Barebacking

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Originally Posted by SLS

Some of you make it sound like the average gay man would have laughed at the idea of using a condom before hiv hit hard. Were syphilis, hepetitus, herpes, and anal warts just considered battle scars then or what? Three are/were incurable, the other can cause major incurable damage. To me this makes no sense, and makes it sound like gay men were all walking stds anyway back then.

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Hell, a lot of gay men I know today still say "As long as I don't get HIV, I'm OK with the rest of it as long as it's curable." There are tons of guys going to sex clubs to this day, very much like back in the '70s in places like the Mineshaft in NYC. So to a certain extent, yeah, to a lot of gay men, STDs are just par for the course.

OBVIOUSLY, however, that's just a certain faction of the community. There are thousands of gay men who practice safer sex. But, as far as I'm concerned, that's common knowledge to anyone with a pulse, and really should go without saying.

Well I am kind of a stupid hick from the midwest but yeah I already knew all that. It's just wierd to me that I keep hearing from a lot of older gay men that everything was care free and without consequence back in the day. Somehow I really doubt that. The producers back then knew that, what made it ok to expose their employees to all the other shit?

k, I'm dating myself, but when I was in high school, the big scare was herpes, because it wasn't curable. There were even herpes dating services (phone in those days, 'cause no web) for people who had herpes...

Other than that, I knew a lot of people who went without protection. Of course, I don't think I even *knew* a gay person in high school... so I'm speaking of hetero couples.

In fact, at my hippie high school, the teachers gave "awards" to students at graduation, which were humorous things, and one very visible couple received the "Couple most likely to concieve" award. I think I got the "How to succeed in business without asking anyone" award or something... long story... :)