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Fighting Sexual Diseases by Going to Sex Clubs

 

            San Francisco is trying to stop the alarming growth of sexually transmitted diseases among gay men with a new program of giving away tickets to sex clubs for anyone who tests for STDs. (From the Federal Center of Disease Control's Prevention News Update of 4/14/02 quoting  the Bay Area Reporter San Fransisco 4/4/02) According to health specialist Larry Hanbrook, "A good proportion of our recent syphilis cases have mentioned they go to the sex clubs to find partners." Therefore, by offering free tickets to sex clubs, the city hopes to get gay men to test.

            Rabbi David Eidensohn, director of the National Non-Sectarian Council of Pro-Family Activists, protested this program. "If a person tests and is clean, and takes a ticket to a sex club, what happens then?" Rabbi Eidensohn noted that new Federal statistics show a 25% increase in new HIV cases. "This is because we approach a deadly disease with silly solutions like tickets to sex clubs. If we tracked down sick people and made them report on their partners, and then enforced the law with quarantines, we would have every sick person in treatment and not infecting. Instead, we make things worse by sending people to sex clubs."

            Rabbi Eidensohn noted that the CDC Update quotes the Minneapolis Star Tribute (4/16/02) that "New HIV infections among white men in Minnesota jumped 40 percent last year." Rabbi Eidensohn asked, "Can we sustain forty percent increases in a deadly disease and still refuse to get tough with infected people and make them stop infecting?"

Rabbi Eidensohn noted an article from the San Francisco Examine (4/16/02) (from the above-mentioned CDC Prevention Update) titled, "Without Fear Factor, AIDS Won't Stop." This article notes that HIV cases doubled in recent years in San Francisco, and there are no solutions. It quotes Marcus Conant, head of the Conant Foundation, a pioneer in AIDS medicine: "Only fear made HIV prevention work in the first place." Rabbi Eidensohn asked, are we instilling fear by sending gays to sex clubs?

"We have a drastic problem, and it will only respond to sensible solutions," said Rabbi Eidensohn. "We must send people who insist on infecting others to jail, not to sex clubs," said the rabbi.

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