You'd think the media had feasted itself silly on the notion that young gay men's reckless behaviors were fueling the HIV epidemic. And then I stumbled on this article from the UK Guardian this week -- with the explosive headline, "Young gay men fueling HIV epidemic, study warns." Irresponsbile and fear-mongering mainstream media garbage at its worst. THe picture accompanying the article -- featuring scantily clad, non-white men sweating profusely while gyrating on the dancefloor -- is just the icing on the cake. Or should I say, the shit-streak on the toilet.

But of course, this alarming headline bears no relation to what the research actually found. Timothy at Box Turtle Bulletin breaks it down for us:

The conclusions from this study were that there are two distinct methods of HIV transmission in Belgium and that these two populations have little overcross. Young gay men who become infected get the virus from other local young gay men while Africans and other non-gay patients came to be infected through travel or migrated to Belgium with the virus.

* * What this study did not find was that "white gay men take greater HIV risk". The study told us almost nothing whatsoever about whether "white gay men" or "gay men of color" take greater risk, because the study had few gay men of color. Belgium is not known for its racial diversity (racism in Belgium is defined in terms of Dutch v. French speaking people). Nearly all of Belgium is white, so nearly all gay Belgians who seroconvert were also white.

* Nor did it find a rampant disregard for safer sex among gay Belgians. A rough calculation suggests that only about 4% of gay Belgian men are living with HIV, a rate a third that of the US. In fact, it would appear that a small subset of young gay Belgians were behaving irresponsibly (perhaps specific social circles) and were consequently infected with a number of sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV.

* Nor does the research of transmission rates and methods in Belgium tell us much about rates and methods in the rest of Europe and especially the rest of the West. This was a local study involving one Belgian city, not "Europe and the UK" or anywhere else for that matter.

This is why it is so critical for us to keep a close eye on media reports relating to gay men's lives. The media gets it not just wrong, but maliciously erroneous. Shame on not just The Guardian for smearing the queers, but also the dozens of other publications that picked up this non-sense angle and ran with it (which includes gay media, like Pink News). Daniel Reeders has an excellent post on the local Australian debates over this noxious misinformation. It's nothing short of scientifically-veiled gay bashing.