Are Things Really Better?

I often comment that things are much better for the LGBT community in western countries and regarding acceptance that is mostly true. I read something a few days ago that made me feel sad for the gay community however. It seems the push for the gay community to be out and free is having negative consequences. There is a resistance towards being responsible and living a gay life. I witnessed this many times on the news when reporting on gay health issues. One evening they had on a man representing some gay men's group, he was livid with the reporter for suggesting that men having sex with strangers should use condoms. He informed the reporter that part of the gay culture was the excitement of having unprotected sex. Suggesting otherwise was being discriminatory towards gay men. Even now, many shows give the impression that HIV infection is just like getting a cold, take a couple of pills and everything will be fine in the morning. The stats that made me sad and were a little scary actually, were that young gay men no longer worry about getting infected, they said that if the infection rates amongst young guys stay on the same path as they are now, every second gay man in the U.S. will be infected with HIV by age 50! I will assume Canada will follow suit as I think our stats are the same. The other thing that got me was the age these stats now start, only 13 years old. How sad, boys 13, 14 and 15 already infected, kids really that are not ready for grown-up decisions. I think there is such a push on today to expose kids younger and younger to things of a sexual nature. I understand the idea of getting them to accept at a younger age their gay identity, I agree with that, it's probably a healthy thing to do but I think we better start saying there are negative aspects of entering into sexual relationships. It's ok to wait, there is plenty of time to be gay later, especially if you are only thirteen and it's certainly not bigoted to look out for the younger gay generation.