From "Bugchasers -- myth or reality?"

I am a counsellor as well as a journalist and first met a young gay man who admitted he’d thought it might be better to have HIV in 1992. “I just feel like I’ve got no direction in life,” he said, “and I see my HIV positive friends and it, like, gives them a kick up the ass. They feel they’ve got some meaning back, something to live for.” He didn’t really want HIV. What he did want was to stop feeling aimless and empty.

This isn’t a bizarre or pathological reaction. What about the grieving lover whose boyfriend has died, and wants to join him? What about the HIV negative guy who can’t face 40 years of rubber-insulated sex with his positive life partner? If these people were heterosexuals, we would be nodding sagely and taking about ‘the difficult choices facing couples’."

What I'd be interested to know, is how many mothers have secretly wished their sons were dead, rather than homosexual or HIV-infected... honourably knocked off in a good war, perhaps.

Or... how many closeted guys have been terrified that this might be true.. frightened ever-deeper into the closet of Avoidance of Shame for Others.

The fact is, Love can have sharp teeth when it's coated in religion. *sigh* more incoherence.