Risky sex thrives in shadows
When Spokane business owner Marvin Reguindin started dating his male partner seven years ago, the duo faced an issue most heterosexual couples take for granted. His partner wanted to hold hands in public, but Reguindin felt unsafe and uncomfortable doing so in conservative Spokane.
That private issue for the two men has public health implications for the entire community, health experts say. When gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or questioning individuals (GLBTQ) don’t feel accepted, they tend to hide their sexuality and engage in unsafe behavior. A conservative environment also can result in dangerous sexual choices among heterosexual people if they feel what they are doing is wrong in the eyes of the community, Spokane Regional Health District spokeswoman Julie Graham said.
“Anyone who is engaging in behaviors that either they don’t want to admit to themselves or don’t want to get caught doing—male or female—it’s going to lead to riskier behavior,” she said, speaking on behalf of the HIV/AIDS Prevention Department. With statistics showing sexually transmitted diseases on the rise in Eastern Washington, health officials are taking greater interest in risky sexual behavior and looking for ways to curb it. And they already have learned it could be a complex task.
The Internet, for example, is making it easier for people to go underground for sex. Singles Web sites such as Gay.com and bulletin-board sites such as Craigslist.org make it possible for people to find anonymous partners and hook up within hours of posting a personal ad.
STD outbreaks have been linked to Internet chats in other parts of the country. A 2003 California Department of Health Services study found that 23 percent of men who had sex with men and who’d contracted syphilis met their partners online. A 2004 Internet-based study of 129 gay HIV-positive men by San Francisco’s Center for AIDS Prevention Studies found that 95 percent said the Web was their primary method for finding sexual partners.
Graham relayed a scenario she said plays out often in Spokane: A gay or bisexual man marries a woman because it’s socially acceptable. He has affairs with men he doesn’t know, but doesn’t use condoms because he fears his wife will find them and wonder why he needs prophylactics. Meanwhile, he catches a sexually transmitted disease and brings it home to his wife.Risky-sex scenarios are common in the heterosexual community, too. A young woman raised in a strict family might not carry condoms for fear of being caught with them. She also might not plan ahead for safe sex because if sex with a man “just happens,” it feels less sinful and is easier to justify to herself than if she had anticipated it, Graham said.
When a person believes sexual desires are wrong, they will take risky steps to not get caught acting on those feelings, she said.
“In a conservative climate it is more difficult for people to be more honest with themselves and their families … when they feel there could be condemnation,” Graham said.
Some sexually transmitted diseases are on the rise in Spokane and northern Idaho. In 2004, 1,136 Spokane County residents reported contracting Chlamydia, up from 660 in 1999. In the five northern Idaho counties, that disease grew from 263 cases in 2001 to 320 cases in 2004.
Gonorrhea rates have gone up and down in Spokane County, but they saw a six-year peak last year of 150 new cases. They hit a high in Idaho, too, with 12 new cases in 2004 compared with nine or 10 in previous years.
Dr. Kim Thorburn, the district’s health officer, said that although the number of HIV and AIDS cases reported in 2004 is lower than in years past, the previous years’ figures are misleading because the district was catching up with the reporting of already-existing cases. Instead of declining, HIV and AIDS likely are holding steady, she said.
Although the STD rates here weren’t directly attributed to the Internet, safe-sex advocates are taking their message to the Web and trying to create a community that’s more accepting of sexual minorities. Russ Hemphill, community health educator for the Spokane AIDS Network, regularly visits chat rooms to answer questions about diseases.
“People ask about testing and referrals,” he said. “I don’t engage in conversations unless somebody talks to me first.”
Hemphill said the Internet has sped up the courtship process.
“Oftentimes, people don’t go to the normal get-to-know-you rituals,” such as meeting over coffee or being introduced by friends, he said. Chatters depend on mini biographies written by other chatters—”bios” that are often embellished.
“In the chat world, sometimes people don’t even want to know all those connections,” Hemphill said. “They want something convenient and quick.”
Very quick. A Thursday post on Craigslist’s “casual encounters” page sought a sexual partner for Friday’s lunch hour. “Need to have fun at a local resturant (sic) or park? I’m very uninhibited,” the ad stated. On Wednesday, a man was “Looking to play this evening.”
In addition to Internet outreach, Hemphill and others in his field visit the public parks, mall bathrooms, truck stops and bars in the Inland Northwest known to be hot spots for anonymous sex. They hang posters touting disease prevention, distribute condoms and answer questions.
The Spokane Regional Health District has launched a poster campaign that warns people of a new crop of diseases, dubbed “Super STDs” in one ad.
“Sexually transmitted diseases that resist normal antibiotics are spreading in Seattle and Portland,” one poster reads. “When—not if—they reach Spokane, sexually active men will be at risk.”
Another shows gonorrhea bacteria under a microscope and warns “This is not your father’s gonorrhea. It’s a lot more than a nuisance to be dealt with, because a course of penicillin won’t knock it right out anymore.”
When Reguindin, the businessman, moved to Spokane, he met other men through newspaper personal ads because there weren’t obvious places for gay men to congregate socially. Although he said using personals was “intimidating,” there was a level of honesty in those ads that’s missing on the Internet.
“(The Internet) is anonymous,” said Reguindin, 47. “You don’t know who’s on the other end.”
He emphasized, though, that some people will have unsafe sex whether they meet someone in a bar, at a bookstore or in a chat room.
“Casual sex is going to happen no matter what,” he said. “The Internet makes it easier. Whether it’s safe sex or not, that’s up to the individual.”
Danielle Mahoney, executive director of the North Idaho AIDS Coalition, concurred and added that the Internet plays a positive role for sexual minorities.
“It’s not necessarily a place for a hook up,” she said. “It has built a community that otherwise wouldn’t be there because we’re in a rural area.”
But, like in Spokane, there are plenty of men in the Coeur d’Alene area cheating on their wives with men and not using condoms, Mahoney said.
“They may not see themselves as being gay, but occasionally they have sex with men,” she said. “They may not be using condoms because they see HIV as a big-city disease and a gay man’s disease.”
The GLBTQ community is more open to the safe-sex message than heterosexuals are, Mahoney said. When she distributes condoms at gay bars, patrons say, “Hey, thanks.” At straight bars, she said seven out of 10 patrons ask her, “Do we really have HIV here?”
Disease-prevention advocates said risky sex would decline in Spokane if people felt less oppressed here. Despite recent steps in that direction, Reguindin still doesn’t hold his partner’s hand in public.
“It’s still a very conservative town,” he said.
Spokane developer Rob Brewster made that point on a recent KSPS Public Television program. Brewster and other community leaders were discussing the scandal surrounding Mayor Jim West, who is accused of molesting two boys in the 1970s and of abusing his position by offering an internship to a man he thought was a high school student. West was courting the man in a gay Internet chat room.
During the KSPS discussion, Brewster talked about Spokane’s inability to accept people outside the mainstream.
“It’s a dangerous community, in some ways, to grow up in because then you get away to other places and say, ‘Wow. There are a lot of other people around the world that do different things,’” Brewster said. “They’re not all Christian, they’re not all straight, and they’re not all wrong.”
In an interview this week, Brewster said he believes that as more people move to Spokane from outside the area and as more young Spokane natives move to more accepting communities and then return, this community will become more open-minded. Until then, the risky behavior will continue, he said.
“The more you don’t feel a part of something, you still do what you want to do, you just do it more covertly,” Brewster said.
It’s not that the GLBTQ community is more promiscuous than heterosexuals, he said. They just feel more pressure to hide their activity.
Disease-prevention advocates noted some recent signs that Spokane and Coeur d’Alene are opening up. This month’s GLBTQ Pride events drew only a few protesters, and police no longer corral participants with yellow “caution” tape during the festivities. The Spokane City Council recently approved domestic partner benefits, and there are gay-straight alliances in high schools and colleges.
Reguindin thinks the discussion about sexuality that the city is having in response to the West scandal is a significant move toward acceptance. He compared it with the conversation homosexual people have when they come out to their families. It’s uncomfortable, but it’s honest, he said.
Hemphill, of the AIDS Network, warned that because West was “outed” by the newspaper and didn’t come forward with his sexuality himself, what he has endured could force some members of the GLBTQ community deeper into the closet.
But he agreed that there are some “bittersweet victories” as a result of the mayor’s scandal.
“We have people talking about gay and lesbian issues that normally wouldn’t talk about it,” he said. “It is dinner time conversation for families who wouldn’t normally talk about it.”