AIDS TURNS 32

HUFFPO: AIDS at 32: For Whom the Bell Tolls (32 Notables Share Their Stories) My contribution to this: "Of course I'm delighted that new drugs have largely stopped making AIDS a death sentence, but to see young people who apparently think of these drugs as a cure is horrifying. HIV transmission is treated casually -- or even as inevitable -- and I don't understand my friends who are getting tested every few months. Doesn't that prove that they aren't practicing safe sex? We do know how to prevent HIV transmission, so why aren't we doing it? Are we even talking about AIDS enough? One young friend of mine didn't even know that the disease can have a decade-long incubation period during which symptoms don't show. The younger generation didn't watch their friends waste away as my generation did, so they don't know the horrors firsthand. Infections are up among youth as they actively seek out barebacking. And it saddens me that looks-obsessed gay men may have come to the conclusion that there isn't much point in living when you're old and no longer desirable. I hope we are more than that and, as the great Larry Kramer points out, we should value each other's humanity more. We aren't just pieces of meat with an expiration date after which we become trolls. We're supposed to be a community." I URGE YOU TO CHECK OUT THE REST OF THE SUBMISSIONS BY JACKIE BEAT, PETER STALEY, GREG LOUGANIS AND MORE: HUUPO