Nov 09, 2007  |  By: RYAN LEE  | COMMENTS     

Editors’ note: This is the first in a two-part series taking a frank look at gay sex, condom use and HIV prevention. Next week: Are generations of gay men who endured the height of the AIDS epidemic no longer committed to using condoms?

ATLANTA — There was once a time, in the not too distant past, when there wasn’t a gay social function — whether held at a club, community center or festival — that didn’t stock condoms seemingly by the truckload.

There was once a time, in the not too distant past, when many gay men — older men, teens, even gay porn stars — wouldn’t think about having unprotected sex, particularly with casual sex partners.

Times have changed.

Jay Dempsey runs the P.O.O.L. program for gay men at AID Atlanta, and begins each new group by asking attendees whether condom use is still the sexual norm among local gay men.

“The answer’s always no,” Dempsey said.

The change in gay men’s views toward condoms is often associated with the onset of highly effective anti-AIDS drugs in the mid-’90s, when the perception of the disease transformed from an automatic death sentence to an almost invisible, manageable illness. Experts agree that no longer seeing friends suffer or die from AIDS has affected how gay men approach safer sex, but other factors have changed as well.

The condom-friendly sex education of the ’90s has been replaced wholesale by the Bush administration’s devotion to abstinence-until-marriage, while, simultaneously, marriage has become a legal impossibility for most gay and lesbian Americans. And as gay people fight for rights and acceptance from society at-large, many continue to struggle with self-acceptance, tensions with their families and creating healthy intimate relationships.

“If you have this feeling of yourself as not being worthy, perhaps you don’t really care about yourself, you don’t care about your health, and so you might not use a condom,” said Celia Lescano, a researcher at Brown University who studies condom use among young people.

And then there are gay men who believe wearing a condom is futile.

“There’s a deep linkage in the minds of some gay people that if you’re gay, you’ll inevitably get HIV,” said Donna Futterman, professor of clinical pediatrics and director of the Adolescent AIDS program at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in New York.

Colton Fitzgerald thought he could navigate HIV/AIDS as successfully as he navigated being an openly gay teenager in Loganville, Ga., a small town of about 9,000 residents.

Before and after he came out as gay at age 13, Fitzgerald was bombarded with messages from his family, school and church about homosexuality being dirty and sinful.

“Where I grew up, I always heard gay is wrong, and all gays have HIV,” said Fitzgerald, who is now 18. But Fitzgerald persevered as the only gay teenager at his high school, and finally discovered a more accepting environment when he attended his first Atlanta Gay Pride festival in June 2005.

As he began frequenting gay venues and indulging in promiscuous sex, Fitzgerald developed a crude HIV-detection system that he thought would keep him safe. His screening process led him to start a relationship and have unprotected sex with a boy he met at a birthday party in early June 2006.

Fitzgerald had never seen the young man before, which he interpreted as a good sign.

“I figured he was somewhat of a new person who hadn’t been around the block,” said Fitzgerald, who had a three-and-a-half week relationship with the young man.

Three months later, on Sept. 17, 2006, Fitzgerald tested HIV-positive at age 17.

“I never felt like I was Superman, I just felt like I could outsmart the system,” he said. “I always felt like it definitely could happen to me, but I thought I could figure out a certain method of how it was dispersed by people.

“It’s definitely something I was not expecting, especially this early in my life,” Fitzgerald added.

The HIV rate for gay and bisexual men 13-24 years old declined by 30 percent from 1994 to 1998, but skyrocketed 41 percent from 1999 to 2003, according to a 10-year analysis of HIV diagnosis among youth ages 13-24 conducted by the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention.

“The study found that HIV diagnosis among young females declined steadily from 1994-2003 in every racial/ethnic and age group,” said CDC spokesperson Jennifer Ruth. “Among young males, however, an initial decline was offset by significant increases in more recent years, driven primarily by increases among young adult [ages 20-24] men who have sex with men.”

The CDC notes that although HIV diagnoses are ...