Originally posted by Cow Poke
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Meanwhile, while we can close our eyes and pretend really hard that this is all about "stress" from discrimination, that would necessitate ignoring sources such as the CDC....
As fm93 has rightly pointed out, STDs are not really relevant for gay women, nor for monogamous gay men. So when we talk about homosexuality and STDs we're talking about a minority among gay people. Obviously that minority ought to take standard safe-sex precautions, get what vaccinations are available, and have regular sexual health check-ups so it they've caught something they can get it treated.
There have been various problems due to discrimination, however, with regard to STDs.
For example, there is a vaccine for HPV, one of the most common STDs, mentioned in your quote. When that vaccine came out here, the government funded it free to all young women, with the idea that HPV could be wiped out from the population if all the women were immune. The vaccine cost $450 for any gay men wanting to get vaccinated. It took a lengthy campaign for gay groups to point out to the government that gay men actually existed, and their idea of just vaccinating women was a silly one.
To give another example, when HIV was first discovered, authorities were particularly slow to act because it seemed to be affecting only gay people. There was a very long delay in even acknowledging that the disease existed, and a great unwillingness to commit funding to research a cure for it.
But there have been some structural problems of discrimination that have worsened STDs among gay people: For decades gay people were told by Christians that they weren't allowed to marry. They were told that gay people were immoral and promiscuous, and that committing to one another for life in marriage was a Christian thing. Christians were very much responsible for creating and perpetuating a societal expectation and stereotype about how gay people behaved sexually. They deliberately prohibited gay people from accessing the institution of marriage that existed to acknowledge and strengthen, committed monogamous relationships. I think this historical discrimination was very much the primary cause of a higher than usual level of promiscuity that was historically present in many gay sub-cultures.
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