Bay Windows - August 6, 2008
Jeff Epperly, contributing writer

"Log Cabin Republicans Call for a National Strategy to Combat Growing U.S. HIV Epidemic" declared the press release from a group that supports the party that has done nearly everything in its power to block effective national HIV legislation since the epidemic began.

The press release continued: "It is inexcusable for the U.S. not to have a national plan to address this ongoing crisis,' said Log Cabin Republicans President Patrick Sammon. 'The U.S. won't give PEPFAR money to any country without a National Strategy for combating HIV/AIDS, yet we don't have a plan in our country. That's not right.'

"The revised CDC estimates, which were officially released on August 2nd in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), show approximately 56,000 new cases of HIV each year. That is a 40% increase over the previous estimate of 40,000 new cases per year. Based on new surveillance data, the CDC also says that for the past 15 years the annual number of new cases is actually 25%-50% higher than previously thought."

"These new numbers make it clear that our nation's efforts to control the spread of HIV in the U.S. have failed," said Log Cabin's Healthcare Policy Adviser Dr. David Reznik in the LCR release. "Too many men and women in their twenties are coming to my clinic with advanced HIV disease. In many ways, it seems as if it is 1988 all over again," added Reznik.

All that is well and good, and I don't want to completely dismiss an effort by LCR that makes sense -- for once. However, the great engine fueling the epidemic in this country is drug abuse -- both intravenous drug users and their sexual partners, and non-IV recreational drug and alcohol users whose partying excesses lead them to make unfortunate decisions that put themselves and their sex partners in danger.

Talk to any gay man who has been in the grip of methamphetamine and its endless nights of "party and play" orgies during which not a thought is given to STDs, and then talk with some of them who have stopped abusing meth, and the turnabout is usually remarkable. At the very least they often begin to serosort their sex partners, in addition to taking steps to lessen exposure to other STDs for themselves and their would-be sex partners.

If we could get even a majority of HIV-positive drug and/or alcohol abusers into medically sound drug treatment programs -- in addition to HIV-negative drug and alcohol abusers who might otherwise take mentally-hazy health risks -- we could make real difference in one of the most intransigent areas of the epidemic.

The LCR press release doesn't mention drug policy, and with good reason. While drug control policy under the Democrats was far from perfect, under the Republicans it's been disastrous.

Someone at LCR ought to speak with someone from one of the countless drug treatment programs at the state and local level that are crying out for funding in spite of the LCR's long history of supporting Bush's billions in tax cuts. Under the wise stewardship of the Republicans, the economy and the federal budget are both a mess.

At least under a Democratic administration drug treatment programs were not underfunded. Not perfect, by any means, but at least we didn't have the situation we have now where treatment beds are not only in short supply, entire programs are closing or in danger of closing (in addition to HIV prevention programs).

Let's have a press release from LCR that talks about these issues, instead of an empty one that calls for solutions to problems their own party has spent the last 20 years exacerbating. I'm not holding my breath, however. On its web site under the 2008 Elections tab, the McCain apologists at LCR note without hint of irony:

"While we respect those who believe that only traditional 'scorecard' LGBT issues such as hate crimes and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) should matter to gay people, we disagree. The vast majority of LGBT Americans are not one-issue voters. Like all Americans, gays and lesbians have wide-ranging concerns -- from foreign policy to the environment to soaring gas prices to the size of the federal government and more."

One suspects that if there are members of the organized LGBT community who list "foreign policy ... the environment ... soaring gas prices [and] the size of the federal government" as their chief concerns, the last people they're going to trust will be the GOP and a gay organization that has its collective heads up their asses on "scorecard LGBT issues."

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Jeff Epperly is the former editor of Bay Windows. He can be reached at jepperly@laquidas.com

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