'Porno Pete' tries to besmirch World AIDS Day

Yesterday was World AIDS Day and while there were much necessary information put out there, there was also some unnecessary nonsense.

Our friend, Porno Pete LaBarbera is exploiting the day to whine about the supposed "high risk" of being gay.  It's really nothing we haven't heard before. We all know it's his obsession with gay sex.

And following that obsession, LaBarbera is into demonizing gays and throwing out his idea of what exactly gay sex is rather than solving the problem. Let's break down the fallacies of his points:

1. LaBarbera:  

Recognize HIV/AIDS as a predominantly “gay disease” in the USA (as some LGBT leaders like Matt Foreman have admitted)

Problem - LaBarbera distorts Foreman's call for gays to do more to stop AIDS. What Foreman said is no different than what Phil Wilson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute, wrote in this brilliant piece, part of which reads:

There are many reasons why we are so disproportionately impacted by AIDS. But, chief among them is that we've not taken ownership of the AIDS epidemic and responsibility for ending it. Many of us continue to believe that AIDS is someone else's problem. Even as our brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, get infected with HIV, develop AIDS and die.

I get the sister from the Black Philanthropy conference's concern about stigma and image. But we can't be more concerned about 'our image' than we are about our lives. Having a raging epidemic run through our community unchecked is actually the last thing we need.

Wanting something to not be so is not the same as it really not being so or doing something about it. AIDS in America today is a Black disease ... unless we do something about it.

Or when Julian Bond said the following:

It is time for the African-American community "to face the fact that AIDS has become a black disease" and find ways to defeat it, the chairman of the NAACP said at the international AIDS summit.

This speaks to another point. LaBarbera cites a CDC fact sheet on AIDS which shows that new infections are higher among young black men than they are among younger white men.


2. LaBarbera:

Stop pretending that all lifestyles are at equal risk for AIDS – because HIV is NOT behaviorally- or lifestyle-neutral. Instead, teach students in school health classes the DOCUMENTED REALITY that certain behaviors, especially male homosexual sex, are especially high-risk for contracting HIV (and other STDs like hepatitis).

 LaBarbera conveniently omits the reasons why people are at risk. The CDC flyer which LaBarbera cites above also says that lack of proper information and social discrimination leads some MSMs (men having sex with men) into high risk behaviors. LaBarbera seems to be saying "stop gays from having sex" when the problem is a bit more complex than that.


3.  LaBarbera:

In the wider culture and especially among youth, re-stigmatize anal sex and other (predominantly) homosexual acts (e.g., “rimming,” homosexual slang for oral-anus perversion). If other behaviors were as dangerous as homosexual male sex, there would be well-funded PR campaigns and government mobilizations to curtail them. Political Correctness is no excuse for failing to educate against bad and harmful behaviors.

 Here, LaBarbera unwittingly demonstrates how social discrimination can cause problems. Defining sex acts as "homosexual sex acts" gives an inaccurate impression and it is a stigmatizing thing to do. Generally the same sex acts are done by both heterosexuals and gays.

4. LaBarbera:

Using whatever means and laws necessary, shut down all “gay” bathhouses (e.g., Steamworks in Chicago, and Flex Baths in Cleveland). These anonymous sex clubs facilitate unnatural and deviant, disease-spreading sex. Moreover, because they are used by bisexual men and those on the “down low” (homosexuality-practicing men who do not identify as “gay”), bathhouses help spread AIDS to innocent women. For the record, AFTAH also supports citizen action against heterosexual swinger clubs as well as strip clubs and pornographic video stores, which promote promiscuity and undermine natural marriage.

LaBarbera seems to be obsessed with "bathhouses" as well as giving possible inaccurate information about these "bathhouses." Certainly if there is a problem, it needs to be explored. But that last sentence LaBarbera puts out reveals his anti-gay obsession: AFTAH also supports citizen action against heterosexual swinger clubs as well as strip clubs and pornographic video stores, which promote promiscuity and undermine natural marriage.

To my knowledge, I have never seen or read anything about LaBarbera "monitoring" strip clubs, pornographic video stores, or swinger clubs with the fervor in which he trolls around subcultural events where he thinks gays are having sex.

It's best not to get angry at LaBarbera. During World AIDS Day, we have seen the best in how people are combating this disease. With LaBarbera, we are now seeing the worst. We need to take his information as what NOT to do to combat the AIDS crisis.