Why are gays more susceptible to getting HIV than straight people?

Answer 1

HIV travels more quickly through the gay male community because of the role versatility that is possible in gay sex. While HIV may be transmitted from the receptive partner to the insertive partner, it is FAR more common to happen the other way around in both heterosexual and gay pairings. Unlike straight men and women, gay men can take on both the insertive and the receptive role.

For illustrative purposes (meaning these are numbers that make the math easy and illustrate the point, but are not factual numbers), let's say that an insertive partner has a 50% of infecting his parter, where as a receptive partner only has a 10% chance. Using those numbers, we can say that if an HIV+ gay man has sex with 10 people, serving as the insertive partner 5 times and the receptive partner 5 times, he will infect 3 people (2.5 as insertive partner and .5 as receptive). If an HIV+ straight woman has sex with 10 people, she will be the receptive partner in each encounter (because she doesn't not have a penis), and will therefore infect only 1 person using the numbers above.

The illustration above shows how role versatility greatly accelerates the spread of HIV through the gay male community. Lesbians have the lowest risk of HIV transmission.

Answer 2

First, men -- gay and straight -- tend to have more sex partners. Second, gay men tend to "experiment" more with different sex acts, toys, etc. Third, because many men are ashamed to admit they had a homosexual experience, they don't go to a doctor or clinic until something is seriously wrong. When they do see a medical professional, they may lie about who they had sex with, and as a result may not have gotten the right tests. Therefore, they are more likely to spread whatever disease they have gotten. Finally, most of us -- gay and straight, again and male and female -- don't know nearly enough about sexually transmitted diseases, thanks to our culture's refusal to discuss them openly.

Answer 3

They're not. This is a complete myth. The vast majority of new cases of HIV infection are heterosexual people.