I went onto the Drudge Report today and read something that must be a bunch of shit or a complete hoax: “MAG: 25% OF NEW HIV-INFECTED GAY MEN SOUGHT OUT VIRUS, SAYS SAN FRAN HEALTH OFFICIAL.” Is there any truth to this? The link was E-mailed all over my office today, and it makes gay men look awful if it’s true. Can you prove or disprove Matt Drudge’s outrageous claims? I sincerely hope that it’s not true and that Matt Drudge’s “journalist” badge is revoked! –Can’t Trust Drudge
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Gregory Freeman wrote the story that Drudge–who seems to take a perverse delight in pumping stories that make gay men look awful–trumpeted on his Web site. Freeman’s piece focuses on so-called “bug chasers,” HIV-negative gay men who are actively trying to get infected, and “gift givers,” HIV-positive gay men who are only too happy to infect others. After a depressing slog through the cracked thinking of one bug chaser, Freeman whips out a little amateur psychoanalysis: “[Some] see HIV infection as inevitable…so they decide to take control of the situation and infect themselves. For others, deliberately infecting themselves is the ultimate taboo…and that has a strong erotic appeal for some men who have tried everything else.” Then he introduces Dr. Bob Cabaj, director of behavioral-health services for San Francisco County.
The day after Drudge ran the link, Cabaj accused Freeman of fabricating his quotes. In an interview with Newsweek, Cabaj denied ever saying that 25 percent of new infections in gay men are due to bug chasing. Freeman told Newsweek that he quoted Cabaj accurately and implied that the doctor got cold feet once the story hit the cable-news talk shows. “I can only imagine that now that it’s getting a lot of attention,” Freeman told Newsweek, “people are getting worried.”
When I read it I didn’t think that the now infamous and disputed “25 percent” was the most shocking revelation in it. To my mind that honor goes to the comment from Daniel Castellanos, assistant director of community education at Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York. Castellanos, who acknowledges that the bug chasing phenomenon is real, was asked if he would try to talk someone out of trying to catch HIV. “If someone comes to me and says he wants to get HIV,” Castellanos replies, “I might work with him around why he wants to do it….But if in the end that’s a decision he wants to make, there’s a point where we have to respect people’s decisions.”
