On May 17, 2005, among those homosexual activists sneering and jeering Brian Camenker at the Article 8 press conference on Boston City Hall Plaza was none other than the founding director of that venerable institution, the AIDS Action Committee of Massachusetts -- Larry Kessler.
Mr. Kessler was there to keep tabs on the Resistance. Little did he know that his organization was about to be exposed through the Little Black Book as endangerers, not protectors, of the public health.
For years now, AIDS has been so politicized that few have dared to speak the truth: that AIDS got its start and primarily spread due to male homosexual practices, as described in the Little Black Book. What a farce the AIDS Action Committee is. They certainly are an action committee of a sort: promoting actions of unsafe sex.
Bay Windows' latest issue -- even after the expose of the Little Black Book -- continues to pretend that the AIDS Action Committee is an asset to public health, when in fact it is clearly compounding this public health crisis. Out of one side of his mouth, Mr. Kessler says that gays are "in denial" about the disease, and this is very bad. Out of the other side of his mouth, he produces a booklet that encourages the grossest of homosexual practices and makes light of taking precautions. From Bay Windows:
What, exactly, is safer sex?
And how can men who have sex with men be persuaded to engage in it?
By Ethan Jacobs
May 19, 2005
[excerpts]
"What's the biggest factor that leads gay and bi men to have risky sex? Some would say it's the influence of crystal methamphetamine and other club drugs. Others say it's the fatigue men feel after two decades of being forced to use condoms. AIDS Action Founding Director Larry Kessler, who has fought on the front lines since the beginning of the epidemic, says one of the major obstacles facing AIDS prevention workers has been denial, and not just within the gay community. In the early '80s he remembers gay men in Boston dismissing AIDS as a New York disease. By 1986 and 1987, as Bostonians were seeing AIDS devastate their own community, Kessler remembers people in Worcester writing off AIDS as a Boston disease.
"That was just a metaphor for what occurred in so many communities over time. Men who have sex with men [who did not identify as gay] didn't think they were at risk because it was a gay thing. Black men didn't think they were at risk because it was a white gay thing. Women didn't think they were at risk because it was a male thing," remembers Kessler. 'Today I think we still have that denial.'
"Gay and bi men, along with the other men who fall under the broad category of men who have sex with men (MSM) [Note from MassResistance: not to be confused with the other MSM -- the mainstream media; though there is quite a strong link between the two!], appear to be suffering from a particularly strong case of denial. Since 2000 the largest percentage of new HIV infections each year in Massachusetts has been among MSM."
"Yet according to HIV prevention specialists, any approach to HIV prevention that stigmatizes men who have risky sex could actually have a negative impact on prevention efforts. Benjamin Perkins, director of AIDS Action's Men's Action Life Empowerment (MALE) Center, a wellness center targeting MSM set to open in June, says such an approach may drive those most at risk for infection away from prevention services. 'Who's going to admit to having unprotected sex if they're going to be so stigmatized?' argues Perkins. 'I think it's very seductive, the idea [of a 'get tough approach'], but I think ultimately in the long term it ends up causing more harm than good.' "
