In an Aug 1 speech at the MSM Global Forum Pre-Conference, outgoing UNAIDS (The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS) executive director Peter Piot referenced a Washington Post reporter who had written that the 17th annual AIDS Conference, which was to start a few days later, would be for the MSM (men who have sex with men) community what the 2000 International AIDS Conference in Durban was for AIDS in Africa.
This heady prediction is nothing to ignore. It was because of the Durban conference that money and global awareness was mobilized to deal with HIV/AIDS in Africa and it was then and there that a decade of how we think of HIV/AIDS was shaped.
Before Durban, HIV/AIDS was in danger of becoming a non-issue for many people in North America, but because of the images and information that poured out of the conference about how AIDS was ravaging the continent, a renewed commitment to the pandemic was felt around the world. AIDS went from something as ‘90s as Alanis Morissette’s “You Ought to Know” to something synonymous with Africa and human rights.
The reporter’s prediction, if true, will change the way gay is understood around the world and how gay men’s sexual health is prioritized from Singapore to the Ukraine and everywhere in between. If willing national governments and international organizations like the UN begin to focus on gay men’s health, it will generate new funds for gay men’s health research and push countries with oppressive laws and taboos to enact change.
At the heart of the renewed focus on MSM is rising rates of HIV and other STI infections among men who have sex with men, an understanding of the interconnected role between homophobia and HIV infection and an acknowledgment of the enormously beneficial contribution of the queer community during the early days of AIDS, a role which has declined over the past decade.
“Let us not forget,” said Piot “that in the early ‘80s it was the gay community that responded first. We need to see that again.”
Jeffery O’Malley of the UN Development Program echoed Piot’s remarks at the conference the following day, saying, “We all know that it was gay men and trans people that invented safer sex,” O’Malley recounted. “We all know that it was gay men, trans people and lesbians who created homecare for people living with HIV.” As a gay man who has worked in HIV/AIDS for more than a decade, he has seen how his colleagues “tried hard not to be seen as too gay and to not focus too hard on gay areas.”
This de-gaying of AIDS from a policy and funding level left the work to others. “For every timid gay bureaucrat,” O’Mally explained, “there were dozens of fierce queers on the ground, working in the fields who got the work [of HIV prevention and AIDS awareness] done.”
As someone who has worked from the top levels of government as an out gay man, Dr Jorge Saavedra, director of the National HIV/AIDS Programme of Mexico, finds that being out provides him the best reason to be involved. “It was women who fought for women’s rights,” Cordova said during the conference’s opening address. “So why shouldn’t gay men be leading the way for gay rights?”
Beyond speeches, action is a key part of the Aug 3 - 8 Mexico Conference, supporting the belief that the conference may become a watershed moment for the MSM and HIV/AIDS community.
On Aug 2, just as the MSM pre-conference was concluding and less than 48 hours before the main AIDS conference was to begin, the first-ever International March Against Homophobia started under El Angel de la Independecia—one of Mexico City’s most recognizable landmarks, a victory column erected to mark the country’s war of independence—and ended in the historic central Zocalo. With 5000 participants from around the world taking part, including sex worker collectives and youth groups, the march closed down the Paseo de la Reforma, one of the city’s busiest roadways.
After the closing ceremonies where UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, among others, referred to the need to focus on MSM HIV prevention, I was reminded by an HIV/AIDS outreach worker from Ontario as we walked away, that the conference means nothing unless it results in concrete action.
While it does seem that Piot and O’Malley, both of whom are with the UN, could be on-message, the point is that much-needed dialogue about men’s sexual health is being addressed.
As for the possible effects that the conference’s focus on MSM may have, one needs to look no further than the US presidential race. In a statement made by Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama on the opening day of the conference regarding the Center for Disease Control’s underreporting of new HIV infections, Obama had this to say: “We must also overcome the stigma that surrounds HIV/AIDS, a stigma that is too often tied to homophobia.”
Regardless of what the future brings, the fact is that world leaders, bureaucrats and activists from all over the world are currently focusing on and fighting for sexual minority rights. We as a community must work with this progress and eliminate our own internal and community-based homophobia. When the world comes knocking to help us lower new HIV infections rates among us and to support us in creating a safer world for all people, we want to be part of the solution.
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