Oh Dear....The "DL" & HIV

Sometimes my Google news alerts can be the debil...yes, I meant to type "debil."

I know some will accuse me of "Black man hating" or "pushing an IR agenda" for bringing up this article, but oh well. Information is power...that's my ONLY agenda in bringing this up.  J.L. King, author of  "On the Down Low: A Journey into the Lives of 'Straight' Black Men Who Sleep With Men,"  is back with a novel and CD. 

Please go HERE to read the article in its entirety; the following are key points that jumped out at me immediately :

King also plans to talk to Metro Detroiters about how down-low behavior contributes to the high rate of HIV/AIDS among African-American women. According to the Centers for Disease Control, in 2003, black women accounted for 67 percent of all new AIDS cases among women, compared to 15 percent of new cases among white women. Two years later, the CDC cited "men on the down low," or men who are bisexual but don't disclose that behavior to women, as the main reason for rising HIV infections in black women.

"I know people get tired of hearing about it. I get tired of the death threats because I talk about the down low. I get tired of accusations that I'm destroying relationships between African-American men and women. "But African-American women still are getting infected by heterosexual behavior. It's important for us to continue to talk about the down low, down-low behavior and sexuality. Until we get to the point where we can talk about it in our homes, in our community, in our churches, we're always going to be talking about STDs and HIV rising in the African-American community. We'll continue to get the numbers from the CDC saying the numbers are going up."

Four years after his book release, King gets about 500 e-mails weekly from women pleading for help after learning of their husband's or boyfriend's secret sex lives. King says women come to his forums crying they are afraid to have sex, get married or share intimacy. He encourages them to be fearless, but armed with information -- and condoms.

I think the true indictment here should be the homophobia in the Black "community" that drives this behavior "in the closet."  I also think this information is important because I get tired of certain folks trying to deny that this DL business exists and is contributing to the rising rates of HIV among some Black women.  CNN did a fabulously lousy job of reporting on this with their "Black women are the face of AIDS" smear campaign.

Source