Andrew Sullivan: New, improved, AIDS-ier

I can only say WTF?!?!

I’m sorry. It has taken me a long time to say this, but it’s time: I’m sorry.

It’s been almost 12 years since I became infected with HIV, and I haven’t died yet. I haven’t even had the decency to get sick. I am a walking, talking advertisement for why HIV seems not such a big deal to the younger generation—and indeed, many in my own age bracket. I know this is a terrible thing, and I promise in the future to do better. As gay activist Michelangelo Signorile recently told The New York Times, “If everyone in your group is beautiful, taking steroids, barebacking, and HIV-positive, having the virus doesn’t seem like such a bad thing.”

I’m sorry. At the tender age of 41—a year longer than I once thought I would live—I have never felt better. HIV transformed my life, made me a better and braver writer, prompted me to write the first big book pushing marriage rights, got me to take better care of my health, improved my sex life, and deepened my spirituality.

I’m sorry. I’ll try to do better.

Americablog, quoting Signorile’s open letter back to Sully, is as freaked out as I am. Signorile makes the only sane response to such idiocy– he doubles down:

I just read your latest column, the one in the Advocate in which you – former New Republic editor and current right-wing blogger — extol the virtues of having HIV and the wonders of being positive. I must say: Very effective. It was enough to make any young gay man declare, “I gotta go get some of that hot poz seed!” Maybe we can get Fox to create a reality show in which we follow people around as they try to get themselves infected – you can be the host! — and then watch their lives transformed for the better, while all of those nasty, negative people who warn gay men against getting HIV are shut out of the most chic nightclubs, as their steroid-free bodies shrivel-up. We can call the show, “Getting Pozzed!”

Sullivan actually suggests that “HIV is fast becoming another diabetes.” To call this irresponsible is an insult to pretty much every responsible person on the planet–not to mention people who have lost kidneys, limbs, eyesight and decades of quality life to diabetes!

I’m sure he will say that all the humorless gay liberals don’t have enough of a sense of humor to understand his satire. This faggot certainly doesn’t! Fuck you, Andrew. I have read and loved many of your books, appreciated your struggle with religion and mostly tolerated your sado-masochistic-schizophrenic “tough love” of Bush. No more.

Of all the self-righteous, solipsistic bullshit in the world, this takes the cake. Not to mention the weathy white privilege of it all–plenty of people in this country can’t afford diabetes meds, which are cheap compared with the cocktail that keeps Sullivan and his upper-middle-class survivor buddies alive [and, as Sullivan boasts, buff]. Just a noblesse-oblige nod to the side effects that “some” get, and nary a whit about the long term dangers of the drugs. He even mocks concerns about a “super-bug.”

Because Signorile’s plain statement of observable fact hurt Sullivan’s feelings, he wrote an utterly irresponsible ode to the curative powers of one of the worst plagues ever to face mankind. This from a pro-life Catholic? Nice culture of life–viral life!

Maybe you’re not dead, Andrew. Maybe you’ll live to be 120 and Jesus will come down from the clouds and personally invite you to that neverending brunch in the sky. But you’re damn well dead to me–you and all the pretty words you ever wrote.