Gay Sex Same As Front Lines Of War

A British MP has compared gay sex to fighting on the front lines of a war (as in life-threatening).

The leader of his party is being urged to sack the homophobic naysayer. I’m not sure if that’s right, but this certainly needs to be addressed.

Currently in the UK the legal age of consent is 16 for all sex. In 2000 they changed the legal age for gay sex from 18 to 16.

This MP, Julian Lewis, thinks this was wrong and it should have stayed at 18.

Lewis said “that anyone aged 16 to 18 who had unprotected gay sex was ‘at risk, and potentially at risk of their lives’.”

Now this is true to an extent. Unprotected sex at any age is a risk for STIs, including HIV, and yes, there is a higher rate of HIV among gay men, but any person of any sex and any orientation can get HIV.

Not to mention, for young gay men having an older age of consent probably won’t make any difference to them. If they want to have sex they will, regardless of the laws.

As well, because HIV is so prominent among gay men there tends to be a lot more education and services around it, which could potentially improve a young gay man’s knowledge about HIV compared to his peers.

Yes, unprotected sex can lead to HIV transmission, but the problem I have with this is equating it to death.

“It is nevertheless true that someone is just as much dead if they are among one of the much smaller percentage of people who would be unfortunate enough to contract a deadly disease through a form of sexual activity as they are if they are in the frontline and they find themselves being injured or killed.”

Plenty of people have lived with HIV for more than 20 years and will continue to do so indefinitely.

The medications are great and if people get the proper treatment and take care of themselves they will likely live into old age and have a life not unlike people without HIV. Especially in the UK where healthcare is free and available.

Also, it’s important to realise that the MP doesn’t have an understanding of the statistics. Just because there is a higher rate among gay men doesn’t mean that he can project the data the way he did.

There is only a small portion of people with HIV in the whole of the UK, and, as of June 2009 in the UK, the percentage of new diagnoses from gay sex was 36% and those from heterosexual sex was 53%. So there.

Clearly this man is using his biases to colour his politics without looking at the facts first.