Gayness and HIV blamed on the Internet

31 Mar 2008 | 14:52 BST

By Sylvie Barak

THE INTERNET PROMOTES GAYNESS and increases the risk of contracting HIV, according to a British news channel.

More4News, a programme hosted by Britain’s Channel 4, slams the Internet and social not-working sites as places where “Thousands of gay men risk getting HIV through internet organised "bareback" sex”, and reckons that contemporary technology has made extreme forms of sexual behaviour a normalcy.

Channel Four is, of course, justly famous for its low-key, sober programming including such family friendly viewing as Penis Week, Wank Week and the seminal gay drama Queer as Folk.

The sensationalist hyped up drivel, purporting to report on the dot.com decade, attempts to prove its point by mentioning that on sites like Gaydar and other “gay hook-up websites”, men can search for partners by hair colour, eye colour, height, weight or penis size. Totally unlike any heterosexual dating site on the internet, of course.

The report also melodramatically decries the amount of men advertising their preference for “bareback” sex (sex without a condom), noting that the Health Protection Agency has warned that a super strain of HIV could be spread if an already HIV positive individual is infected with a different strain of the virus. Blame the Internet of course, not a lack of education on the subject.

More4 News also reckons that the Internet has revolutionized gay life, bizarrely staking the claim that gays don’t even have to leave home to find sexual partners anymore, making gay clubs and bars obsolete. Again, strange how heterosexuals, who also, to the best of our knowledge, have access to the Internet, still choose to go out to clubs, bars and parties to find partners, for casual sex or otherwise. Perhaps More4 News is accusing gays of acute laziness rather than just plain old fashioned sexual deviancy?

The bigoted news site even has the nerve to preach that social networks aimed at the gay community should “stand as a warning to society”. It likewise laughably puts forward the view that the ability to locate sexual partners willing to act out what it clearly sees as perverted behaviour, has only become possible with the advent of Internet technology. Yes, and video games turn children into serial killing, war embracing psychos too.

If anything, what More4News fails to “report”, is that the Internet can be an incredibly useful tool in all that pertains to educating people about the risks of STDs and dangerous or risky sexual practices. People, and especially teens, who once had no one to turn to ask their “embarrassing” questions, can now simply search for, and receive answers in seconds.

So when it comes to pinning the blame for what narrow minded people see as deviancy, here’s a thought; lets blame the parents, lets blame the lack of comprehensive sex education, lets blame the sensationalist media hype, the entertainment agency and organized religion. But, for crying out loud, surely not the Internet? µ

L’Inq
Channel 4 News

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