[Originally published in Fashion Fag Magazine Volume 1, Number 2, February 1994, very mildly edited for clarity.]
The New York Post bashes Gay Men's Health Crisis new poster.
"Anyway you read them, the poster endorse homosexuality. encourage promiscuity and promote the false and dangerous notion that condoms are safe and will protect users against AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases." says Ray Kerrison columnist for the post.
Let me explain this poster to those of you who have not seen it. It is a bright purple subway poster with three pictures of couples embracing or kissing. In bright yellow writing there is the poster's slogan YOUNG, HOT & SAFE, each couple is holding a condom, lubricant, latex dam, or latex glove. There is also the GMHC hotline number which ask you to call for further information about safer sex.
To address Mr. Kerrison's first point I don't understand how he comes to the assumption that this poster is promoting homosexuality or any kind of sexuality. Its like he's saying a poster of a couple of married couples is promoting marriage, or a couple of African American children promoting Afrocentric ideals. I feel that Kerrison is just another homophobe who believes that any portrayal of queers in a positive light is saying to everyone that homosexuality is OK and there is nothing wrong with it. Which there isn't, I've been a homosexual a long time now and I am perfect proof.
Kerrison's second issue of the poster encouraging promiscuity is absolutely absurd. Everyone in these posters is full clothed and pictured above the shoulders. Now last summer there was an ad campaign by a local radio station
HOT 97 who had really raunchy posters which portrayed men in women in very suggestive positions and very skimpily clad. One of the more overt posters had a male grasping a topless women's breast.
And GMHC's poster's are called porn and sleaze???
Lord forbid we show happy homosexuals that are healthy and not dying of AIDS. I strongly believe that these type of gays are the only kind that the conservative heterosexual community can deal with. Because then they can feel sorry for the poor dying fag.
Kerrison's final point of his article bothers me the most because not only does the information it contain very wrong but could be very dangerous if you are not an informed reader. Studies show and have proven that latex condoms are the most effective device against the HIV infection, if used properly.
GMHC is the first and largest AIDS organization in the world and Kerrison saying this to GMHC is like telling God the sky ain't blue. Actually I am very happy there has been such controversy about the ads because it brings back into the public view and that will force people to talk about it.
I got my chance to speak on the issue at a press conferences that councilman Tom Duane held on the steps of city hall. Here is the speech I prepared and read:
"Hi my name is Trevor Brown. I am a proud young black homosexual and I am a volunteer In Gay Men's Health Crisis's Education Department's Young Adult Aids Prevention Program.
According to what this society shows me, I as a young black man should be in jail, unemployed, father of a illegitimate children, and inarticulate. I as a homosexual should be promiscuous, dying of AIDS, and rotting in hell. I refuse to believe any of this to prove this society wrong, and to do my part in the fight against AIDS.
I did the YOUNG HOT and SAFE campaign. As much as adults would like to think they know what is best for youth and would like tell us how to run our lives I believe we young people know what we young people want. I know that my friends and I have been sexually active for years and it wasn't some ad on the train that told us to start having sex. its a natural part of growing up, and exploring your sexuality. Knowing that a lot of youth think it is not cool or fun to have safer sex. We thought it was important to show other youth Hey its COOL to have safer sex I am do in' it you can do it too.
The young people that were working on this campaign were full of positive intentions and I think they should be applauded for being conscious of the health and safety of other youth. Not slapped on the wrist and told there is only one way to avoid the HIV virus. Abstinence. AIDS is something that effects us all and I that there is no one way to properly educate about it there are many different ways. Because it effects many different kind of people. And because my way of trying to educate differs from yours I don't believe we should be bashing one another, You may attract flies with fly paper I prefer honey, But most importantly we will both be saving lives."
I truly can't recall if I had assistance with drafting my speech for the press conference held by Councilman Tom Duane, who was the second openly gay council member and the only one at the time who was public about his being HIV positive. I do hear my voice within it, my phrasing and my colloquialism, so I was totally one of the authors if not final editor.
I know I am being patronizing to myself, because I am so impressed with my eloquence, not at the level of an orator like Dr. King, but for an average individual with minimal press experience I think this was amazing, and I applaud my younger self. Not just for being brave but to speak so publicly about very private things, and to be clear I do not infer that sexuality is something to be ashamed of, but who I go to bed as and with is really no one else's business.
Curiously Mr. Kerrison was my grandmother's contemporary dying curiously enough on her birthday a year after she did. Like her he didn't mask his hostility and disapproval of homosexuality, I guess both of them are products of their upbringings, but both are dead and no longer my concern.
This was thirty years ago exactly and it would be false to say that things haven't changed for the gays since then, but it was also be false to say that we are welcomed with open arms with legislation around "Don't Say Gay" floating around all over the country and it being against the law some places for trans people to go to the bathroom. Progress I guess is always an incremental thing, five steps forward and three steps back.
I guess I can say definitively that I attempted to make the world a better place by physically using my likeness and speaking publicly about my identities to in effect normalize acceptance of folks who looked and loved like I did.
I have mixed feelings about the Young Hot & Safe campaign because thinking about it makes me think of the fact that Tim my photo-partner and friend is now dead, we were both amongst the committee of young people who helped to conceptualize and execute the campaign in tandem with Gay Men's Health Crisis. It was a happy time of my life and I look back on those memories and the friends I had very fondly.
When I started doing HIV/AIDS peer education work in high school, I remember our group having meetings and lunches with an older man that was HIV+ (I do not remember if he was positive for AIDS or not). He spoke about the 80s and the friends he had lost. He told us about the medication that would either help or kill you. He gave us a chance to ask many questions and shared stories about his life. I remember him showing us the medication cocktail he had to take. It was at least 8 pills, 3 or more times a day. He would always express how important it was for him to take them so precisely because if he missed just one dose, his medication could stop working, and the chance he would die would increase exponentially. These meds were extremely expensive, and of course, the stigma was incredibly great.
Now, I see adds for PrEP and PEP on cable television. They air like any other medication commercial, and no one bats an eye. Depending on the med, you take one pill, or one injection every 3 months, or something else much simpler than anything I had learned about before. This progress means that a U=U status is much more accessible than before. The first time I saw it on TV, I was at work and had to stop myself from crying from how emotional it made me.
Yes, the stigma around HIV and AIDS is strong, and people are misinformed and fearful. But just seeing how things have progressed makes me so hopeful for the future.
A Manerbio, è stato presentato il progetto di peer education "Bibliotube". Ed è stata annunciata la miniserie "Vita da bibliotecari", di Silvia Cascio e Giulia Barucco.
