Many Gay Men Feel Left Out At International AIDS Conference

TORONTO, CANADA - When AIDS first crept into the public consciousness in the early 1980s, the victims of the terrifying new disease were mostly gay men in North America and Europe. One after another they died, as partners and friends despaired of becoming infected themselves and wondered if the next of the innumerable funerals they attended would be their own.
But 25 years later, gay men have found themselves relegated to the periphery of the HIV-AIDS pandemic, which has expanded exponentially into every continent and to every possible segment of humanity.
The shift in focus from men who have sex with men (MSM), as they're now called, to women and children, and from western countries to Africa and other southern regions, was nowhere more apparent than at the weeklong International AIDS Conference, which wrapped up Friday.
Few of the sessions dealt with issues of importance to the MSM community, said a number of gay men at the conference - and that has left many of them resentful, angry or feeling left in the proverbial dust by those leading the public discourse about the disease.
"One thing I've heard people talk about is the lack of exposure at this conference on issues having to do with men who have sex with men," said Jerome Galea, who works in the global health program at the University of California at Los Angeles.
"I got an e-mail from someone that I always see at conferences, who works in the public health department in California, and didn't come to this one," said Galea, a homosexual who is not HIV-positive. "And that was the question he asked me: 'Have you see the MSM stuff. It seems like it's just fading away.'
"I think people aren't coming because they're not seeing that," he said of the lack of sessions dedicated to homosexual, bisexual and transgendered men.
Gabriel, a public health worker from Mexico who asked that his real name not be used, conceded he is angry that MSM-specific groups weren't among those that put together the Toronto conference, although gays and lesbians are involved in many advocacy organizations that attended the meeting under other banners.
"I'm not saying that women are not important," said Gabriel, who is gay. "But in Latin America, women have an HIV prevalence from one in 1,000 to 15 in 1,000. For gay men it's 90 in 1,000 to 250 in 1,000. So it's not comparable.
"There is a sense among many people that if you prioritize one group you are excluding another, but that's not true. There's only so much money for HIV treatment and prevention and you have to treat them equitably - not equally, but equitably."
And Gabriel pointed out that women primarily get infected by having sex with men. "And nobody's talking about that. You have to talk about those who are transmitting it, and that's men.
"What have you heard about men in this conference. I've heard about male circumcision - and that's it."
Franck DeRose, the Washington-based executive director of the global Condom Project, called it deplorable that there was no representation of the MSM community "inside the conference."
"I'm not resentful. I'm a little bit disappointed actually," he said. "Am I surprised there's not something on MSM? Yes I am. I would think that we would be a little bit more progressive."
While acknowledging that gay men were the most affected in the early days of the epidemic, conference co-chair Dr. Helene Gayle of Atlanta said that since then, HIV-AIDS has become much more diverse.
"And so this has to be a conference that represents the totality of the epidemic," she said. "That may mean or that may feel like some issues don't get the attention that they may have gotten in further days, but there continues to be strong support for inclusion of gay men and we'll continue to do that."
Benjamin Perkins, director of a gay men's wellness centre in Boston, said there's a danger that the International AIDS Conference, which will next take place in Mexico City in 2008, "lumps everybody into a group and denies the distinct differences that might exist."
"I think we're here," he said of gays. "I don't think we've ever left.
Still, he said that with so many people infected elsewhere around the globe, "it would be unjust not to pay attention to those parts of the world."
Galea of UCLA agreed, saying that since the target of HIV has shifted so much towards women worldwide, it makes sense that the conference would follow.
"When I look at where the epidemic is going, as a man who has sex with other men, I don't (feel) ... personally resentful," he said. "More and more women are getting infected.
"This has really helped me refocus on the face of HIV and AIDS right now. Frankly it's taken me outside of my box a little bit."
from The Canadian Press