Washington Blade - November 30, 2007
Joey DiGuglielmo

Robert Brandon Sandor, who's 48 and has been HIV-positive since 1983, founded poz4poz.com in frustration a decade ago because he felt gay men with HIV were social outcasts, both in society in general and even in the gay community where, in the days before anti-retroviral drugs, they were shunned.

"There was nothing around then," Sandor says. "There was a sense of total banishment. Everyone wanted us on an island. Society couldn't accept us on any level."

After several years of what he calls successful sex parties in the Big Apple for gay, HIV-positive men, it started to dawn on Sandor that the same strategy could work for gay men who are negative. This fall he started a spin-off site, HIV-UB2. It's linked to poz4poz.com. The group's first gathering is scheduled for Dec. 7 in New York.

Serosorting entered the gay lexicon in early 2006 when the San Francisco Department of Public Health officials and researchers attributed a decrease in new HIV infections and a simultaneous increase in other sexually transmitted diseases to the phenomenon. Gay men in the Bay Area were choosing partners of the same serostatus as themselves for sex, i.e. HIV-positive men were only having sex with other positive men just as HIV-negative men sought partners who were also negative.

Researchers said after 25-odd years of safer sex, gay men were experiencing "condom fatigue."

Serosorting has always been controversial. The Centers for Disease Control said its effectiveness at preventing HIV infection among men who have sex with men hasn't been "established" and that having unprotected anal sex, especially with casual partners, is risky because some men do not know or disclose their status.

Others may have been recently infected, could test negative, but still pass on the virus unaware that they'd been infected. That happened last month on the set of a gay porn shoot in Great Britain.

Sandor, though, says the risks have been exaggerated by a bevy of special interest groups and that serosorting doesn't have to be condom-less. He makes condoms available at his events and lets attendees decide if they want to use them.

"It's very simple," Sandor says. "If you're HIV-negative and you have sex with another HIV-negative man, with or without a condom, you will stay HIV-negative. I guarantee it. If you are HIV-positive and you only have sex with other positive men, you will not infect any HIV-negative men. And unsafe sex between two positive men won't get anyone new infected with HIV."

Although Sandor doesn't take credit for inventing serosorting, he believes his work is revolutionary.

"I'm stopping the spread of HIV on a global scale," he says.

Though Sandor's efforts have been mostly confined to New York so far, he hopes to take the concept nationwide. He's critical of agencies that warn against serosorting.

"They're against it because it wasn't their idea," he says. "No HIV agency will do what I'm doing - get this message out to the public ... they're stupid, negligent and should be shut down."

He admits men have to be honest about their status for his concept to work - he doesn't plan to test at the door of his negative parties. Sandor also stresses that each man's health is ultimately his own responsibility.

That's why some, such as Dan Kaufman, a gay man from Arlington, Va., who founded I Am Your Neighbor, a gay advocacy group, take issue with Sandor's approach.

"Some people slip up. Some people don't know their status. And some people are vindictive, angry or just plain psychopathic," Kaufman says. "Unless you've got a screen for all of those people, you can't in good conscience say that everyone who belongs to your group is HIV-negative and that's what I have a problem with. Those who join the group and assume everyone else is HIV-negative because they belong, too, easily set themselves up for disappointment or, worse, infection."

Sandor says Kaufman has no confidence or trust in HIV-negative men and he finds that lack of faith insulting.

"If I could do this for positive men, why not for negative? ... Think about it - what personally would I have to gain from offering a negative group since I'm positive and won't take part in it myself? I'm doing this for other guys. One by one we can stop AIDS."

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