The Politics of Planning HIV/AIDS Education and the Disenfranchisement of HIV Negative Gay Men

Abstract

This paper offers an interpretation of the historical failure of HIV prevention education in US urban gay communities. In particular, the authors question the rationale for continuing to offer generic prevention education (undifferentiated by target audience) for generic gay men (undifferentiated by HIV antibody serostatus), long after it became possible to distinguish who was and was not infected. They argue that AIDS educators in the gay community have intentionally designed prevention programs that ignore any serostatus distinction in the target audience out of interests in promoting community solidarity and protecting HIV‐infected men from further isolation and disenfranchisement. Unfortunately, the result of efforts to provide undifferentiated prevention education may be ultimately counterproductive to the gay community in general and to HIV‐negative gay men in particular.