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by Peter Jacobsen

Editor's note: With this column, Peter Jacobsen launches a series of columns of opinion and information on health matters in the lgbt communities.

      Judgement Day indeed. Queer people are under increased scrutiny by politicians and the media, post civil union furor aside. Talk show hosts still foment discouraging vitriol about the "Death of the Family." Zealots still protest at queer funerals. Politicians still want to legislate how queer people have sex and form relationships. National debates about queer sex, health, and community are mired in judgment and reactive panic.
      Sure, sodomy's legal now, but only our sustained energy and activism will keep it that way. With anti-queer marriage fervor still saturating election-year rhetoric, some transphobic and homophobic laws could find their way to our next President's desk. Even last year's legislative session in Vermont saw a proposed - and ultimately defeated - law forbidding discussion of "homosexuality" in schools. And don't forget for one minute that gender identity is still not a protected class in Vermont (except by court extension of the Hardwick case of Anthony Barreto-Neto). There are without doubt those who judge us and those who want to drag us back to pre-Stonewall silence.
      I work in HIV prevention because I came of age in an age of fear-based sex hysteria in a prudish New England state. This field remains, for better or for worse, one of the few public health forums in which a queer voice is consistently present in Vermont. HIV continues to be a virus that conflates politics and the bedroom (or backroom). It still matters very much to queer Vermonters.
     OITM has provided this forum to talk about how our queer communities make choices about sex. How do we stay healthy? How do we have sex? There are so many unexplored areas of HIV prevention in Vermont, and we need to start talking NOW. We're still dying, as a close friend says, and we're still angry about a transphobic and homophobic system that keeps us sick and scared.
     It's hard to say how queer people in Vermont "should" make safer choices about how we have sex, or whether we share needles to inject hormones, steroids, or illegal drugs. Most of us want to make "the right choices," but in an information-saturated age, it's hard to know what messages to believe. As an example, the federal government just started announcing that condoms are ineffective. A little confusion about sex makes a whole lot of sense.
      Queer communities continue to be disproportionately affected by health disparities - including HIV and other sexually transmitted infections - but the government continues to support our health only by associating us with HIV and AIDS.
     What's true is that many of us are uninsured, estranged from healthcare, scared to learn about our HIV risks and status, and/or work in jobs or live in neighborhoods where being openly queer could put us in a much more direct danger than a potential exposure to HIV. In Vermont especially, queer people of all stripes may be living in poverty, without access to cruisy websites, transportation to the famed Route 89 rest areas, or the ability to visit Vermont's few queer-friendly bars and clubs.
     We have the right and responsibility as queer people to demand equal, appropriate health care and HIV prevention services. The questions I pose to you are these: what choices have you made to stay healthy? How do you keep sex frisky in an era of sexually transmitted (and institutionally ignored) infections? What information do you need to make more informed choices? Already suggested topics include HIV testing and lesbians, trans-men and safer sex material, queer people and party drugs, and redefining "safer sex" in the boondocks. Email me more ideas for this forum to peter@vtcares.org Let's move away from judgement and let's keep queer relationships and sex legal, healthy, and enriching.

Peter Jacobsen is a big butch truck driver in Burlington (in his dreams) who wiles away hours at home arguing national security policy with his white cat, Condoleezza.