How can I convince my mom that I won't get AIDS just because I'm gay?

April 13, 2008 12:07 PM

Help me dispute an anti-gay AIDS statistic from my mother. What (estimated) percentage of all AIDS cases are from gay sexual contact? Do homosexual men have more partners than heterosexual men?

My mother is having a hard time accepting my sexuality and she's concerned I'll get AIDS. She sent me the following statistic from a Christian anti-gay organization and it doesn't seem accurate to me:

"AIDS Transmission

"The HIV virus is transmitted through the exchange of infected bodily fluids. Some 89 percent of persons known to have AIDS are homosexuals or intravenous drug users. Another 3 percent became infected through blood transfusions (most before blood banks began testing for the AIDS antibody), 1 percent are infants and children, and 3 percent are undetermined.

"These figures leave 4 percent of known AIDS patients who became infected with the disease through heterosexual contact."


Are there any statistics I can give her that might ease her fears?

posted by GardnerDB to health & fitness (24 comments total)

This site says it's 47%
posted by mpls2 at 12:11 PM on April 13, 2008

i can't help but notice that the quoted text never actually indicate what percentage of hiv infections are contributed to homosexual intercourse.
posted by phil at 12:13 PM on April 13, 2008

I think this page would be a good place to start:
CDC stats page on HIV/AIDS
posted by fiercecupcake at 12:13 PM on April 13, 2008

In Canada her statistic would be around 72% - 51% MSM, 4% MSM+IDU, 17% IDU. Its high, especially considering the low number of msm, but her statistic is definitely off.
posted by fermezporte at 12:26 PM on April 13, 2008

Of all the people that wear blue hats, 89% are homosexuals! Only 4% of known blue hat wearers are heterosexual! Ergo... All homosexuals will wear blue hats?

Seems like broken causality to me.
posted by jlowen at 12:31 PM on April 13, 2008

Tell her unsafe sexual practices result in HIV infection not gayness per se.

Statistics about the populations are at the end of the day meaningless.

The only important thing is your own behavior, and the prior and present behavior of your sexual partner(s).
posted by tachikaze at 12:35 PM on April 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

You're forgetting that the majority (60% or more) of AIDS cases are in Africa, where the mode of transmission is overwhelmingly heterosexual.
posted by neuron at 12:37 PM on April 13, 2008 [3 favorites]

Her reasoning is so faulty. I would respond with the proposition that she should stop being heterosexual and shack up with another woman - after all, she's nearly twice as likely to get HIV from sexual intercourse with a man as you are from sexual intercourse with a woman! And the number of women who get AIDS from female-to-female sexual contact isn't even documented.
posted by muddgirl at 12:41 PM on April 13, 2008 [7 favorites]

Seems to me the better statistic is "What is my chance of contracting HIV if I use a condom?" (Assuming you use condoms.) After all, 100% of people with Emery-Dreifuss Muscular Dystrophy are men, but that doesn't mean that all men have it.

From the Wikipedia page on condoms.

According to a 2000 report by the National Institutes of Health, correct and consistent use of latex condoms reduces the risk of HIV/AIDS transmission by approximately 85% relative to risk when unprotected, putting the seroconversion rate (infection rate) at 0.9 per 100 person-years with condom, down from 6.7 per 100 person-years.

If I understand correctly, that means that even if you're having sex with someone who's seropositive, as long as you use a condom chances are you won't get infected over your entire lifetime. And of course, if your partner isn't seropositive, then your chances of infection are zero.
posted by lore at 12:41 PM on April 13, 2008

In Canada her statistic would be around 72% - 51% MSM, 4% MSM+IDU, 17% IDU..

It's worth noting that the figures are lower for new infections (46% MSM, 3% MSM+IDU, 14% IDU) and rising for heterosexuals. Whether this calms the fears of someone reading a Christian anti-gay website is a different story.

Also, HIV and AIDS aren't the same thing, and it's somewhat irritating to hear them used interchangeably.
posted by Adam_S at 12:42 PM on April 13, 2008

My Kuby Immunology text book states that globally 75% of HIV transmission is attributable to heterosexual contact, but the probability of transmission by vaginal intercourse is lower than by anal intercourse or IV drug use.
posted by Pantalaimon at 12:55 PM on April 13, 2008

Unprotected promiscuous sex is what cases transmission of the virus.

I think there is a perception (right or wrong) that homosexuals are more promiscuous than heterosexuals. If there is any truth to this at all, a major contributing factor is probably lack of legal standing for same-sex marriage. If mom is that worried about you, ask her to write a letter to her state representatives asking them to make same-sex marriage legal.
posted by Doohickie at 1:12 PM on April 13, 2008 [2 favorites]

Its not that homosexuals have more partners than heterosexuals (though they might, I have no idea) its that with no risk of pregnancy, homosexuals are more likely to have unprotected sex.
posted by missmagenta at 1:33 PM on April 13, 2008

If there is any truth to this at all, a major contributing factor is probably lack of legal standing for same-sex marriage.

Why is the ability to marry a major impediment to promiscuity?
posted by Krrrlson at 1:35 PM on April 13, 2008

The SF Aids Foundation might have some info on statistics.

But honestly, I only looked them up so that I could provide at least one bit of possibly valuable information. Because what I really want to add is that I can't think of any gay people I know whose parents didn't trot out the AIDS thing after finding out their kid was gay. Mine did it. All of my girlfriends' parents did it. It's absolutely par for the course. It happens after it's sunk in and they've decided they want to change the fact of it.

I think the AIDS reference invariably comes during the third stage of the parent's grief -- the bargaining stage.

Sorta like:

1. Denial: "You did NOT just tell me you're queer. I just thought you always really liked girls' clothes because they're pretty."

2. Anger: "Why me? What did I do wrong? Was it those tap dance lessons I made you take when you were six? I thought they'd make you more attractive to the ladies!!"

3. Bargaining: "Fine. You're gay. But you know, you're going to get AIDS. All gay people do. It's a fact. Here, look, this church group has even documented it. So really, don't you want to be straight? It's better if you're straight."

4. Depression: "You do what you want. It's your own life. Don't worry about me. I'll be fine. You go on and have your gay boyfriends or whatever. Don't mind me."

5. Acceptance: "Wait, you'll take me to the ballet when your father refuses to go? You say you want to have a spa day? Oh son, I love you. There are a lot of bigots in this world. Don't ever let them get to you."

So my point, basically, is that you shouldn't have to find hard statistics to deflect bogus ones. Your mom is going through a list of things that she thinks might change your mind. There will be others. It's sad, but it's also natural.

Help her find some good things to focus on in the meantime.

It's a long road. Best of luck.
posted by mudpuppie at 1:42 PM on April 13, 2008 [8 favorites]

Why is the ability to marry a major impediment to promiscuity?

While I accept that increasing social acceptance and a growing norm of long-term monogamous relationships may change habits, the main impediment to male promiscuity is still women.
posted by Adam_S at 1:54 PM on April 13, 2008 [3 favorites]

I would start by suggesting to your grandma that she not get her health information from Probe Ministries. The only two sources cited (even vaguely) are the 1986 Surgeon General's Report and 1987 CDC figures. Oh, and "some health officials" in the 1990s.
posted by dhartung at 2:03 PM on April 13, 2008

Did anyone notice this? Some 89 percent of persons known to have AIDS are homosexuals or intravenous drug users.

Drug users and homosexuals are lumped together. So really the amount of homosexual AIDS cases could be as high as 89%, but could be as low as 0 - we have no idea.
posted by PercussivePaul at 2:39 PM on April 13, 2008 [1 favorite]

Uh, there's some reasons why there's such a large preponderance of heterosexual HIV transmission in Africa. I would probably remove Africa from the equation and stick to comparing apples to apples in the U.S.A., assuming that's where you are. Similarly, remove intravenous drug use (unless that applies to you). HIV transmission no respecter of political sensibilities, sadly. Receiving anal intercourse is a fairly wide highway for transmission. Oral sex isn't, unless you've got bloody gums. Vaginal intercourse still isn't as "great" of a transmission vector as anal is.

Not to squick out your mom, if you're, ah, oral-only, I saw at least one study that tracked approximately fifty gay men who were promiscuous by most reasonable standards (let's face it, once you get that year-long bath pass, you're halfway there) but who stuck to oral-only. Only one of them contracted HIV, and he had indulged in anal intercourse. Of course, that's hardly definitive, but it is suggestive. I suppose the only way to really settle the dispute is to get about five hundred HIV-positive bisexual men and give them, oh, say five HIV-negative partners of each sex, and have at it. It'd be definitive, cruel, and somewhat pointless.

Statistics can be something of a counter-intuitive trap at points. We just had a very nice post on the 98% certain test. Even if half of the HIV-bearing population (subtracting IV drugs, bad transfusions, and the like) were heterosexual, it would still mean that the statistically smaller proportion of MSM population was very highly represented.

Avoid arguing this on her turf, it's more or less irrelevant. If you're gay, you're gay, and the stats won't change it a bit.
posted by adipocere at 3:09 PM on April 13, 2008

The statistics your mom is quoting show up here on a google search. The piece she was citing from was written in 1992. If you want to show her that she's wrong, find (accurate) statistics from 1992 and compare them to the most current (accurate) statistics you can find.
posted by 23skidoo at 3:27 PM on April 13, 2008

Regardless of whether your mom's statistic is correct on its surface, it's not correct in its context. Concluding "gay men catch AIDS" via "most people with AIDS are gay" is akin to concluding "white men become senators" via "most senators are white men".

According to the CDC stats posted earlier in this thread, in the year 2005, there were about 19,000 cases of adult or adolescent males who engaged in male-to-male sexual contact catching AIDS.

There are something like 90 million males from age 20 to 64 in the US.

It's hard to arrive at a firm percentage of people who are gay, but brief googling reveals that estimates (ignoring obvious fundamentalist Christian websites) seem to range from 4% to 10%. Let's split the difference and say 7%.

That means something like 6,300,000 gay men aged 20 to 64.

Which means an average pre-retirement aged gay American man's chance of getting AIDS in 2005 was about three in a thousand. Nothing to be scoffed at and dismissed out of hand, but also certainly not cause for undue fear.

Also note that that "19,000" figure listed above is not the number who caught AIDS via male-to-male sexuality; it's the number who engaged in male-to-male sexuality and caught AIDS. So it includes, for example, men who caught AIDS via sharing needles for their drugs, if they happened to also be gay.

Also note that this is an average, and so includes people who are rampantly promiscuous, people who are not smart enough or wise enough to take reasonable precautions, et cetera.

Presumably you don't share needles for drugs, you aren't rampantly promiscuous, and you are both smart enough and wise enough to take reasonable precautions. Presumably your mom would understand all of these things were they pointed out to her.
posted by Flunkie at 3:38 PM on April 13, 2008 [2 favorites]

There are two different statistics that are relevant here: the percent of HIV cases that are related to men having sex with men (MSM), and the proportion of the gay/bisexual/MSM population which is HIV positive. Also, what the numbers are like nationally may or may not be reflective of what happens in your local community (i.e. the one from which you are selecting sex partners).

For the first one, yes, the largest group of HIV/AIDS cases, both current living cases and total cumulative cases, are MSM cases. The CDC's latest (which is not very recent - 2003) data estimates that half the people living with HIV/AIDS are MSM, including those who also inject drugs (10% of the total MSM group). MSM are over two-thirds of all adults ever diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and 71% of those newly diagnosed in 2005.

Secondly, yes, gay/bisexual men are more likely to be HIV positive; a higher proportion of MSM are living with HIV than heterosexuals and lesbians. That percent varies. It's about 1/3 where I live, 25% in some urban areas, less in rural areas, and we don't have a very good national estimate because we don't have a good number for the denominator. As a gay man finding sex partners in that pool, yes, you're more likely to run across someone who is positive, whether they know it or not. THAT DOES NOT MEAN YOU ARE GOING TO GET AIDS.

As that last set of statistics shows, MOST gay/bi men are not HIV+. The gay/bi community has done more than any other to bring down the number of new infections. Gay/bi men are more aware of HIV and its consequences than any other group. What really matters is what you do to protect yourself. While it's nice that your mom is concerned for you, being an adult is a risky business in general, what with buses and lightening and pandemic flu and any number of other things that could do you in. Can you convince her that she raised you to take care of yourself and look both ways before you cross the street and you'll still retain that sense of safety as a gay man?

You may want to direct your mom to PFLAG if you haven't already, in addition to the CDC info. I'm sorry she's having a hard time with your coming out, and I hope she finds a better way to express her concern for you.
posted by gingerbeer at 3:40 PM on April 13, 2008

Number of Partners Doesn't Explain Gay HIV Rate

"We found that even if gay men behave the same way heterosexuals do -- in terms of sexual partner numbers -- gay men would still have a huge HIV epidemic," Goodreau said.

Conversely, "even if heterosexual men behaved the way gay men do, they would not have a huge HIV epidemic," he added.

In fact, for straight men and women to experience an epidemic of HIV infection as widespread as that of gay men, they would have to have an average of almost five unprotected sexual partners every year -- almost three times the rate of the average gay male, Goodreau and Golden found.

So, why the higher HIV risk for gay men? "A couple of different things could give gay men an overall higher risk for HIV than heterosexuals," Goodreau said.

One reason HIV remains epidemic among gay men is that anal sex is much more conducive to the transmission of HIV transmission than is vaginal sex, the researcher said.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 5:14 PM on April 13, 2008

More accurate statistics are not going to solve this problem.
posted by electroboy at 7:08 AM on April 14, 2008 [1 favorite]