Status woe

Did somebody say orgy?

Well, that got your attention. Mine too. There were also words like "drugs", "gays", "date-rape" and "HIV positive." All these buzzwords surfaced, and they were more than enough ingredients for a sensational story. For sure, they got the salivary juices of press-hounds flowing.

This was the police raid in Room 609 of the upscale SEDA Hotel in BGC, where eleven men were arrested for participating in an allegedly drug-fuelled sex party. What they call PnP, or "party and play." Ecstasy, shabu, and date rape drugs were recovered. A young doctor, engineer, and ex-models were among them. Good-looking, hunky even, with undoubtedly bright futures ahead of them. One could say they were part of the alpha gays in the LGBTQ community.

But this is the Duterte era, where even the whiff of drugs is a no-no, and ending up with one's name on a list is a death sentence. The invincibility of beauty, the hubris of youth, the privacy bought by money: those aren't enough to protect against this regime's scourge.

And so, in the police went, and out came the gay men. Mugshots, disheveled, bare feet. Duly trotted out before the press. Named, complete with their second names and middle names. Despite their years of posing for selfies, none had the nerve to look straight at the dozens of cameras trained at them.

What happened next was a disaster, at least in terms of AIDS outreach and community work. Our authorities revealed that in the course of confiscating the party pills, one vial of drugs was questioned. What was in it? A culprit confessed that it contained not Ecstasy, not sex enhancers, but HIV medication. Ergo, one of the party boys was HIV positive.

Face palm. Instant outrage. Disbelief.

So eleven faces, and one of them HIV-positive. Really? Did we need to know that? In what way was public interest served? What are we the public supposed to do with that information? Point and pick? Amuse ourselves with how accurate we can guess?

Or are we supposed to avoid having sex with all the eleven men? Should we start digging into their previous sex partners? Create not a daisy chain, but a chain of causation?

Or perhaps, we should start assuming that the one man infected the ten others, and now all of them are suspect, and all of them, shamed? That we must now start avoiding them like the plague? Now, this is a new level of slut-shaming I haven't seen before. 

For this, folks, is precisely the impact, however unintended, of the unnecessary and unfortunate disclosure of the HIV status of one arrested man. The stigma that activists have worked so hard to fight against has been employed, brutally and irrevocably, against all the eleven arrested youths. All over national media, and the whole blogosphere.

Yes, we are in a drug war. But we are also in a war against HIV-AIDS, and the resulting noise created by this whole brouhaha of orgy, naked men, and drugs jumbled up the issues together and made the issues difficult to process. But nuancing is important, and some got it right.

Miss Universe Pia Wurtzbach was ahead of the pack in condemning the disclosure, and what do you know, even the head of our drug agency, PDEA Chief Aaron Aquino, eventually issued an official apology for what he acknowledges as a violation of their right to privacy.

Yes, indeed. HIV-positive individuals have a right to privacy. Even if they are drug suspects.

Just in time for World AIDS Day.

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