Washington Blade - December 10, 2004
Ryan Lee

Set for release in February 2005, Boykin's book charges that African Americans have long avoided having honest conversations about issues like fidelity, the existence of black gay men and lesbians, and taking individual responsibility for protection against HIV.

Instead of addressing those issues, black adults - aided by what Boykin describes as a sensationalistic media - have recently focused their ire over rising HIV rates among black women on black men on "the down low," widely perceived as men with wives or girlfriends who secretly have sex with men.

A deluge of media coverage over the last two years cites men on the down low as the primary cause of disproportionate HIV rates among African-American women. That presumption has become prevalent despite the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention's insistence that data on the down low is hard to come by and a clear definition of the "DL" is non-existent.

"It's very frustrating when you read the newspapers day after day and you see the same old bullshit being printed about the down low, and it's all wrong - everything you think you know about the down low is wrong," says Boykin, board president of the National Black Justice Coalition, a group that advocates legalizing marriage between same-sex couples.

Boykin also takes aim at J.L. King, author of the 2004 book "On the Down Low," which warns black women that men on the down low are an ominous threat. Boykin places much of the blame for misconceptions about black men who have sex with men on the widespread media attention King receives as a so-called "expert," due to his years of personal experience leading a sexual double life.

King's book took flight with his high-profile appearances on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" and the talk show of U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-Ill.), as well as interviews with New York Times Magazine, Sister 2 Sister magazine and many other outlets.

A friend first introduced King to Boykin in 2001 as an "ill-informed black gay man masquerading on the down low," Boykin says.

Boykin charges in "Beyond the Down Low" that King's book is a ball of contradictions and that King bounces from interview to interview spreading misinformation about HIV and black sexuality for his own financial gain.

"One person's life story, which really isn't that credible to begin with, is fueling this entire media story," Boykin says. "He has always been motivated by money - that's the guy's whole objective."

But King says in an interview this week that Boykin's criticism is fueled by envy and that Boykin's own aspirations are simply to capitalize on King's literary success.

"I just hope he doesn't become successful off my name - don't tear me down to sell a book," says King, who also insists that he respects Boykin as a colleague.

In his book, Boykin paints King as a modern-day Uncle Tom, willing to exploit his own people by feeding into stereotypes of black men as irresponsible sexual predators in order to acquire fame and wealth for himself.

"A few opportunistic blacks are all too willing to tell white America exactly what they want to hear about us, and ... white America is all too willing to publicize and promote controversial black figures who are severely ill-informed," Boykin writes.

King does not dispute a passage in Boykin's book in which King originally attempted to court Boykin to ghostwrite "On the Down Low," only to be rebuffed. When Boykin refused, King tried to "sweeten the pot [by telling Boykin], 'We're going to make a lot of money off this,'" Boykin writes.

But King dismisses Boykin's charges that he is motivated solely by personal gain, saying that his main motivator is to stop the spread of HIV.

"Why is it that in the African-American community, when one is successful we don't celebrate that success instead of tearing him down?" King says. "We need to really come together as one voice and make some positive things happen instead of Keith trying to talk about me."

King notes that he has contributed $100,000 to help establish the Lillie Mae King Foundation to deliver HIV-prevention messages to under-targeted gay and bisexual men.

Boykin's book criticizes the media's unquestioning acceptance of King, who originally landed on the national scene in a New York Times Magazine profile as the operator of a "DL" Internet porn site, as an expert on HIV and black sexuality.

Kelly McBride, an ethics faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a Florida-based journalism school and think tank, also questions how media outlets automatically accept at face value the word of King, who has no experience in health care or sociology.

"We don't vet our experts very well, and as journalists we need to do a better job of doing that," McBride says. "If his only credentials are he used to run a Web site and he used to participate in the down low life, that doesn't make him a sociologist, and we should not make him a sociologist."

King says he never purported to be an expert. The biographies that appear in his book and on his Web site refer to him as "an HIV/STD prevention activist, educator."

Mary Mitchell, a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and an African-American woman who regularly writes about the down low and other black issues, said if the information King is spreading about the down low is untrue, then black gay men, not the media, are responsible for challenging what he's saying.

"J.L. King is well known [in gay circles] and if he was a fraud, they should have come out and told their story," Mitchell says. "I just don't think we understand the black gay community, and so King can say whatever he wants to say because it's such a closed community. That's how he got away with it."

An appearance on Oprah Winfrey's talk show earlier this year gave King widespread exposure.

Some black gay men protested King's message, but they didn't receive the same media attention, says Boykin, who hopes his book will spark new discussions among blacks and the media about the complex cultural factors surrounding the down low.

McBride at the Poynter Institute doubts Boykin's book will cause the same stir that King managed to build.

"It's never going to be as big as that [New York Times Magazine] piece, and that is one of the problems of reporting - you can never duplicate what you've already done," she says.

But Boykin, who contends that there are limited examples of thorough, in-depth reporting on the down low and positive media representations of black men who have sex with men, says he hopes the media will correct the inaccuracy of their earlier stories.

The first eight chapters of Boykin's book challenge popular conceptions about what being on the down low means. Boykin uses pop culture and current events to show that men and women of all ethnicities and sexual orientations - from former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey to the female R&B trio TLC - partake regularly in sexual relations outside of committed relationships.

But when McGreevey admitted to having an extramarital affair with another man in August, the media did not report that his behavior was indicative of a new group of white men on the down low who are possibly exposing their wives and girlfriends to HIV, Boykin notes.

"When black men become involved in fake relationships, we process the issue by ascribing negative characteristics to an entire group of people, and we tend to think in global terms concerning the breakdown of the black family and other such nonsense," Boykin writes.

"When white men become involved in fake relationships, we simply call it what it is and move on," he continues. "We don't make sweeping generalizations about all white men, and we don't try to study the pathology of their behavior."

The media's handling of black male sexuality is reflective of society's historic fascination with the issue, McBride at the Poynter Institute says.

"If you look at the media's coverage of sex and sexuality, we are much more suspicious of black male sexuality than we are of anybody else's sexuality," she says. "The media haven't caused that, they haven't corrected it and sometimes they perpetuate it."

But it is understandable why the media and black women generally accept the notion that men on the down low are spreading HIV to their unsuspecting female partners because, Mitchell at the Sun-Times says, "there has to be an explanation as to why HIV rates have skyrocketed among African-American females."

"As long as those stats are there, then you can't say [it's not the down low] because it's happening somehow, and someone needs to explain why," she adds. "And you have this guy [King] who came out and alleges there's a down low community going on - now that's juicy stuff."

In addition, black women who have been infected with HIV by men increasingly are speaking out. Patricia Nalls, the founder of the Women's Collective, an organization in Washington created to help HIV-positive women, has discussed her plight in the Washington Post as well as in Essence magazine, a publication geared toward black women.

Boykin says that in addition to black women needing to take responsibility for protecting themselves from HIV, the perception that they account for the majority of new HIV/AIDS cases is also misguided. The figure widely quoted by King, that black women represent 68 percent of all new HIV diagnoses, is especially egregious, according to Boykin.

U.S. Rep. Jesse L. Jackson and his wife, Sandi, spoke with King (center) about his book, on the congressman's talk show. (AP photo by Amy Sussman)

King pictured with Maryland resident Jamie Foster Brown (left), publisher and editor of Sister 2 Sister magazine.

"Black women are grossly over-represented among female AIDS cases, but they have never been even close to a majority of all AIDS cases," Boykin writes. "Nor are black women the majority of black AIDS cases."

According to CDC data released last week, the number of HIV/AIDS cases in 33 metropolitan areas with confidential HIV reporting "remained relatively stable" over the last four years, with the rate of HIV/AIDS cases increasing 3 percent among men and decreasing 3.7 percent among women.

In 2000, men accounted for 71.3 percent of all HIV/AIDS diagnoses, a figure that increased to 72.6 percent in 2003, according to the CDC.

The number of blacks diagnosed with HIV/AIDS decreased slightly from 2000 to 2003. But black men and women continue to have drastically disproportionate rates of the disease, with black women accounting for 69 percent of female HIV diagnoses during that time period.

The HIV/AIDS rate for black men is 103.8 per 100,000 people, compared to a 40.3 per 100,000 for Hispanics and 12.8 per 100,000 rate for whites. The rate for black women is 50.2 per 100,000 people, compared to 12.4 per 100,000 for Hispanic women and a 2.0 per 100,000 rate for white women.

In contrast to the popular assumption that men on the down low are the main cause of rising HIV rates among black women, the CDC lists the following HIV risk factors for black U.S. residents: poverty, denial, high-risk behavior, substance abuse and higher rates of other sexually transmitted diseases, which facilitate the spread of HIV.

King says he is unsure whether the claims he makes in his book about the down low's impact on HIV rates will survive scrutiny, but he adds that he is not interested in debating Boykin about "his opinion."

"I don't know if they will stand up because the numbers have changed so much in three years," says King, who added that his second book, "Coming up from the Down Low," is scheduled for an April 2005 release.

"It will more or less try to heal the turmoil among African-American women," he says. "Since so many women listen to me, I want to give them peace."

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