Why did aids affect the gay community so much

The AIDS epidemic’s impacts on this generation of gay men, now agedare still being explored. Learn why gay men, bisexual men, and other men who have sex with men are more likely than average to contract HIV. Find strategies for reducing the risk.

One unfortunate byproduct of the stigma of the HIV scare is the misguided and discriminatory treatment of individuals with HIV in the criminal justice system. It appears that these laws that were adopted in response to the HIV scare do not hold up under close scrutiny.

Though numbers were markedly increasing, AIDS was not acknowledged by the Reagan administration until As the number of infections climbed and the fear of HIV infection spread, law and public policy measures were implemented with the goal of protecting the population from this threat.

Awareness of how it is spread and can be prevented as well as treatment have drastically lowered the number of individuals diagnosed with HIV and individuals who die of AIDS annually. Such rampant levels of anti-LGBTQ+ bias is particularly worrisome when so few PLWH in the U.S.

seem to have the virus under control. By the mid to late s, bathhouses in large cities had been closed and gay men were prohibited from donating blood. For instance, we are aware that individuals with HIV who are receiving treatment for the virus and are undetectable do not carry high enough of a viral load of HIV to transmit it to others.

Beyond the possible imprisonment or fines faced in sentencing, collateral consequences, such as lack of voting rights and hardship in acquiring housing, employment, and a variety of benefits, follow an individual well beyond the time of conviction.

However, while the number of new HIV diagnoses per year is considerably down since its peak of 3. According to the Center for Disease Control, an estimated 1.

HIV Is a Story

Due to its early prevalence in the gay community, gay men bore much of the brunt of abuse and stigmatization. Be Social With Us. Follow Us On:. HIV rates in gay men are higher than in all other groups. For gay and bisexual youth who are just beginning to explore their sexuality, homophobia and other forms of anti-LGBTQ+ bias help explain why so many young people in our community are unaware of their HIV status.

In alone, there were just under 38, individuals newly diagnosed with HIV. Of those individuals: approximately two-thirds were gay, bisexual, or men who have sex with men, nearly seventy percent Black or Hispanic, over half were under the age of 35, and over half lived in the South.

Additionally, prosecutors have brought felony wanton endangerment charges against individuals who have failed to disclose their HIV diagnosis to sexual partners. When one considers these potential consequences and what we know about HIV now, one may very likely question whether these laws do anything more than discriminate.

Moore, Ph. Name First Last. In the USA, byone gay man in nine had been diagnosed with AIDS, one in fifteen had died, and 10% of the 1, men aged who identified as gay had died. When one considers that one disease, which has long been stigmatized and attributed to the queer community, is treated more harshly than similar diseases in spite of the fact that advances in medicine have made individuals who are undergoing treatment physically unable to spread the disease, one could easily draw the conclusion that these laws are byproducts of discrimination and should be reconsidered.

Kentucky law makes it a criminal offense a class D felony for individuals with an HIV diagnosis to donate organs, skin, or tissue. At the time, little was known about this novel disease. Email Required. In some ways, one could categorize this as the criminalization of HIV.

While sex work is already banned by law, an individual diagnosed with HIV who engages in sex work is in jeopardy of additional, enhanced felony criminal charges. Learn about the biological, sexual, social, and psychological causes of this disparity.

HIV activism has been integral to politicizing gay and bisexual men because the homophobia and HIV-related stigma they have experience at individual, community, and institutional levels are interlocked. While the human immunodeficiency virus HIV does not discriminate in its transmission when an individual comes into contact with it, data suggest that HIV has a disproportionate impact on the queer community, especially young, queer people of color in the South.

Additionally, one may question why HIV is treated with such a harsh penalty in the aforementioned scenarios when there are not similar penalties for a variety of similarly dangerous communicable diseases that are known to be spread through sexual contact or the sharing of certain bodily fluids.

Individuals familiar with the criminal justice system know that felony convictions have serious impacts on an individual.