...while Michael Carter reports that emotions ran high on subjects like 'bareback' sex, chatrooms and oral sex
The conference debate on barebacking focused on the use of internet chatrooms
by gay men to meet for sex.
Mark Watson, UK communications director of the website www.gay.com,
said he opposed the decision of his American parent company to ban the
'bareback' chatroom site.
He said that knee-jerk arguments based upon assumption and prejudice had
already been employed by the opponents of legal equality in campaigns
to lower the age of consent and repeal Section 28.
He feared that there was similar evidence of intolerance and prejudice
among those within the gay community, and in particular gay men's health
promotion, who wished to see the closure of internet facilities used by
gay men to discuss, fantasise or meet for bareback sex.
The chatroom is visited by around 2,000 people a week, he said, many of
whom were HIV positive and felt inhibited or reluctant to use other chatrooms,
as they feared the stigmatisation of their status.
Mark Maguire, head of HIV health promotion at Camden and Islington Health
Authority, said that research showed that 40 per cent of gay men admit
to having unprotected anal sex. In most instances, this was of no concern
in terms of HIV transmission as it occurred between gay men of the same
HIV status, positive or negative.
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Only about one per cent of gay men have 'bareback sex', he maintioned, defining this strictly as non-negotiated unprotected sex where one of the partners is HIV positive and does not know, or care, about the status of his
