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From: sdyer@bbncc5.UUCP (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: New York anti-sex laws - newspaper article
Message-ID: <156@bbncc5.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 28-Nov-85 20:17:26 EST
Article-I.D.: bbncc5.156
Posted: Thu Nov 28 20:17:26 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 1-Dec-85 03:21:45 EST
References: <994@utcs.uucp>
Organization: Bolt Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 25

>Pretty strange, wouldn't you say?  It's the ole double-standard again:
>straight bars are not disease centres, but gay bars are.  I bet that a higher
>fraction of the straight clientele of a straight bar has herpes than the
>fraction of the gay clientele of a gay bar has aids.  But anyway... the other
>thing that really angered me about this article is that they seem to be saying
>that the PURPOSE of (gay) sex is to transmit aids.  As if that's what we're
>trying to do.  And of course there's also the assumption that straight people
>never have anal intercourse, which is quite established to be false.  Actually,
>this article also assumes that straight people don't have oral intercourse.

Um, I'm holding off on any opinion of the Mineshaft closing right now, but
the Mineshaft wasn't your "typical" gay bar where you might go for a beer
to meet your friends--it was a pretty raunchy sex club where unsafe sex
practices remained commonplace even up until its closing.  It *does* boggle
my mind to imagine the mindset of the people who continued to have sex there.
Although it is always hard to separate politics from practice in a situation
of this kind, I am inclined to think that this closure wasn't so much anti-gay
as anti-unsafe-sex, especially given the observed intransigence of the owners
in encouraging the use of condoms and safe sex practices.  The herpes analogy
is pretty weak, since I doubt anyone would lift a finger, not to mention a
court order, if herpes were an epidemic in the gay community.
-- 
/Steve Dyer
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