year 2000 more than half of all our country’s AIDS cases will be within the African American community.

Since using condoms with their wives would arouse suspicion, gay black men on the down low place their female partners at risk of HIV infection and many of these women wind up contracting HIV as a result. The homophobia in the African American community is quite literally killing African American women.

Here's a bit from Uganda, where we are very interested in altering the sexual behavior of Black people:

http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index.php?qid=20070622234126AAenskt

Why did so called 'safe sex' "Have no hint of even a small effect"?

Sex And HIV: Behaviour-Change Trial Shows No Link
The East African (Nairobi)
March 17, 2003

By Paul Redfern, Special Correspondent Nairobi

A UK funded trial aimed at reducing the spread of Aids in Uganda by modifying sexual behaviour appears to have had little discernible effect.

The trial, carried out on around 15,000 people in the Masaka region, involved distributing condoms, treating around 12,000 victims of sexually transmitted diseases and counselling.

However, while the trial led to a marked change in sexual behavioural patterns, [good black people, good!] with the proportion reporting causal sexual partners falling from around 35 per cent to 15 per cent, there was no noticeable fall in the number of new cases of HIV infection.

////////////

So, we altered behavior, but not "infection rates".

The reason why this is can be found in any of the literature on hiv testing. Here's one from the NEJM, last year:

"A case–control study of 101 blood donors who had been vaccinated against influenza and 191 matched controls showed that recent inoculation with any brand of influenza vaccine was significantly associated with a false positive screening assay for HIV antibodies. Guidelines of both Johns Hopkins and the New York State Department of Health list influenza vaccination as a known cause of indeterminate results on Western blotting for HIV antibodies.

Given the escalating international awareness of various influenza strains, it is very important to remind patients and clinicians that influenza vaccination may cause cross-reactivity with HIV antibody assays."

/////////

On the other hand, here's a piece, specifically on homos (as Savage would say), that showed that even when homos had oral sex, (and as much as they wanted!!!), they still didn't come up "positive".

"Page-Shafer is a researcher at the Center for AIDS Prevention at the University of California, San Francisco. At the 2004 World AIDS Conference, she presented data from a study of 400 men whose only form of sexual behavior was receiving oral sex. Despite little condom use with multiple partners -- including partners known to be infected with HIV -- none of the men came down with HIV infection.

"We had zero infections over 1,493 person-years of exposure to oral receptive sex," Page-Shafer tells WebMD. "This doesn't mean there aren't factors that contribute to easier HIV transmission by oral sex. It does happen. But data confirm it is a pretty rare occurrence."

/////////////

The reason why there's no reason in hiv testing, can be learned by reading what hiv tests actually do, and do not do.

But you'd have to be interested be able to tolerate reading what 'hiv tests' actually test for.

Which you can do, or not do.

Since using condoms with their wives would arouse suspicion, gay black men on the down low place their female partners at risk of HIV infection and many of these women wind up contracting HIV as a result. The homophobia in the African American community is quite literally killing African American women.

Here's a bit from Uganda, where we are very interested in altering the sexual behavior of Black people:

http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index.php?qid=20070622234126AAenskt

Why did so called 'safe sex' "Have no hint of even a small effect"?

Sex And HIV: Behaviour-Change Trial Shows No Link
The East African (Nairobi)
March 17, 2003

By Paul Redfern, Special Correspondent Nairobi

A UK funded trial aimed at reducing the spread of Aids in Uganda by modifying sexual behaviour appears to have had little discernible effect.

The trial, carried out on around 15,000 people in the Masaka region, involved distributing condoms, treating around 12,000 victims of sexually transmitted diseases and counselling.

However, while the trial led to a marked change in sexual behavioural patterns, [good black people, good!] with the proportion reporting causal sexual partners falling from around 35 per cent to 15 per cent, there was no noticeable fall in the number of new cases of HIV infection.

////////////

So, we altered behavior, but not "infection rates".

The reason why this is can be found in any of the literature on hiv testing. Here's one from the NEJM, last year:

"A case–control study of 101 blood donors who had been vaccinated against influenza and 191 matched controls showed that recent inoculation with any brand of influenza vaccine was significantly associated with a false positive screening assay for HIV antibodies. Guidelines of both Johns Hopkins and the New York State Department of Health list influenza vaccination as a known cause of indeterminate results on Western blotting for HIV antibodies.

Given the escalating international awareness of various influenza strains, it is very important to remind patients and clinicians that influenza vaccination may cause cross-reactivity with HIV antibody assays."

/////////

On the other hand, here's a piece, specifically on homos (as Savage would say), that showed that even when homos had oral sex, (and as much as they wanted!!!), they still didn't come up "positive".

"Page-Shafer is a researcher at the Center for AIDS Prevention at the University of California, San Francisco. At the 2004 World AIDS Conference, she presented data from a study of 400 men whose only form of sexual behavior was receiving oral sex. Despite little condom use with multiple partners -- including partners known to be infected with HIV -- none of the men came down with HIV infection.

"We had zero infections over 1,493 person-years of exposure to oral receptive sex," Page-Shafer tells WebMD. "This doesn't mean there aren't factors that contribute to easier HIV transmission by oral sex. It does happen. But data confirm it is a pretty rare occurrence."

/////////////

The reason why there's no reason in hiv testing, can be learned by reading what hiv tests actually do, and do not do.

But you'd have to be interested be able to tolerate reading what 'hiv tests' actually test for.

Which you can do, or not do.

"Smells like racism, Savage"?

I smell a) a foreigner or b) someone from, I don't know, Wyoming? How anyone who has an even passing acquaintance with black American culture could not know about the rampant homophobia and down-low phenomenon is a mystery to me.

Poke your nose into just about any majority-black internet forum and you'll see these subjects discussed sooner or later. They are a huge preoccupation for many, many black Americans. Your ignorance of a particular phenomenon, BD, doesn't negate its existence. So you can put away your Anti-Racism Avenger cape.

Seeing heteros kissing used to make me cringe too. But you know, after seeing heteros kissing on nearly every TV show, every magazine, half the ads on TV and in print and even on billboards, not to mention seeing actual live heteros kissing in school and classroom hallways, park benches, restaurants, busses, bars, and pretty much anywhere people hang out for the last 45 years, I've sort of gotten used to the phenomena.

But even though it makes me cringe a little inside whenever I'm forced to see it (which probably happens dozens of times every day), I tolerate the spectacle that is hetero kissing. Why? Because I'm a tolerant kind of guy. I recognize that heteros exist and kissing is a normal part of hetero behavior.

The whole point of this exercise is that homos also have a right to exist. And kissing is also a normal part of homo behavior. And even though the sight of it might make you cringe a little, I absolutely expect you to accept it and tolerate it.

If you learn to tolerate things that are different, you might even find that your life is less stressful than if you spend your whole life trying to get people who are different than you to disappear from your existence.

why wouldn't it worry you more that someone who had a flu shot is told that they are, for the rest of their lives, 'hiv positive'?

It's a death sentence of drugs and social isolation.

(Versus the flu, which you can get over in a week, without a shot. Lots of ginger tea, lots of hot water.)

I don't get the inverted concern...

I mean, Christ, why not worry that these tests test for Flu and not for Aids?

Cute.

Sorry if I disagree with you on this.

It's because this sort of thing happens with white men as well, except they don't have a hip term for it, unless "screwing around" counts.

The "down low" has great media appeal. It's a riveting sex and betrayal story with a hip name that can be sold again and again. Of course, it doesn't happen with white people now, does it? Are we just smarter than black people? Haven't they heard of the HIV thing? Let me know, I'm from Montana or something.

I'm slow or something, because I thought hiv tests tested for hiv, not for the flu.

hey, what's with some lesbian on the d-l action? I'm hip. I'll go a few, and I'm generous in the giving department, my hot and horny d-l lesbian amours.

I mean, where's the lesbians on the D-L?

What, nobody loves cuddling anymore? I'll cuddle? I'll spoon! I'll dive, come on, I mean, if gay men are always on the d-l, getting flu - I mean 'hiv' tests, then where are the ladies?

Hey BD, you're crazy if you think that white men have sex with other men, when they're also in relationships with women.

i mean, come on. Really now. So silly - but it does remind me of this Cole Porter number...

Well, you can check out Craigslist and see this quite blatantly occurring. You can also peruse the various bareback websites...see if there's anybody you know there. You could also check out the bathhouses. But this phenomenon amongst white men fails to captivate us because it doesn't have a cool, hip name...like the ooh, yeah..."down low"...oh, baby! Uhhhh....huhhhh...uhhhhhhhhh.....aaaaahhhhhhh.

Maybe we could come up with a cool name for the white guys engaging in this behavior. Why should they not be stigmatized and shamed like black men?

Does make you wonder though, doesn't it? I mean, black guys going behind their women's backs to have sex with men...we must assume they're not using condoms with their male partners, right? Then, they get home, and have to do their duty with their woman, BUT now that they're probably all chock-full of AIDS, they don't want to "give that away" by putting on a condom for their woman. Seems to show an awareness of the HIV problem, but the black men don't seem at all concerned for their safety or their woman's. Strange. Maybe they just want to get it on, and that's all those black folk care about? Maybe Dan Savage can enlighten us. He's always full of answers to things.