| Fighting AIDS by Going to Sex Clubs 4/20/02 | |
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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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D. Eidensohn's poem
"The Wall" won an International Poetry Contest. His poems appear in
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