Miami Herald - Sunday, June 10, 2001
Johnny Diaz

The report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, conducted in six U.S. cities, including Miami -- issued two decades after the world's first public report of the AIDS epidemic -- found a sobering resurgence of HIV infections among young gay and bisexual men between ages 23-29, especially among blacks.

In South Florida, young gays were not surprised by the numbers -- that one in 25 became infected with HIV each year in the late 1990s.

That's the same infection rate as in the mid-1980s before AIDS prevention methods and research began in earnest. When asked, local gay men between 23 and 29 said complacency over HIV and AIDS has been commonplace. Many see their friends ignoring the risks, and don't subscribe to the it-could-happen-to-me theory.

They don't see AIDS as front-page news anymore, but they are barraged with HIV-drug ads in magazines that feature buff people who have the virus while living life fully and coping well.

"A lot of young people now think `Oh, all these drugs can help me live longer, there is hope for a cure' so they have let their guard down a bit," said Miguel Fernandez, a 26-year-old gay Hialeah man who frequents South Beach clubs on the weekend and practices safe sex but hears of lax attitudes on condom use among others in his age group.

"They are aware of HIV and the consequences but there is a carefree attitude toward sex because it's a way of fitting in with the gay crowd: `Everybody is doing it so I have to do it too.' "

Health-crisis warnings and AIDS statistics have fallen on deaf ears as a growing numbness pervades this younger generation, who were schoolchildren when the epidemic first broke out two decades ago, health educators say.

It's that attitude health educators have found challenging as they try to counter it through support groups for young gays, safe sex and behavioral workshops and condom distributions at nightclubs and gyms.

Health officials say they must renew such messages because young gay men have not seen many friends die of AIDS and may not take prevention as seriously as their older counterparts.

An AIDS conference held at a Fort Lauderdale hotel in January was aimed at exchanging strategies that work in reaching this demographic, particularly among blacks. Homosexuality and AIDS remain taboo subjects in churches and homes in the black community.

That cultural barrier traps many young gay and bisexual blacks in silence and denial, often sending them to parks and public restrooms for unsafe sex, health officials say.

In the CDC study, the infection rate among black men who have sex with other men was almost 15 percent, nearly one in seven for gay and bisexual men. That is four times the rate for Hispanics and six times the rate among non-Hispanics.

"There is a false sense of security. They are in chronic denial," said Eston Dunn, health educator for the Gay and Lesbian Community Center in Fort Lauderdale where he works with young gays from all backgrounds. "They try to keep their affairs on the down low and they live in shame because the church does not address it."

Young gays say they also see less media coverage about AIDS infections. It's become a nonissue, absent from everyday conversation, even story lines in movies and television shows. If there is a character with AIDS, he or she is more likely to be peripheral to the plot. Or other characters, as in the cable show, Queer As Folk, treat sex as a sport, something fun and to do often with various partners in bathhouses -- even under the influence of drugs.

"Monogamy has become this sort of obsolete notion no one cares for, and when they do have sex they are careless because AIDS has become out-of-sight, out-of-mind," said Eugene Carral, a 21-year-old Miami Springs gay man. Although he says he practices safe sex, he hears of friends and other gay guys his age who "have sex on a whim."

The topic of safe sex and AIDS awareness is absent from conversations at nightly outings.

Said Carral, "People stop thinking about AIDs. It's not even on the back burner of people's minds."

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