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I’d like to reflect on these and these relatively recent comments by @Walterodim and @HonoriaWinchester on the official response to the initial AIDS epidemic in the US and California in particular (I guess).
Not being an American I only have a vague idea about this entire subject. As far as I can tell, the standard Blue Tribe narrative in the context of the culture war on this is that the bigoted and evil Reagan administration, politically captured by Christian fundamentalists and pandering to Southern racists, callously refused to even consider the idea of formulating a federal response to a dangerous epidemic, and missed a good opportunity to contain the spread thereof by allocating federal funds to research and preventive measures.
Fair enough. But let’s assume for a moment that the administration had actually tried doing all those things earnestly, for real. What are the realistic chances that whatever measures they’d have come up with were bound to include the decisions to publicly call upon homosexual men to refrain from a) having unprotected sex with strangers altogether b) donating blood?
One distinction: homosexual men and men who have sex with men (MSM) are different terms. As far as I know, the blood donation screening questions have always been activity based, maybe very early understanding and terminology was fuzzy (GIRDS). So claims of discrimination against homosexual men are conflating terms and missing the epidemiological reason of the bans. On current blood donations, the organization I donate with asks about 'new sexual partners in the last # month', STI questions, if you have ever tested positive for HIV or taken HIV prevention medication. Questions which maybe more finely target the MSM population they want to exclude.
One time when I was donating blood an old-time volunteer about how at one point blood donation was a free HIV test, so some men would donate and then call later and ask the red cross not to use their blood.
Fellas, is it gay to bang another dude?
I suspect the answer includes "not if you do it in prison - particularly not if you didn't have any choice in the matter."
In machismo-based homosexuality (which appears to include the kind practiced in both American and Russian prisons), it isn't gay to dick another guy, only to take a dick.
I imagine it also includes straight men who work as gay porn stars.
Are there any?
... arguably? (cw: no actual wing-wong, but still NSFW)
Gay4pay as a genre also attracts just masc-looking guys who are pals with guys, but there is significant crossover workforce from the het side of the aisle, including people that are pretty clearly more into the het fuckery. A lot of them focus on solo work (eg, the squirrel guy), but the difference in pay is significant, and modern chemistry can do a lot to keep an erection going even if physical interest isn't there.
((There's a handful of pieces that involve gay-focused actors who are gay-focused in their personal lives having heterosexual pairings-or-more, though for a variety of reasons that's a far less common kink.))
The line gets fuzzy and definition-focused: you can argue a strict definitional no-het-would-stick-their-dick-in-a-dude, and I'm sure at least a few are either self-closeted, or playing it up for the viewers. On the flip side, I know enough people that thought they were bi and then found out that it wasn't working for them once they actually got another dude involved in person (and a few that thought they were bi until they got a woman involved in person), and while that occasionally fails around the physical bits not working out, it's as or more often something where only the mechanics work.
I mean, I'm 0% aroused by the idea of having sex with men, but it's also not the thing you would have to pay me most to do either. I can easily imagine there are some guys who don't like it, but also don't mind it, and would be fine with doing it as just another job.
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