Can Sex Survive Aids?: Playboy’s February 1986 ‘Viewpoint’

Does the coming of AIDS mean the end of the sexual revolution? As the Editorial Director of this magazine, I’ve been asked that question often lately. Let’s begin with part of the answer. The best-kept secret of the AIDS terror is the fact that if you are a healthy, heterosexual male and you don’t take intravenous drugs or have sex with prostitutes, there aren’t enough zeros on your pocket calculator to indicate the chance of your catching AIDS.

That doesn’t mean we don’t take AIDS seriously; we do. The possibility that sex—joyous, clumsy, laughable and reckless sex—has been twisted into what doctors call a “vehicle for transmission of terminal illness” is terrifying. But it is not as terrifying as we have been led to believe.

Senior Staff Writer Jim Petersen (a.k.a. The Playboy Advisor) says that the biggest health problem in the country right now is fear of AIDS. The second-biggest problem, he adds, is ignorance about AIDS.

It’s no surprise that Jerry Falwell is working this street. AIDS almost lives up to Falwell’s idea of a dream disease—one that would instantly strike dead anyone having sex not sanctioned by his church.

Falwell has been immeasurably helped by the print media—particularly Time magazine—which are marketing AIDS the way Procter & Gamble markets soap. I’ve seen sensible network-TV coverage, but Time has been shameless. Oddly, alongside a feature story called “The New Untouchables” was an underplayed sidebar headed “Not an Easy Disease to Come By,” in which we learned that (1) AIDS was not an epidemic, (2) the virus was easily destroyed and (3) most people had nothing to fear.

One month later, Time‘s editors were again talking out of both sides of their word processors. In the midst of an article that called AIDS a “scourge that spreads panic,” Time reported, deadpan, “On the face of it, the panic seems out of all proportion to the numbers involved.”

If the panic takes root—and there are signs everywhere that it is doing so—we will dehumanize our social lives and destroy romance. If the people who thrive on inhibition get their way, the atmosphere will be so poisoned that you’ll look at an attractive person across a crowded room and think, Virus!

If AIDS were a capricious fatal illness inextricably linked to sex, we could understand the hysteria. But it isn’t. Associate Editor Kate Nolan, Petersen and I have spent months trying to separate the facts from the myths. What do we really know? Less than we’d like but a great deal more than the propaganda that’s out there.

Nolan has a virtual direct line to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. She has tracked down a large number of virologists and epidemiologists who are working on AIDS research. They rarely agree about anything; in fact, they barely talk to one another. Nolan found three separate studies of AIDS and prostitution under way, but none of the doctors involved knew of the others’ work. Each, however, was ready to report his conclusive results.

Petersen, a man with a cynical bent, has speculated that “AIDS is the best thing that’s happened to the medical-grant business in years, so doctors aren’t eager to squelch the AIDS hysteria. Viral research is the frontier of medicine. When we figure out this virus and its effect on the immune system, we will have the future of medicine. If it takes fear to make the Government release funds, so be it.”

Nolan says, “In order to discuss AIDS, you’ve got to discuss bodily fluids. You’ve got to find out exactly what the people who have been infected did, and that information hasn’t been forthcoming. In the cases of heterosexuals who have developed the disease, there are questions about sexual histories and drug habits that simply haven’t been satisfactorily answered. We don’t know what those people did to get AIDS.”

Here is what we do know:

1. Blood and semen are the only bodily fluids that carry large enough concentrations of the virus to cause the disease, and—except in the rare cases in which the virus is transmitted by mother’s milk to infants—a victim’s blood stream must be invaded. You can’t get AIDS from a doorknob, and no one has ever gotten AIDS from kissing.

2. The AIDS virus (HTLV-III/LAV) invades white blood cells and induces them to produce more AIDS virus. When the white blood cells are ravaged, the body’s immune system stops working. At that point, the body becomes vulnerable to many illnesses, any one of which may become fatal. The virus may also directly attack the central nervous system.

3. Because the rectal walls tend to become ruptured during anal intercourse, semen containing the AIDS virus has a direct path to the blood stream—hence, the disproportionate number of male homosexuals who have been victimized by the disease.

4. Most heterosexuals who have the disease got it from infected blood transmitted through needles—either through recreational drug use or through transfusions. Drug use is one of the things that put prostitutes at risk.

5. While there have been 1472 reports of health-care workers who have come into contact with infected blood after pricking themselves with contaminated needles, only one has developed symptoms of the disease.

6. Many more people (perhaps as many as 1,000,000 Americans) have AIDS antibodies in their systems than have the disease. The presence of the antibodies does not necessarily mean that symptoms of the disease will appear, just as the presence of antibodies against hepatitis and herpes does not mean you’re bound to get either.

7. As we go to press, early in November 1985, there have been reported 145 heterosexually transmitted cases of the disease (of which only 16 were transmitted by women to men) and 10,314 homosexually transmitted cases. Does that mean that AIDS is primarily a homosexual disease? No, it’s a blood-contamination disease.

Here is how Mathilde Krim, a research biologist who heads the AIDS Medical Foundation, explained the transmission of AIDS to The Village Voice: “The virus is very difficult to transmit, even under the ideal conditions of a laboratory. In order to infect, it must be freshly out of a live, transmitting cell, and it must almost immediately meet a specific white blood cell on its surface. In other words, there must be an open cut with hot, fresh blood. It cannot be spread through ordinary physical contact.”

One of the threats we hear most frequently is that we are sitting on a time bomb. When it goes off, the explosion will supposedly ravage the heterosexual community, just as it is now ravaging the homosexual community. The evidence presented to support this theory is the fact that AIDS victims in the U.S. are overwhelmingly homosexual, but in Africa, where it seems to have been around longer, it is a heterosexual disease.

Here’s Nolan from the front lines: “I’ve talked with the virologists; they offer the party line—apocalypse now. The virus is going to break out into the culture at large. But the epidemiologists say that’s not true. Circumstances for the epidemic that exist in Central Africa don’t exist here. In Africa, AIDS is associated with prostitution and with poor hygiene. Central Africa is a needle culture. Everyone who’s sick goes to a clinic. People don’t think they’ve been treated unless they get an injection—even if it’s aspirin. Needles are used and reused. The standards of cleanliness may be low. In order to have an epidemic, you have to have the conditions for an epidemic. We can avoid those conditions here.”

Nolan continues, “The homosexual community was victimized because there was no information about the way the disease was transmitted. Individuals kept engaging in high-risk activities because they didn’t know they were at risk. Add to that the difference in levels of activity: Before AIDS became widespread, the promiscuous homosexual male was far more sexually active than the promiscuous heterosexual male. Increased contact increased the spread of the virus. The projections assume that behavior won’t change. Now heterosexuals and homosexuals have the option of keeping themselves at very low risk.”

Most of us have a Clint Eastwood view of disease, and it has served us well. If you have a germ that kills, you kill it. Alexander Fleming’s penicillin is the best example. But there are other worthwhile models. If you have yellow fever, you drain the swamp. If you can’t kill the germs, you prevent the disease.

Here are some guidelines about AIDS. Ignore them if you are confident about your sexual partner. If you are not confident, this is the way to go.

For heterosexual men: Avoid the high-risk groups. Don’t have sex with women who have sex with men who fuck men or with men who inject drugs. Use condoms. If you’ve ever had one break during intercourse, change brands. Don’t reuse sex toys from one partner to another without washing them first. Don’t have sex with prostitutes.

For heterosexual women: Don’t have sex with men who fuck men or prostitutes or with men who inject drugs. Refrain from anal sex. If you can’t, ask your partner to use a condom and plenty of lubrication (something he should have been doing all along).

For homosexual men: Learn about “safe sex.” Cruising in the gay community implies much higher numbers than in the straight community, so if you’re not in a monogamous relationship, you should assume that you or your partner has been exposed. Mutual masturbation is fine. Oral sex is all right if you don’t come in each other’s mouths. Do not engage in anal-oral or anal-receptive sex.

This isn’t a pretty discussion; but unless we confront reality, we’re avoiding it. The show-business people who have admirably given their time and talent to raise money for research under the banner Fight AIDS might better use those dollars to purchase billboards that say, stop AIDS! Use Condoms. That could save more lives in the next two years than new research.

People ask if The Playboy Philosophy is still relevant in light of the AIDS onslaught. The answer is yes and more so. Unlike the caricature version of the Philosophy—the one that’s supposed to encourage one-night stands and keeping a score card of sexual partners—Hefner’s Philosophy is about fearlessly examining society’s inhibitions and accepting our individual sexuality. It is about enriching our lives. Hefner was trying to raise the curtain on sexual enlightenment; now we’re facing a rerun of the Dark Ages.

In a recent issue of New York magazine, Dr. Helen Singer Kaplan, who heads the Human Sexuality Program at New York’s Cornell Medical Center, said that AIDS meant, “If you’re a single woman, remember, no casual sex ever again. Wait until you know the other person. Know your partner. Know whether he’s had a homosexual experience or used injected drugs in the past eight years.”

While it appears responsible, there’s a paralyzing undertone to that advice. It’s a step toward recommending that single people shut down their sex lives altogether. Why, for example, do we have to go back eight years? It would take police-work to get the information, and there weren’t enough cases of AIDS back then to have statistical impact today.

We need distinctions we haven’t had to deal with before. It’s a good idea to forget about anonymous sex, but how far do we have to go? When two people who have known each other for a while, who have flirted a little, decide to consummate their relationship in an evening that will live fondly in their memories, is that casual sex? When two people meet for the first time and spend an intense, nerve-tingling day and a half together, with no intention of buying a house, having children or taking a mortgage on a condo, is that casual sex? Is fear of AIDS being used to enforce virginity, abstinence and puritanism?

The sexual revolution was about understanding sex. It was about becoming unafraid. Men could express their sexuality without fear of reproval. Women could express their sexuality without being branded whores.

If we’re going to come to grips with the AIDS panic, we are going to have to stare down some fear. While it is easy to scorn the parents we see on television who won’t allow their children to sit in the same class as a victim of AIDS, the darker possibility is that those parents are going to start forbidding gay teachers to even enter the classroom.

There is a neurotic response to this illness that can’t be overlooked: “I know it’s unlikely, but what if it is me?” We require the courage to face the facts about the disease, modify our behavior, if necessary, and say it’s not going to be us. Moreover, we require the courage to look at the victims and understand that they are victims. They have not committed sin, they have committed sex; and sex served as an accidental pathway to a tragedy. The message to the homosexual community should be that we are on your side, because we are all in this together. Until a medical breakthrough gives Time the chance to run its last AIDS cover story, we must defeat AIDS with our knowledge and our humanity.