A man who says he's a former homosexual also says sexually-explicit online chat rooms should warn against the dangers of random sex with strangers. And he has even gone far enough to consider a radical call - shutting down the chat rooms.
"If anonymous promiscuous sex has led to an outbreak of disease, then we've got to try to stop the outbreak wherever it starts," says Jim Hanes to the Conservative News Service. "When the AIDS outbreak happened, they shut down the bathhouses. Maybe it's time now to shut down the chat rooms."
Hanes, administrative director for Americans for Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH), tells the CNS that, for now, if those using chat rooms are making unsafe sex contact, the chat room providers should at least put up some kind of onscreen warning about the risks in those encounters.
Hanes tells CNS he was not surprised California health officials traced a syphilis outbreak in San Francisco to an America Online chat room. "If Internet chat rooms had been around when I first got into the promiscuous gay lifestyle," Hanes says, "I might not be around today.
"I could have either been a victim of a pickup murder, which gays don't like to admit happen, or I would have been infected with some type of sexually transmitted disease, such as HIV, hepatitis-B, or syphilis."
Earlier this week, San Francisco health officials confirmed a syphilis outbreak based on contacts made via an AOL chat room for homosexuals. Seven men were reported infected so far, with each identifying about 100 sex partners in the past several months and five of the seven having also been infected with HIV, says CNS.
But officials didn't have names or phone numbers to figure out whether any others have been infected, and AOL's privacy policy makes it difficult to find them.
AOL spokesman Rich D'Amato told CNS they put together representatives from Planet Out with health officials to help resolve the dilemma and trace other similar cases. "The most responsive and responsible approach," he says, "seemed…to get the community and the health department together."
But health officials have told the media they considered subpoenas for the names of the seven chat room subscribers but decided there wasn't a big enough public health risk to justify it. And if Internet chat rooms continue the trend of becoming sources for anonymous casual sex, they could soon enough cause equal headaches for privacy watchdogs having to balance privacy rights against public health concerns, CNS says.
