Washington Blade - July 12, 2002
Chris Crain

Two big themes seem to have emerged in the president's AIDS policies: additional funds for drug treatments abroad, and greater emphasis on abstinence-based prevention efforts at home. Both were spotlighted recently.

Tommy Thompson, Bush's health secretary, was jeered as he tried to tell delegates to the International AIDS Conference in Barcelona this week about the U.S. commitment of some $500 million to a new Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis & Malaria. The reception was quieter, but also cool, to Thompson's appointment last week of abstinence advocate Julie Gerberding to head up the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.

The activists in Barcelona used old-school ACT UP techniques to shout down Thompson and make their point that the United States has not earmarked enough money for the Global Fund, much of which will be distributed for the purchase of drugs that prevent the transmission of HIV from mothers to infants.

This is an issue that has something for everyone. Infection rates in Africa and Asia are indeed out of control, threatening economies, regional stability and our own national security, and the infection of "innocent" children is an issue that moistens the eyes of even Jesse Helms. To top things off, most of the taxpayer money at issue will eventually reside in the coffers of giant pharmaceutical companies, many of which are among the largest campaign contributors to Bush and the GOP.

With all those factors favoring more funding, is this really where the activists should worry the most? Especially in Africa and Asia, homosexuality is considered not only a taboo, but a Western taboo that local officials swear doesn't even exist among the populace. As a result, virtually zero effort and attention is focused on HIV prevention relevant to men who have sex with men in those parts of the world.

For whatever reason -- probably the absence of a giant corporate villain dressed up in Uncle Sam clothing -- most AIDS activists here and abroad can no longer work themselves into a lather about AIDS policies that ignore gay men, especially where we aren't among the largest percentage of those infected with the virus.

BACK HERE AT home, where gay men and MSMs (men who have sex with men but who choose not to identify as "gay") remain the population group that is by far the most devastated by HIV and AIDS, but the Bush administration has no answers, or even apparent interest, in our plight.

The most disturbing information to come out of the conference, at least for the future of AIDS in America, is the percentage of young gay men who are infected with HIV and don't know it. Most young gay men, of whatever ethnic background, consider AIDS a relic of the 1980s, like that lacy glove without fingertips that Madonna used to wear. To the extent AIDS is still around, many young gays seem to think, the disease afflicts older gay men, but it isn't something for the younger set to worry about when they're having fun in the sack.

That other relic from the '80s, the ACT UP slogan "Silence = Death," is still an accurate equation -- though perhaps "Silence = Incurable Disease" is a bit more accurate in light of drug advancements -- and ignorance about the disease is its ideal breeding ground.

To date, the Bush administration's only contribution to the fight against AIDS at home has been to steer prevention funds to programs that emphasize abstinence over safer sex and condom use. There's some real benefit to abstinence programs, at least those that don't insist upon monogamy until marriage, but the new research suggests much more must be done.

In this climate, the CDC appointment of Gerberding, who has learned the bureaucrat's mime act required to get money from a conservative Congress, isn't likely to result in new initiatives aimed at aggressively preventing new infections among gay men and MSMs.

THAT TASK WILL probably fall to Scott Evertz, the gay man tapped by Tommy Thompson to be the Bush administration's AIDS czar. So far, Evertz has been largely invisible on the policy front, laying low and pitching on behalf of the president before selective audiences. It's time for Evertz to come out all over again, this time with some of his own ideas on how to reach gay men, especially young gay men, with the information that can help save their health, and perhaps their lives.

At the time of his appointment, Evertz said he took what is certainly a thankless job as a favor to Thompson, who is a longtime friend. It's time for Evertz to prove that he'll answer to an even higher calling, like protecting his own people from an epidemic that has already taken so many thousands of us.

He should actually find a receptive audience in the Oval Office. After all, our affable president and vice president have said repeatedly -- and to most of us, convincingly -- that they respect gays as individuals, even if they do not embrace all aspects of our civil rights agenda. But AIDS is not an issue we picked out to further our cause. It is an incurable, often deadly, disease that for whatever reason picked us out, to horrifying results.

It is a matter of public health, not gay liberation, that AIDS prevention policies be targeted to our population. Abstinence-only is not enough. We cannot get married, partly because this president -- and most other politicians from both parties -- opposes acknowledging our God-given civil liberty to do so. So arguing that we should remain abstinent until our happy wedding night is not just impractical, it's criminal.

It's time to speak up, Scott Evertz. And if he can't or won't make our case to Tommy Thompson and George W. Bush, who will?

Chris Crain is executive editor of the Washington Blade and can be reached at ccrain@washblade.com.

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