by Emily Bridges, Director, Public Information Services

USA Today has published two articles posing some different theories about why HIV rates are so high in the Southern United States, each of them informative but troubling.

As we know, the South suffers from the highest rates in the United States, with the virus concentrated in the African American/Black community. No one reason exists for the disparity in rates – rather, it is a combination of a number of social factors, including poverty, lack of education, and lack of access to health care. USA Today’s analysis also found that of counties stricken with both poverty and high HIV rates, most are located in the South. Yet the paper quoted HIV researcher Harold Henderson thusly:

"The age when kids first become sexually active is pretty young in the Deep South," he says. "That has a lot to do with the fact parents don't do a good job of (educating their kids about sex). And if you happen to live in a broken home, with drug use and poverty involved, you may not be getting the parental supervision you need."

The quote bears unpacking because it is so laden with myth.

Firstly, the notions that a home is “broken” because two adults have decided to end a relationship, or that if parents counseled their children about sex, they would/must counsel them to remain abstinent, are both biased and offensive.

Henderson also implies that irresponsible parents are the cause of the HIV epidemic – that if these parents would stay married, supervise their kids, and teach them not to have sex, the HIV rate would be lower. This may well be true, but it’s firmly in “if wishes were horses” territory. Many parents can’t educate their kids because they didn’t get and don’t have good information about safer sex themselves. Many relationships are unstable because of a need to travel to find work, disproportionate incarceration of African Americans and other forms of racism, and neighborhood factors like higher rates of crime.   Many parents may have less opportunities to supervise their child because they are working to keep a roof over their children’s heads. Do we think parents don’t care if their kids get HIV? Of course they care. They just don’t have the tools they need to help protect their children. They need support, not condemnation.

But worst of all, Henderson brings up the old chestnut of personal responsibility as the sole cause, and the cure, for the epidemic: if the kids would behave, HIV would go away. This attitude totally disregards the 21^st century understanding of how the epidemic works. In fact, African Americans, especially those in the deep south, have higher HIV and STI rates than their white counterparts even when they have the same or better risk behaviors. The snowballing of the epidemic is the cause: when a person in an AIDS-heavy sexual network is selecting sexual partners, the partner they select is simply more likely to be HIV positive.

In addition to the body of research around sexual networks, we know that state-level policies around HIV contribute to the epidemic’s spread. Seventeen states have cut funds to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, which helps poor patients pay for HIV meds, leaving thousands unable to access HIV treatment. A recent Human Rights Watch report on Mississippi found that the state’s policies fuel the epidemic, with half of people who have tested positive not receiving treatment. As we have recently learned, immediate access to treatment saves lives by nearly eliminating the possibility of HIV transmission.

Meanwhile, with the epidemic at its worst among men who have sex with men, most Southern states were near the bottom of GLSEN’s ranking of GLBTQ school safety , few have laws protecting GLBTQ rights , and sodomy laws remain on the books despite the Supreme Court judgement rendering them unenforceable. High levels of homophobia create a pervasive atmosphere of stigma and denial around HIV.

It’s not a matter of the kids being bad or the parents being irresponsible. Our nation’s policies are what has cursed the South with HIV and STIs.

Of course Advocates for Youth does not deny personal responsibility as a factor – far from it. In fact, Responsibility is one of Advocates’ core guiding principles: young people have the responsibility to protect themselves – and society has the responsibility to give them the tools to do so.

The second USA Today article delves into some of these factors – yet it still opens with some song lyrics that are very stigmatizing of HIV and which place the burden on “little schoolgirls” not to have sex. The rest of the article is informative, and the song lyrics could be chalked up to poetic license on the part of the reporters – but they’re just not helping.

As a nation, we need to change our understanding of the HIV epidemic. We need to put policies in place that support young people to make healthy choices around sexuality, and that support parents in communicating with their children. We need to get rid of homophobia and stigma around HIV. We need to eliminate poverty and racism. And we need to empower everyone to get the treatment they need to prolong their lives and reduce their chances of spreading the virus. Most of all we need to stop playing the blame game: it helps no one, and it hurts our chances of ending the HIV epidemic.