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LifeSiteNews Daily News reported in 2013 that

Nearly two-thirds of gay men who know they have AIDS have sex without condoms: CDC report

A new report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) shows approximately 62 percent of gay men who know they have HIV/AIDS continue to engage in sexual relations without using a prophylactic, a behavior that can spread AIDS.

Is this right?

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Such a value is, indeed, a finding of the CDC report in question. The LifeSiteNews article which paraphrases it is (purposefully, I believe) misleading, and fails to invoke the precise quantities listed in the report's additional, specific inquiry pertaining to individuals who were having unprotected sex with non-positive partners. As of 2011, only 13% of HIV-positive Men-Who-Have-Sex-With-Men (MSM)¹ undertook such behavior.

The disparity is accountable to men whose partners are also HIV-positive. Now, even between two HIV+ individuals, there's upshot in using prophylactics; there are other STDs, of course, and even other strains of HIV. But, knowing that ~87% of HIV+ MSM are sticking to partners who also carry the condition, we can reasonably suspect that that many of them act with a sense of conscientiousness, even if they're not making the choice to use condoms, specifically. This conjecture starkly contrasts the LifeSiteNews article's tacit suggestion that a majority of HIV+ gay men are negligently barebacking whoever they please, consequences to their partners' health be damned.

¹ Interesting lexical aside: In the field of epidemiology, terms such as "gay" and "homosexual" are considered less preferable, because a lot of men-who-have-sex-with-men actually identify as straight. Go figure.

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  • I am not knowledgeable in the field of epidemiology, but there is a very wide field between "a man having sex with another man" (which would include one-time occurrences, homo-curiosity, non-consensual encounters, or the one special person where one's usual preferences go out of the window) and "a man that is gay / homosexual" (i.e., identifying with preferring men).
    – DevSolar
    Jul 13, 2016 at 14:14
  • Where does "in the '80s" come from?
    – DevSolar
    Jul 13, 2016 at 14:19
  • Shit, I tapped the "post" button too soon- In the 80s, when GRID suddenly made orientation a subject of such immense epidemiological concern, there was much less validation for sexual gradience and much more stigma for being of non-straight orientation. So there were concomitantly more people who would have elided identifiers like 'bisexual with a preference for women,' or "a two on the Kinsey scale," etc, and the interest was in making sure such people weren't discounted from the studies out of hand.
    – Eikre
    Jul 13, 2016 at 14:23

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