“Barebacking Has Become the Norm”

The excerpt below is from an article about “barebacking” (condomless anal sex) that reviews two books that assess the health risks of homosexual sex. It was written by a homosexual physician and was published in a homosexual NY weekly newspaper (emphasis added).

WARNING: OFFENSIVE SUBJECT MATTER

Excerpted from “Crystal, Barebacking in Perspective: Two front-line warriors for public health offer balanced assessments of risks facing gay men,” published Jan. 5-11, 2006, in Gay City News:

By Lawrence D. Mass, MD

… At sex parties, which have grown steadily since the closing of back rooms in the bars, and at the bathhouses in Fort Lauderdale, one of them a beautiful, state-of-the-art spa, another trend was emerging. Barebacking is not new to South Florida or elsewhere, but it’s in Fort Lauderdale that I first became aware of what I myself might have called—before reading Michael Shernoff’s “Without Condoms”––barebacking with a vengeance. On any given night at the baths, you’re hard put to find anyone with bedside condoms. And if you bring your own, you are likely to be rebuffed. Even if you find a willing partner, you better have brought your own, because unlike the leading bathhouses in New York City, the Fort Lauderdale baths don’t provide them with your towel, or otherwise promote them. You have to ask for them. For what may be a minority but a sizable one, barebacking has become the norm and if you don’t like it, you can go shove it elsewhere.

… Different people are barebacking for different reasons in varying circumstances, not all of them diabolical. Not every barebacker is like [Bearyrnz2bpoz: need to be married to HIV, to be born-again into the brotherhood]. And even someone like [bearynrz2bpoz], as Shernoff demonstrates, is not necessarily psychotic, criminal, or evil. His choices might make a degree of sense for him not immediately apparent to the rest of us.