

“Everything from child sexual abuse, to being bullied in school, to other ways you could define homo-negativity, the ways dominant culture is negative to homosexuality and is played out by bullies, has a relationship to adult behaviours that lead to HIV risk.”
African American gay men have even higher HIV rates. Auerbach said that had a lot to do with their social position, driven in part by the homophobic black church culture, and also their low visibility in so-called gay refuge destinations like San Francisco’s Castro district.
“[Same-sex] marriage is not necessarily protective,” she said. “Most transfers continue to happen between main partners, not the other partnerships. All people tend to use condoms with their non-main partnerships.”
Auerbach and the SFAF are now facing the challenge of whether it is possible to tell gay men to have fewer sexual partners.
“We’re more likely to say ‘use condoms correctly and consistently’ than we are to say ‘don’t have multiple sex partners’. We don’t take an abstinence-only point of view, but we do point out there are epidemiologic arguments to be made that it would make more sense to reduce one’s sex partners.”
Gay communities are still important, Auerbach said, but gay men’s sexuality is increasingly only one part of their lives, making the traditional strength of gay communities in combating HIV more complex.
