The Cost of Silence
Let’s be clear. The silence described by the NY Times in HIV Rises Among Young Gay Men is the result of explicit policies of the CDC, which have hamstrung prevention efforts by rewarding poorly vetted cookie-cutter approaches and stifling innovation and efforts at community building.
In June 1992, the waning days of Bush 41, the CDC created Program Review Panels “to consider the appropriateness of messages” used by recipients of CDC funding to communicate with various groups. [Source.] The Review Panels were to take their guidance from federal law which explicitly prohibited education “designed to promote or encourage directly, homosexual… sexual activity.” (It also prohibited messages designed to promote heterosexual activity but there are already plenty of supportive messages about heterosexuality throughout the culture.) The universal response of anyone who has prepared prevention materials in light of these Program Review Panels is that the Panels have a chilling effect on prevention work. Any comparison of the gay prevention efforts of the 80s to those of the 90s clearly illustrates the move away from condom distribution and edgy, graphic messages designed to catch the attention of a younger gay population.
Systems produce the results they were designed to produce. It should be no surprise that dramatic increases in HIV infections have resulted from the prohibition of messages positively portraying gay sexual activity.
The Times is right–there is a silence. But the silence has been imposed by the government while it is the gay community that is increasingly paying the cost.
