The Men Who Want AIDS-- And How It Improved Their Lives

[tednlou2]

I used the same headline, that Out Magazine used.  I was reading my latest copy today, and came across this story.  This magazine comes, even though I never ordered it, but I digress. 

Interesting article.  I can hear all the anti-social programs folks now, saying this is another example of the "taker/give me society."  While being very dangerous, is this pragmatic? 

http://www.out.com/news-opinion/2013/08/02/men-who-want-aids-bronx-new-york?page=0,0

[Tool man]

That is a sad statement on our society.

TM

[leatherman]

I've been quite horrified a number of times through the years at testing events my ASO has held here in little ol' rural Rock Hill SC. I've spoken with straight people, women, middle-aged persons, poor, blacks and whites who were hoping so badly that their test results would come back positive so that they had access to help with housing, food, utilities and health care. In a poor red state like South Carolina, there aren't many resources at all to help anyone. Thankfully, we have a good ASO system (that's fairly coordinated - thanks in part to the work of the SC HIV Task Force and the SC HIV Planning Council) which is able to assist positive people with getting their basic needs met.

It's broken my heart to see these people crying when their test results came back negative and they considered this bad news. But when you leave a testing event w/o being HIV positive and are unable to get access to housing, food, or health care, I can see how that would seem like "bad news". However it still hurts my head and my heart to think there are people who not only want to be infected with HIV; but whose lives really would improve a great deal if they only were HIV positive and had access to these benefits. It's definitely a crazy mixed-up world sometimes.

[ratcat]

Wow Leatherman that is just nuts.  My mother always told me that if I didn't have anything good to say about a subject to then not say anything.  In that case, I'm speechless.

[Valmont]

Ohhh Leatherman, I´m just so impacted in regard to your experience with people so desesperated for hopping being infected like these, this generates a so strange feeling to me... very hard to understand...  particularly from people coming from a developped country as US...  These is something that is working wrongly, definitively...