WHAT’S THE POINT?
My first reaction was abject horror. We have an Austrian governor and any system that reports names to the government just evokes images for me of the movies “1984,” “Soylent Green” and the “Holocaust.” I was appalled that this bill, which was unanimously approved in the California Senate, is going to the Governator, a man who seems to be marching more with the far right Republicans as each day brings us closer to his re-election.
But as I read the article, it turns out that the Aids Healthcare Foundation president Michael Weinstein co-sponsored the bill and is absolutely giddy that the Senate moved so swiftly on getting this bill through the legislature and onto the governor’s desk. It seems that the current system of reporting, which identifies people with HIV by a unique set of letters and numbers is inaccurate.
That inaccuracy is no longer acceptable to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, which is about to begin a new allotment procedure for their grant money. States which do not use a names-based system will lose funds, and California stands to lose up to $50 million, which would directly affect those who are receiving care and treatment.
I had to look at why my immediate reaction was so viscerally anti-reporting. As someone who is not HIV positive I can’t speak from the position of those whose names will be reported, so my reaction is all the more curious. Was it from years of fear of homophobic backlash? Was it from growing up in a culture that said HIV equals death? Is it that HIV is a sexually transmitted disease and we as a society have so many weird views on sex? Is this just internalized homophobia on my part? Am I just paranoid that the government is collecting information?
When I look at it, I believe I have been subjected to all of the above pressures that go into making one’s opinion.
The gay community has been the subject of raids, scrutiny and discrimination, which still continue in many areas. Considered to be security risks by some and morale busters by others, we are discriminated against in the military. The Los Angeles Police Department has a few skeletons in its closet about the manner in which the gays were treated in the ’60s and ’70s, and into the ’80s, which is when I started to get my first impressions of what being gay in America means.
As a teenager my mother created an atmosphere of fear and paranoia about HIV. Then when I came out of the closet, it was worse. I can still hear her voice just dripping with maternal fear, saying “for God’s sake, just don’t get sick.” That was her way of dealing with HIV education.
“California names-based HIV reporting bill headed to governor.” — The headline read
HIV is a sexually transmitted disease and we all get weird when we talk about STDs. They are the subject of humor and embarrassment. They are not dealt with well in our society, mostly because we allow overpro-tective parents to dictate the subjects that are discussed. I’ve always found it curious that a child can watch television and see hate, violence and murders every night of the week, but one rarely sees responsible sexual behavior being demonstrated.
As open as I am, I still find myself having pockets of homophobia. It is a pervasive and corrosive thing that permeated my thoughts, and it has taken years of work to root out the majority of it.
Then there is the paranoia that the government is collecting information, which is really silly on my part. After all, if the government wants to find out if I’m gay, all it ha to do is read a newspaper. So I know I’m safe on that front.
I know the government collects information on all of us for all sorts of reasons. It’s no different than the credit card companies and the marketing companies collecting data points on purchases and Web site visits. It does however, seem to have a specter of sinisterness about it when the government is doing it.
The sad reality of it all though, is that HIV rates are increasing in certain demographics. Black women and men, young gay men, and Hispanics are all facing an increased infection rate. The government needs to get more and better information to slow the spread of this disease. Due to their own homophobia and denial, the black community is set to have a major wave of deaths in large part due to their denial about gay sex, and IV drug use.
The culture of machismo is going to do the same thing in the largely Catholic anti-condom Hispanic community. In the gay community, the factors of young men who don’t know anyone who has died, and increasingly effective treatment options have led to a resurgence of infections due to unsafe sex.
It is scary that the disease has matured enough that it no longer evokes outrage, but rather support for a bill that backs names-based reporting. On the one hand it is just a disease, really not all that different from diabetes or cancer, and should be treated as such. On the other, the people who have it tend to be the disenfranchised, the unwanteds, the easy targets of government abuse.
Given the Governator’s anti-gay, pro-family values, hard line Republican stance, it is a veritable certainty he’ll sign this bill. It is ironic though that the Governator who was so proud of his sexual prowess and drug use, would sign into law a bill which creates a database of HIV infected people which makes it that much easier to reduce their privacy and civil liberties. So much for the Republican values of individual freedom and less government interference. (David Pisarra is a business development lawyer in the Santa Monica firm of Pisarra & Grist. He welcomes your questions and comments. He or (310) 664-9969.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 11, 2006. Read the original PDF.