Diamonds are the Girl's best
friend
And Comdoms are the Gay's
best friend!
by: Sune Knudsen
In her famous song the huge gay icon Marilyn Monroe repeats the refrain that diamonds are a girl’s best friend over and over again, while Madonna gets in-tune with her 85 hit “Material girl” with diamonds as her best friend, and it seems to me that the big part of there male fans that are more into men than diamonds should think more about who is actually their best friend.
Each day a large number of men who have sex with men are infected with the HIV virus which leads to the still very serious diagnosis AIDS. And there is still only one friend that can protect you form getting infected and not spreading the decease. It’s for sure not as flashy, costly or shiny as diamonds. But it is well wearing just as well. Of course I’m thinking about condoms.
Let me start by telling a story from last week. Once in a while I visit my old friend Thomas. We have known each other for more than ten years now and he is one of my closest friends. We have a lot in common. We booth enjoy life. And we are booth into partying and having fun. But one thing is quite different. Thomas has been infected with HIV for almost 6 years now and even though he keeps his head high and continues his life this has of course affected his life in so many ways. He has to go to the hospital every month. He takes more than 20 pills everyday. He is often tired and sick. And of course he has a lot on his mind: What will the future bring? Will the medicine continue to work? And how will future partners react to his HIV-status? So, life as HIV-positive is not a life like a pop star. On the contrary it is a life filled with complications and worries. I think about all of that when I hang out with Thomas.
Therefore it strikes me time after time how crazy it is that most of my other friends continue to have sex without condoms – some just once in a while and others as a fixed pattern. And I’m kind of fed up with listing to all of the excuses they come up with – “I was drunk”, “we didn’t have a condom” or “he said that he loved me”. Please come on: to use a condom is not exactly rocket science. It is one of the simplest ways of protection. And it is important. Alone here in Denmark, where I live, one out of every twenty gay man is infected with HIV and in countries in Eastern Europe and especially Africa and Asia the number is much higher. There are not many surveys from the Middle East but there are no reasons to think that the number should be lower there – on the contrary.
The AIDS-epidemic has been around now for more than 25 years and many of its victims have been men who have sex with other men – and a large amount of them very young men and teenagers in the beginning of their lives, so please, when ever getting undressed to have fun do team up with a gay’s best friend: use a condom so you make sure that the only thing you are spreading is love.