Hey, Faggot:

Thanks for the encouragement to move on to a new topic–which we’ll do by the end of this column. By the end of this column, we’ll be talking about pussy farts, I promise.

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But how can you say preventing HIV infection is simply a matter of taking commonsense precautions and then say getting infected isn’t anyone’s fault? If prevention is just commonsense stuff, then it follows that infection results from a lack of common sense and is therefore the fault of the persons involved–infector and infectee. If you’re going to assert the former (prevention equals common sense), have the courage not to contradict yourself by including the latter (infection equals fault).

Hey, DK:

. . . anywhere near as boring as reading these letters about how boring my AIDS columns were . . .

. . . then I apologize for writing those boring AIDS columns!

Second, all that yammering we did about the AIDS crisis led the morons to believe HIV was the only STD they needed to worry about. For the past 15 years the AIDS crisis has been practically the sole focus of safe-sex campaigns and the sole reason given to morons to take precautions. So when AIDS became less deadly, as it has recently, morons became more likely to take risks. And by the logic of AIDS education itself, why shouldn’t they? Continuing to promote AIDS as the only “crisis”-brand STD drowns out awareness about other STDs, awareness that might keep the morons from harming themselves; it also promotes risk taking by folks who, rightly or wrongly, don’t feel they’re at risk for acquiring HIV. Syph, gonorrhea, chlamydia, herpes, warts, hep, children, etc: AIDS is one point on a continuum of risk (granted, a high point), one of many STDs we need to take precautions against and seek treatment for if we catch. Crisis or no crisis, the virus isn’t going anywhere–like Cats, HIV is now and forever. We need to take reasonable precautions, now and forever, to protect ourselves from HIV and everything else–and crisis-driven AIDS education gets in the way of that.