partner. This makes it a "fringe and marginal" activity, he claimed, which should not be addressed in major health promotion campaigns.
He dismissed ideas of a "right" to have bareback sex as "passé
liberal arguments" and accused the media of glamourising the subject.
Tempers ran high in the ensuing debate. Some delegates said gay men would
not understand Maguire's definition of "barebacking". He was
also accused by one delegate of labelling "barebackers" as "deviant
and irrelevant," a charge he robustly defended.
Mark Watson said the UK gay.com site flashed up health promotion messages
on the potential dangers of unprotected anal sex. The session ended with
him asking delegates whether they thought gay.com should close its UK
bareback room. No one voted in favour and in a second question on whether
the room should be kept open, a clear majority voted in favour.
By contrast, the CHAPS session on oral sex proved rather lukewarm.
Ford Hickson, of Sigma Research, said that last year's gay men's sex survey
showed that 97 per cent of gay men, both positive and negative, had oral
sex.
Dr Barry Evans, of the Public Health Laboratory Service, said estimates
from around the world now showed that up to three per cent of HIV infections
in gay men were caused by oral sex. (Surveys in recent years have reported
figures varying from zero to eight per cent). This means that in the UK
between 15 and 45 new cases each year are acquired by gay men through
oral sex.
High viral load and other sexually-transmitted infections increase the
chances of a
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positive man passing on HIV during oral sex, while bleeding gums, cuts, sores, and infections in the mouth and throat are seen as being crucial in a negative man being infected.
