Gay Sex Equals Death! Again! Always!

Oh, those gay men are at it again. Or is it antibiotic use?

In San Francisco on Monday, it was reported "A new variety of staph bacteria, highly resistant to antibiotics and possibly transmitted by sexual contact, is spreading among gay men in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles."

Where did this new horror come from? Was it the gay men themselves that created it?

No.

In fact, "MRSA was first seen in several countries the 1960s. With increasing use of antibiotics, new strains of MRSA have developed over the past 20 years."

And, "The culprit is a form of MRSA, or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a bug that was once confined to hospitalized patients but, since the late 1990s, has been circulating outside medical settings, afflicting anyone from injection-drug users to elementary school students."

Wait... gay men having too much sex is causing elementary school students to get it?

I'm confused.

And I'm mad.

I'm mad because, like Sean Bugg wrote, "These kinds of infections have been a problem in medical settings for some time, but when a report comes out that attaches "gay" with "disease," everyone's certain to pay attention."

A quick google search came up with comments and stories from NPR to The Onion, everyone quick to discuss the new findings. Gay men have yet another reason to panic and abandon their wanton ways.

When is anyone going to panic about lesbian sex? I mean, I do. Will I have enough? When will I get more? Today? Tomorrow? Tonight?

Major anxiety.

Instead, lesbians get blamed for tabouli and Birkenstock shoes.

What strikes me, though, is some of the worst abusers of antibiotics are parents of young children. In an effort to keep kids in school/at day care, these parents insist on antibiotics for almost every illness. In fact, the American public is so confused about antibiotics that patients routinely demand them for viral infections. Antibiotics don't kill viruses, people do...

Oh, wait. I forgot. It's about gay men having sex. And always TOO MUCH sex. Maybe Huckabee is right and we should just quarantine them.

Personally, I'm going to go back to being panicked about lesbian sex. We need MORE sex. Much more. And if that makes it out to the general population... well... Ann Coulter better watch out.

This is a serious disease. It comes from a strain of bacteria first found in hospitals, our most "sterile" of all environments. Whenever gay men's sex lives ends up being classified as deadly instead of focusing on the pharmaceutical industries responsibility for the continued growth of new strains of antibiotic resistant infections, I have to wonder why.

The headlines end up continuing negative images, reinforcing stereotypes about gay men. It won't help the problem.

But it's damn sexy, isn't it?

Comments

[raker]

I'm pissed at this antigay MRSA story. Strange virus, passed to anyone who walks into a contaminated hospital room, but outside the hospital, according to the "research," it's transmitted by gay anal sex. Not just gayness; not just sex, but gay anal sex. They even used boilerplate AIDS epidemic language about "crossing borders" and "once it reaches the general population," like gay people aren't part of the general population; like hospitals are located behind borders.

MRSA did not occur because you or I take Cipro for a sinus infection. It's because our food supply is doused with antibiotics to make barbaric industrial cattle-raising possible. It's because hospitals are full of sick people where MRSA emerges due to half-assed attention to cleanliness.

[realitytrumpsbull]

What, my ideas don't have any merit, or you don't understand social engineering?

[realitytrumpsbull]

Gay/straight, whatever, the Bigger Story here is that you're supposed to be performing your civic duty and propagating. The Lebensborn Republicans want those SEPU's, socio-economic propagation units, or 'children', as they were previously referred to, in a pre-9/11 world.
YOUR life will be statisticized, measured, evaluated, weighed, AND judged, and, if you're found to be wanting in any regard, your citizen 'cool points' can be annulled in short order.

I'm a single celibate heathen(unrepentant), no kids, and these people and their institutionalized discriminatory garbage can go take a flying leap for all I care...
China's coming...while we play politics...tink, tink, tink, tink, the sound of tiny work hammers...24 hours a day...and India's right behind em...

[OtayPanky]

Sara Whitman: Oh, wait. I forgot. It's about gay men having sex. And always TOO MUCH sex.

===

No, it's about having too much HIGH RISK, UNPROTECTED SEX with TOO MANY OTHER PEOPLE.

Let's not conflate the reality of homophobia - in all it's virulent forms - with the reality of willful stupidity by hetero and homosexuals, whether it be in San Franscisco, Thailand, or Africa...otay?

[xdevildawg4u]

I think the problem with the original article is the fact that they said "POTENTIALLY spread by GAY sex" when there are HUNDREDS of other possibilities for how this could spread in the gay community (especially in a gay ghetto like the Castro). For example, this infection is transmitted from skin contact in places like GYMS where many people share the same equipment. It's pretty easy to imagine how this might affect Castro/Chelsea/Midtown gay men more than the general population.

Please people, let's not go off on another screaming fit of homophobia and ignorance before we know the FACTS.

[cylindar]

Why don't you grow up. Gay men are mentioned in this context because anal sex is a health problem more than most lay people are aware of. Although a small proportion of heteros engage in anal sex, this practice is common among gay men. Because of this sexual practices anal sex) gay men are more prone to be a distribution problem. This is a health matter and a very real one. It would seem to me that you would prefer to hide from truth. Being a gay guy is like being fat, The chances of getting various diseases does increase. This does not mean that gay or fat people are bad people, it just means that if you are gay or fat you can expect certain types of problems. Perhaps we should lie to everybody; would that satisfy you.

[itmaybetoolate]

Can the "quarantine" camps be far behind? Does anyone else feel that we are at a tipping point in this country and that rounding up "problematic" groups can't be far behind? Everyday it is something new - some new outrage - and the amurican public is mute. I think it is too late.

[BobbyJoe]

Yeah, uh, isn't this the same "highly resistant to antibiotics" staph that everybody was freakin' out about seeing in elementary and high school students? A quick web search reveals cases of this same strain (and even deaths) of both male and female school kids in places like Michigan, Texas and Ohio, just in the last couple of months.

So while it's good that gays, like everyone, be aware of the danger of this strain, I'm really unclear why these articles are particularly playing it up as though this is only happening to gay men and stressing lines about it "possibly transmitted by sexual contact" when 1) that's obviously only one of many ways the strain can be spread, and to make it sound like that's the primary way is irresponsible and 2) gays are hardly the only victims of this strain, and to say an epidemic is affecting the "gay community" while not also noting that other key communities are affected seems a (deliberately?) inflammatory choice. Unless a lot of elementary and high school kids are all secretly little Larry Craigs (including the female victims), this isn't something limited to the gay community at all.

[provgrays]

I know you were going for a light and breezy blog here, but staph bacteria hardly lends itself to those kinds of themes.

This subject should have been broached by some one with medical credentials. Otherwise, joking about serious medical maladies is hard to bring off. If gays are being unfairly scapegoated in the context of your thoughts, you only made light of the problem instead of offering any humor or insight.

You missed the mark.