Is HIV Gift-Giving Ever Acceptable?
I don't kow if you've ever been in the Bareback chatroom on Gay.com or not. But I have. And let's
just say that that chatroom has about as much to do with chatting as a bath house has to do
with bathing. Most of the time one gets the sense that a new kind of communication is being crafted in
this very room... one that consists of users tossing the name of their location into the ring;
a sort of fishing expedition disguising itself as conversation. But be that as it may, I was in
there the other day as a rather spirited debate erupted out of almost nowhere and raged for a good
ten minutes before subsiding, allowing the new form of conversation to have the floor again.
What was the topic of that debate? What thought or idea could ignite so suddenly as to draw out the
conversationally lethargic and set their fingers to typing once again? It was the topic of Gift-Giving.
No, not the kind we traditionally employ on birthdays, anniversaries, and religious holidays. But
instead the kind that causes someone who is HIV-Negative to become HIV+Positive. Some gift, eh? And
what surprised me most of all was that people were standing up for it. That was most disturbing.
Here's the deal. Some fellow who identified himself as a POZ Daddy was in the room, advertising that
he was looking for a young neg boy to take his infected seed. He finished off with "Phone +++++".
Now, the way I read it was that Poz Daddy (not his real name) was looking for some phone fantasy with
someone who would say in the course of conversation that he was a negative boy who wanted good ol' Dad
to make him POZ. You know, to fuel this fantasy, which is a weird sort of variation to the traditional Daddy/son
fantasy. And it isn't even important if the 'boy' would be telling the truth or not. Right? I mean,
I don't think any true harm is being done by anyone who engages in fantasy talk, no matter how twisted.
After all, just talking about inserting a cock into another guy's mouth or ass
is often twisted enough for some of the more prudish individuals of our society. And so,
while I thought the subject matter could have been in better taste, I didn't see a problem in his advert
as it stood. But someone else in the room did, and chimed in with "POZ Daddy that's sick!"
So I, being the fair minded fellow that I am, tossed my 2 cents into the brewing debate by stating that
as long as this POZ Daddy was keeping the fantasy to mere chat and phone conversation nothing really
wrong was happening. And then I had to go and add, "But if he's going around infecting others,
then I have a problem with it."
You would have thought I'd lit a match to dry brush. The opinions began coming in from all angles. Some
agreed with me. Some felt that it was none of my business. And a few, most disturbingly, presented the
opinion that, if the 'boy' in this scenario wanted to be made POZ, why shouldn't he get what he wanted?
Well, I will tell you why.
HIV, despite the 20-odd medications available to slow the progression
of the disease, is still a fatal condition. People still do die from its effects because the drugs (which
are toxic in and of themselves) do not cure or quell the disease, nor do they reverse the damage done.
And before people die from HIV-related maladies, the disease not only complicates their life tremendously,
but it takes away from the the afflicted's overall quality of life. There is something basically and
morally wrong in willfully passing along any disease to another person,
whether it be a cold, the flu, hepatitis, herpes, VD, or HIV ~ especially if there is the potential that
the disease will harm that person in some significant way for the rest of his or her life. That is reason
number one. But I have others.
In states like California, it is a crime to pass along HIV or any other venereal disease. The penalty
for commintting the crime of "gift-giving" varies from state to state, and the person who you
attempted to "gift" doesn't always have to be infected for it to be considered a crime. For
instance, in Iowa, heart of America's farmland, if you know you are HIV+Positive and you have unprotected
sex with an individual, you can be arrested and tried solely on intent to pass along a deadly disease.
The recipient of your charged load doesn't even have to sero-convert for you to go to jail.
And there's also the matter of responsibility. I do not know where the hell the idea got out there that
barebacking gives one license to be reckless. It doesn't. If anything, barebacking requires us to be
even MORE responsible to our partners than does fucking with condoms, because with barebacking we are
choosing not to use the medically and socially-accepted form of protection. Hell yeah, it feels
better and makes the whole sex act so much more enjoyable and spontaneous. But there is a trade-off here.
For guiltlessly enjoying such pure and heightened pleasure, we automatically take on the obligation to
be just that much more careful about doing our part to contain the HIV virus (as well as other STD's)
It was suggested during the debate that all the HIV-Negative boys in the chatroom were there because
they wanted to get pozzed up. Bzzzzzt! False! ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE! (and I thank the boys who piped up
to dispel that fallacy). So don't try to use that argument
to support doing something so irresponsible and morally wrong. And even if it were true to any degree,
there is no justification in assuming that because someone claims they want the disease you have ANY
obligation whatsoever to give it to them.
Of course, I posed the question, "is it the boy wanting to be pozzed, or is it perhaps the drugs
he may be on making him want this?". Because realistically, many, many men who have used drugs like
crystal meth have made life-altering decisions while under its influence that they later came to regret.
And one of the biggies is to do things that ultimately led to their becoming HIV+Positive. So someone
answered "If he takes the drug and wants to get pozzed, it's his responsibility. Why shouldn't he
get pozzed?" Again, WRONG ANSWER! If someone came to you (whether under the influence of
drugs or alcohol or not) and asked you to run a sword through him, would you do it (provided you had
a sword to begin with)? Of course not. So what's the difference here?
One of life's understood but unwritten contracts is that between ourselves and others ~ that we must
sometimes take the upper hand and refuse to give people the things they claim to want when it is obvious that
the thing they want is not in their best interests. Otherwise, hey, we could all have plutonium in our
homes if we wanted it. One has to not only think of what is good for the individual, but for society
as a whole. Sure, it might be a hot and kinky fantasy to poz up a guy just because he says he wants
to be infected. But what are you ultimately doing to him, and how will that, in turn, affect the greater
society? Beacuse of the numerous risks that barebacking presents, infecting one person can in turn infect
hundreds more. Do you really want that on your head? Have you even thought this thing that far out?
One argument which nobody brought up in this debate, but I have heard before, is the argument that if our
hypothetical bug-chasing "boy" doesn't get the bug from this POZ daddy, he will certainly get
it from someone else down the line. Of all the cheesy, stupid, moronic rationalizations I have heard for doing
something WE ALL KNOW IS WRONG, this one tops them all. Hello??? Even a drug dealer who says "Well,
he'll just buy his heroin from someone else" has the motive of profit behind him. Pozzing some
guy up doesn't even offer that shady reward. Ultimately, anyone who uses that as an excuse really only has
the desire to do something evil and destructive in mind. My answer... so say NO and let him go try to get
it from the next POZ guy he meets. Hopefully that guy will have as much conscience as you, and the equal
fortitude to say NO. And if he doesn't, let the moral and civil crime of intentional infection be on
his head, not yours.
Plainly put, some fantasies are better left as fantasies and shouldn't be acted out. Intentional infection
of another human being, no matter how desperately he may claim to want it, should be avoided at all
costs, as should the intentional infection of someone else without their knowledge. In other words,
keep your disease to yourself. I know that doesn't seem fair, especially to anyone who received HIV
as a result of someone else's deceit and/or failure to disclose. But there's no rule that says that you
can't be the better person... that HIV shouldn't stop with you. It should stop with you, and it can!
So guys, learn where to draw the line between fantasy and action, and be man enough to stay on the right
side of that line. Talk is cheap, unless you're talking on a 900 line. And chatroom or phone fantasy
can be extremely hot if that's what you're into. But if you're going to play bare, by all means remember
that you are taking on more responsibility to your partner, not less. Be a hot fuck to him, not an evil one.
Bareback Jack
PS: There's a great website all POZ guys should check out, called
HIV Stops With Me (.org). This POZ-only
website contains many personal viewpoints from POZ people around the US on a whole range of topics. But
the one common thread in this site is that each individual has made a personal commitment to containing the virus.
Hence the name...
Also worth a look is the HIV Criminal Law
website which presents the statutes pertaining to HIV transmission as criminal conduct for each US state.
For further information on how to do your part in containing HIV, please visit our article,
Sero=Sorting, Making
Raw Sex Even More Exciting as well as the ton of healthy information we've put on our new site,
BarebackHealth.net.
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