"... a subculture of gay men who eroticize risky sexual practices and embrace the prospect of becoming infected. "Across a network of Web sites, gay men from Wichita to Rotterdam advertise group sex parties for men who actively seek to become infected with HIV (a practice called "bug chasing") or seek to infect others with the virus (called "giving The Gift") ..." (And who, no doubt, are big Anne Rice fans.) "Russian Roulette" Sex Parties Gay fringe group's unsafe practices alarms AIDS experts by Sabin Russell, Chronicle Staff Writer San Francisco Chronicle, January 29, 1999 In a Castro district apartment house, an $8 admission fee promises a night of communal gay sex. The only rules: no clothes, no condoms, no discussion of HIV. Two decades into an epidemic that has taken the lives of nearly 18,000 San Franciscans, a new homosexual subculture is emerging: Healthy men are seeking unprotected sex with HIV-infected men, for the erotic thrill of communion with the deadly AIDS virus. For years, AIDS experts have been concerned about the growth of a practice known as ``barebacking,'' where condoms are abandoned, usually based on assumptions that partners are both HIV positive or both negative. Now a fringe element, linked by the Internet, is taking it even further. Web sites are offering lists of "extreme sex" party sites where the prospect of becoming infected or of infecting others is part of the erotic allure. At a "Russian roulette party" set for next month in Houston, a posting seeks three healthy men to have sex with five other men. Four of those must be HIV negative, but the fifth is already infected with the AIDS virus. Only a tiny fraction of gay men are believed to frequent such venues. Even so, many veteran AIDS activists, who championed the "safer sex" ethic that has checked the spread of the AIDS virus since the mid-1980s, are disturbed by the trend. "More than anger, I find it heartbreaking and tragic," said Daniel Zingale, executive director of AIDS Action of Washington, D.C., the nation's most powerful AIDS lobby. New research from San Francisco confirms that an increasing number of gay men are having sex with multiple partners, and without the protection of condoms. Yesterday, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that among men who have anal sex with other men, the portion of men who did so without condoms rose to 39 percent in 1997, from 30 percent in 1994. Rates of sex with more than one partner also rose, and of those engaged in the riskiest practices, 68 percent did not know whether their partner was infected with the AIDS virus. "Groups of men engaging in high-risk sex with multiple partners, that is the kind of behavior that caused the epidemic to explode," said Robert Perez of the Stop AIDS Project in San Francisco. The practice of barebacking has been fiercely debated in the gay community for several years. But nothing is creating quite the stir as the lastest issue of POZ, a glossy monthly magazine brimming with ads for AIDS drugs, featuring a sympathetic portrayal of the barebacking phenomenon. The cover features a handsome gay model, Tony Valenzuela, resting naked atop a black stallion. While the story describes the plight of Valenzuela as an outcast in the San Diego gay community for publicly advocating barebacking, the photos and graphic images portray a glamorous, sexy new icon. "The cover photo definitely turns him into a sex object. I understand people's criticisms," said POZ editor-in-chief Walter Armstrong. "We wanted to provoke people. We're willing to take the heat for that." But AIDS Action's Zingale finds this "bareback chic" appalling. "Anything that glamorizes putting your own health at risk is irresponsible and threatens to unravel all our progress," he said. POZ, which has a modest national circulation of 130,000 is not just trying to sell magazines, said Armstrong. "It's not that we wanted to defend barebacking," he said. "We wanted to try to give a fair, and considered, and nonjudgmental analysis of why this is taking place ... We want to see less condemnation of it as a behavior, and more discussion about why gay men are wanting to stop using condoms." The subculture of barebacking is explored in depth in a second POZ article "A Ride on the Wild Side," by San Francisco free-lance journalist Michael Scarce. It uncritically explores the methods and motives of men who have rejected condoms and are having unprotected sex in organized venues. It includes a visit to the Castro "Bareback House" and an account of what goes on inside. Scarce, 28 years old and HIV-negative, describes a subculture of gay men who eroticize risky sexual practices, and in some cases, are embracing the prospect of becoming infected. Across a network of Web sites, gay men from Wichita to Rotterdam advertise group sex parties for barebacking men. Using street parlance, the Web sites describe the act of seeking HIV ("bug chasing"), or seeking to infect willing partners with the virus ("giving the gift"). Scarce, who has investigated the Internet phenomenon and is writing a book about it, said he has interviewed numerous "inoculation party" participants. The parties, he said, are not an Internet hoax or a fantasy played out only on screen. But he concedes, "We are talking about a very small minority of the barebacking subculture." A former HIV prevention worker who now works at a resource center for gays and lesbian students at the University of California at San Francisco, Scarce said gay men need to recognize the appeal of unprotected sex in order to come to terms with it. "We have to stop kidding ourselves that safer sex is hotter sex. It's just not. There is a particular appeal to barebacking because it is sexier. It is hotter," said Scarce in a recent interview. "It amazes and impresses me that gay men value their sexuality, and that they find such meaning in it that they are willing to take certain kinds of risks," he said. "That is an important and beautiful thing, although it can have harmful and damaging consequences." To Tom Coates, the director of the UCSF AIDS Research Institute, the implications of such thinking are saddening. The POZ article, he said, may "legitimize barebacking" and help break down the behavior changes that have protected San Francisco's gay community from the rampant spread of the virus. "I am surprised at POZ not only for sensationalizing the movement, but for not presenting a balanced view. Nowhere did I see the word 'responsibility.' As an HIV-infected man myself, I take that responsibility very seriously," said Coates. Scarce dismisses the highly respected AIDS expert as part of an "old guard" whose vision of HIV prevention is grounded in the experience of Baby Boomers devastated by the epidemic. This vision of a generation gap within the gay community permeates much of the discussion of barebacking and the shift to riskier sexual practices. Surveys show younger gay men are more likely than their older peers to engage in unprotected sex. To younger gay men such as Scarce, AIDS has become interwoven as part of gay identity. "AIDS and gay culture are permanently tethered to one another, and not necessarily in a bad way," he said. Such talk, in the view of some veteran AIDS activists, dishonors the dead, and makes not only for bad public health policy, but disastrous gay politics. "How sympathetic will be the public, which has coughed up a lot of money for services and research, if we don't have responsibility?" said Coates. Rene Durazzo, program director for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, said the POZ article provides a service in bringing discussions about barebacking into the open. "We have to be challenged how to understand the complex nature of that issue," he said. "We need to give men opportunities to talk about it and make their own decisions." The long history of AIDS in San Francisco, he suggested, shows that the city's gay community has acted responsibly and will continue to do so. "In this city," Durazzo said, "men have made good choices around HIV and their sexual lives. They are making complex decisions how to stay safe. If they were making bad choices, we would see an enormously escalating epidemic."
