Buddrow_Wilson

In my opinion, the promiscuity of gays and the resultant spread of AIDS in their community is largely a result of the social stigma of homosexuality which lead many to lead a "double-life"; driven to underground and/or anonymous locations to fulfill their desires. I imagine It would not have been easy or safe to really know your partners or even to engage in a serious emotional, monogamous relationship, if one also wanted to stay a functional member of society.

RevDahlia

I think you're right in some ways, but I'm a little more cynical about it. I think it's because, well, they're guys. And even if guys settle down eventually, most of them want to fuck... all.. the.. time. If you remove the possibility of a visible, stable, accepted long-term relationship from the picture, as institutional homophobia has done, you get a situation like what B-Wil describes.

As Dan Savage says, "Gay guys do what straight guys would do, if women let them."

I love and respect gay people and think homosexuality is a totally valid way of life. I also don't think that this observation applies to all gay men, or even most gay men... but a lot of guys are wolves, gay and straight, and they take what they can get. And they're visible.

That's why it pisses me off when I hear sanctimonious straight men getting down on queers for being promiscuous. It's like, man, you KNOW that if you could go to a glory hole in some het bar and have a girl suck you off with no strings attached, you would in a heartbeat.

(Lest I be accused of man-bashing, I don't think that wanting to fuck all the time is a bad thing at all... only when the desire manifests in irresponsibility and disrespect for one's partner.)

abe smith

Yeah. the Rev lady is correct; the data do seem to indicate that SOME gay MALES are markedly promiscuous; just as a fair per centage of nominally-hetero males are; and possibly as many hetero males would like very much to be... A guess; what do I know?
Agen, as at another recent thread, I call attention to the couple of weeks ago cover article of the Sunday NYT The 3rd or so of Aug, I think; about homosexual behaviour STRONGLY SELF- DENIED and refused the HOMOSEXUAL label, among black
males ("on the DownLow"). Those guys are heading rapidly for some very unpleasant futures & unpleasant early death; and/but they do not seem to CARE at all. I will not assert the obvious, well I will assert the obvious: that thinking with one's dick to the exclusion of other considerations may be siding with Natural Selection against personal (DNA) survival....
To be sure, ya don't have to be Queer to be/act stoopid(ly); but maybe it helps.
OTOH, such behaviour may be only an extreme form of "Carpe diem" for people who have read (correctly?) that acting "rationally" according to middle-class white standards perhaps HAS NO REWARDS to promise; and let's have fun now.

Gurdur

a) I'm not too sure. Dr Rick and Scigirl are by now the experts on this. Anal sex is an easier transmission route, especially in men, but I'm not too sure of what part it all played.

b) To a degree, yes.

The big problem was the "bathhouse" scene, both in the USA and in Australia. It formed a massive amplifier of the growing epidemic; but also multiple shared use of hypodermics by druggies formed a major amplifier.

BTW, there's a new study out which suggests the big amplifier in Africa originally was not promiscuous (hetero) sex as thought, but instead vaccination syringes used numerous times without intermediate sterilization.
Come to think of it, I am extremely lucky; having been yearly vaccinated in Africa (*), I must have missed the beginning HIV epidemic by only five years or less.
_________

(*) I once watched a nurse first hammer a needle flat with a brick (it had become badly bent through use), then sharpen it on the brick.
The yearly vaccinations gave me a needle phobia wihich is still fairly strong.

echidna

Not happy folks.

I was kinda indifferent to the first, but I was hoping for a "no" on the second. You see, from a "yes", I would be so old fashioned as to recommend less polygamy over more polygamy, not as a religious decree, but as a general rule, when it came to providing a stable home to raise children within.

Now, in order to deflect as many flames as possible, that doesn't mean that promiscuous gay couples are incapable of being good paretns, it means that I think it's less likely, just as I think more promiscuous straight couples are less likely to be better parents than monogamous ones.

Is this then an argument against gay adoption ? Or at least would it suggest that gay couples should statistically be less suitable as parents than straight couples ?

Chicken Girl

gays who are promiscuous aren't as likely to try to adopt as a committed, settled-down gay couple who are looking to start a family.

Since both gays and straights can be promiscuous, and certainly not all (or even most) gays are promiscuous, even if a higher percentage of gays than straights are promiscuous, that doesn't mean that the ones who are looking to adopt aren't as capable of providing a stable home...

Of course, that's not going to stop fundies from using it as an argument anyway...

RevDahlia

People who behave irresponsibly with respect to themselves and others should not adopt children. No matter what team they play for.

Fortunately, homosexuals who do behave irresponsibly are in the minority, and the actions of a few should not condemn the character and suitability of the many.

Saying that gays shouldn't be allowed to adopt because some are promiscuous and irresponsible is kind of like saying that my fiance and I shouldn't be allowed to adopt because some women are prostitutes and some men are drug addicts.

Can't we just apply the same standards to everyone who's going through the adoption process, and leave it at that?

echidna

But RD, the speed at which AIDS spread through the male gay community was not just marginally quicker than through the straight community. It was stunningly quicker. At face value, this could not be the case if only a "few" or even "some" were promiscuous. It could only have occurred if a substantial proportion, if not most, of the gay community was promiscuous at the time.

scigirl

You're forgetting about needle sharing, echidna.

Anyway, like I ask dk every 5 seconds, what the fuck does this have to do with gay marriage? Are promiscuous men with AIDS trying to adopt children?

scigirl

echidna

I don�t follow, my understanding was that needle-sharing had a very high probability of transmission & needle sharing was extremely common amongst drug addicts, hence the rapid transmission through the intravenous drug community as well. Nothing to do with marriage per se. More to do with adoption, that all things being equal, it would indicate that gay men (in general !) are substantially more promiscuous than straight couples, promiscuity being a characteristic I think not so beneficial to child rearing (call me a prude).