Well, come on, of course taxes are regressive around here— Washingon is one of only nine states without an income tax, after all. Let's see, the two most populous are
Florida and Texas— I seem to recall hearing those two states mentioned together, somewhere before...
Hasn't the Latte tax been in the ballot initiative pipeline for a long time now? There was an
article about it in The Stranger over a year ago; is this still the same initiative? And speaking of The Stranger...
Hasn't Dan Savage
gone a bit overboard?
I mean, come on. I've been involved in a few email flame wars in my time, but I've never resorted to an FOIA request before, you know? And Public Health of King County/Seattle can't exactly turn around and demand all of
The Stranger's internal email to even the score, can they?
I'd just shrug and blame the late summer heat, if it weren't for the fact that Dan wears his personal politics on his sleeve. It looks to me like he's taking Public Health, a local government agency, to task for engaging in
politics in order to get its ostensible job done. Oh, the scandal! The outrage! Gee, Dan, do you think you could be any more of a flaming Libertarian?
From what I've read, it does look like Lifelong AIDS Alliance and Gay City are both doing pretty crappy work, but Dan's "The Righteous vs. AIDS, Inc" portrait of the situation doesn't appeal to me any more than the whitewash job LLA and GC seem to be engaged in.
I'm sure Dan would agree that one thing that ought to be done is to spend a little of that public anti-HIV funding trying to figure out what sorts of prevention strategies actually
work, but this notion gets scant mention in The Hunt For AIDS Evildoers.
I'm sure you notice the problem with the repeated assertion that AIDS in Seattle is being spread by a core of shadowy, amoral, irresponsible HIV terrorists. Not that it's judgemental— I'll agree with the notion that any HIV-positive person who knowingly engages in activity with a high risk of transmission without informing his or her partner is a despicable shithead. But do you see how many qualifiers it took to say that?
What if the infected person doesn't know he or she is infected? What constitutes "high risk behavior?" Are the partners allowed to determine acceptable levels of risk for themselves, or is that for the newspapers to decide? What if some of these scurrilous, amoral "core" HIV transmitters go so far as to—gasp—
lie about their HIV status when they're trying to get
laid?
This "core," it seems to me, must have some pretty blurry edges. If it didn't, after all, then how could the AIDS-causing "core" be infecting people outside the core? If the "core" is the only part of the population engaging in HIV-transmitting behavior, then shouldn't the incidence of AIDS be
dropping as the members of the "core," who expose their dread virus only to other "core" members, inevitably succumb to the disease?
OK, I've misrepresented Dan's position, and wandered off on a tangent, but it's in the service of a point. It's not at all clear that Dan thinks any AIDS education should be undertaken at all— after all, he's said right there in the paper that he believes current efforts do more harm than good, and I didn't notice him calling for any replacement program.
To the extent that he actually
favors any course of HIV prevention, it seems that what Dan really wants is to stigmatize (or, perhaps, re-stigmatize) unsafe behavior. But what does "unsafe behavior" mean? Is it just sex without condoms, or is there more to it than that? With the talk about "disclosure," is Dan saying that there ought to be a taboo against sex that is not preceded with medical discussion, and
truthful medical discussion, at that? No sex with multiple partners, no "open" relationships? No sex without a note from the doctor? No one-night stands? No more Wild Oats or Youthful Indiscretions?
If he really wants to change the culture and behavior of gay men in the service of ending the spread of AIDS, then it looks to me like Dan might eventually find himself advocating Gay Abstinance until Gay Marriage.
P.S. Did you know that Jen, the co-owner of Victrola quoted in that article, lived across the hall from me for a semester, back in ye olde college dayes? She borrowed some truly crappy music from me at one point, if I remember correctly.
