I am compelled to comment on the rhetoric and logic used in Professor Jonathan Katz’s article, “In Defense of Homophobia,” and in his letters to the editor on Sept. 28 and 30. In his article, part of Katz’s justification for homophobia is to place the entirety of blame for the AIDS epidemic in the United States on the male homosexual community. In recent letters to the editor, he went on to say, “I look forward to learning why [Jeff Stepp] absolves homosexuality of blood-guilt for the deaths of the victims of AIDS” and asks for a reason why his arguments are incorrect.
The debate can be reframed to focus on a different perspective on the emergence of the AIDS epidemic that refrains from playing the blame game. It becomes easy to blame others for problems in society because we can easily claim no association with “them.” Viewing situations in this way does little to stop the spread of an epidemic, especially when most of the world’s cases are not transmitted through male-on-male sex. In fact, UNAIDS estimates that of the approximately 39.4 million people living with AIDS, just under half are women. Communicable Disease and Prevention Control estimated in 1996 that 70 percent of HIV infections globally were transmitted through heterosexual sex, while only up to 10 percent of cases were transmitted through homosexual or bisexual activity. AIDS did not develop isolated in the United States; it is a global epidemic that has been affected by the processes of globalization.
One cannot dispute the fact that the first cases in the United States were documented among gay men who lived in San Francisco and New York. However, Katz wrongly blames the deaths of “over 500,000 people” on the entire male homosexual community. When the epidemic first exploded onto the scene, the United States was slow to respond. In fact, President Ronald Reagan never even publicly addressed AIDS until late in 1985, despite the first case being diagnosed in 1981.
It is precisely the stigmatization of groups that Katz is calling for and the subsequent failure to publicly respond to the situation that is largely to blame for the AIDS epidemic in the United States. It is the same homophobia that Katz defends which prevented action from taking place. Perhaps if gay men had been able to benefit from research to know exactly how the disease was transmitted and then educated on prevention possibilities, the situation would have been different. It was not until the government finally recognized that AIDS was also prevalent in heterosexuals that any urgency existed.
Similar ways of thinking have continued to cause problems. The United States routinely fails to promote broadly administered sex education programs to teach youth (one of the highest demographics at risk today) about condoms and HIV prevention. Early prevention would not have eradicated AIDS, but it certainly would have lessened the impact as well as produced drugs such as protease inhibitors more quickly. Stigmatization of HIV and people living with the virus will only continue to hamper our efforts to curtail the epidemic.
Mark is a senior in Arts & Sciences.