Safe Sex Waning Amongst Gay Men in Some Communities

Recent news reports from many places across the United States and around the world indicate that in some quarters safe sex amongst gay men is waning.  In other words, many gay men are moving away from engaging in safe sex practices, practices that they followed closely in prior times and after awareness of AIDS become more widespread.

The most significant aspects of this trend are threefold:

- gay men have started to engage in riskier sexual practices

- some gay men have stopped using condoms

- a growing number of gay men are fueling their sexual activities with drugs like meth

The trend towards unsafe sex practices, not using condoms and the use of meth and other drugs is particularly strong amongst younger gay men.  These younger men did not live through the experiences of the 1980s and 1990s when men were dying from AIDS at a high rate.  In today’s world, AIDS is not necessarily a death sentence for someone suffering from HIV or AIDS.  In fact, on some level, HIV and AIDS is becoming considered a manageable chronic disease rather than a mortal one.

Because of this change in the treatment of HIV and AIDS today, because of the survival rate associated with AIDS patients, these young men do not have the same fear of AIDS that surrounded their older compatriots.  They are far more willing to engage in risky activity, fueled by drugs and without the use of condoms.

Los Angeles health officials have particularly studied this trend.  For example, syphilis cases have risen dramatically in the city, indicating that people are not engaging in safe sex practices, are not using condoms.  Remarkably, and alarmingly, half of all of the gay men who were diagnosed with syphilis in Los Angeles also ended up being HIV positive. 

While younger gay men are heading the pack in engaging in unsafe sex practices, in not using condoms and in fueling their sexual encounters with drugs like meth, older gay men are also jumping into this unsafe swamp.  Indeed, as far as the Los Angeles study is concerned, the average age of gay men contracting syphilis is 36.

What has been studied and documented in Los Angeles is also beginning to be seen across the United States.  This is due in part to so-called circuit parties where participants frequently engage in unprotected sex while high on meth and other types of drugs.

Health agencies in different locations are making a concerted effort to reeducate the gay population about risky sexual behavior, the importance of using condoms and so forth.  Indeed, a great deal more money is being place in educational programs as well as providing condoms free of charge to the gay community an venues at which the congregate, including bars and nightclubs, bathhouses and sex clubs (both bathhouses and sex clubs making a resurgence in recent years).  The hope is that through education and a wider availability of easily accessible condoms, the tide towards a lack of interest and involvement in safe sex practices will turn.