"Agreements with law enforcement, owners of social venues such as bathhouses or sex clubs, neighborhood associations, and other key partners should be established before testing activities begin," advised the CDC in a document entitled "Advancing HIV Prevention: Interim Technical Guidance for Selected Intervention."
I called the CDC to confirm that the federally funded rapid HIV tests could be used in, among other places, bathhouses and sex clubs. CDC Spokesperson Karlie Stanton confirmed that they could.
This is not compassionate conservatism. It is sex-club socialism. It transfers to all taxpayers some of the cost incurred by unrepentant practitioners of reckless behavior. It will work no better than previous federal efforts to fight HIV.
Certainly, the rapid HIV test has valuable applications. It can be used, for example, to determine the status of previously untested mothers giving birth, helping save their babies. It can be used to determine when health care workers have been exposed. And it can relieve anxiety, and speed treatment, for those who go to clinics determined to be tested and to change their behavior.
But when the government uses it in bathhouses, it will mean we have sued for peace with the behavior that spreads a lethal virus.
Tellingly, CDC guidelines for counseling HIV test-takers recommend that counselors take a "nonjudgmental" approach focusing on "HIV risk reduction" not risk elimination.
"For clients with several high-risk behaviors," say the guidelines, "the counselor should help clients focus on reducing the most critical risk they are willing to commit to changing. The step does not need to be a personal behavior change."
In the war against terrorism, America took a clear moral stand. You are either with or against us in resisting the senseless destruction of human life. Until we face the behaviors that spread HIV with similar moral clarity, the virus will continue to defeat us.