Gay Black Men Slow to Practice Safe Sex, Survey Finds : Health: Only 54% ‘always or nearly always’ take AIDS precautions. Low self-esteem and the failure of prevention programs are blamed.

Black gay and bisexual men have been slow to adopt safer sex practices despite near-universal knowledge of how the AIDS virus is transmitted, according to the first nationwide survey of black men who have sex with other men.

Although 97% of the 952 men surveyed claimed knowledge of what constitutes safer sex and unsafe sex, only 54% “always or nearly always” practice safer sex, the survey found.

The survey was funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and conducted by the National Task Force on AIDS Prevention, a project of the National Assn. of Black and White Men Together.

“There is an alarming gap between the knowledge of what constitutes unsafe sex and the ability to act on that knowledge,” said Phill Wilson, health training coordinator for the task force.

Among the survey’s findings:

--Only half of the men who engaged in anal intercourse, the sexual activity most likely to transmit the virus, said that they always or almost always use a condom.

--One-third of the men said they have vaginal sex; of those, only 30% always or almost always use a condom.

--Twenty percent said that they probably would engage in unsafe sex even if they had AIDS or were infected with the human immunodeficiency virus.

Wilson, a Los Angeles black man who is infected with HIV, said many black men suffer from what he called “the full-plate syndrome”--the sense that “there are so many dangers and attacks on their lives that HIV has to stand in line.”

Black gays and bisexuals are not “cavalier hedonists,” added Reggie Williams, another black man with HIV and the executive director of the task force. He blamed the continued prevalence of unsafe sex among blacks on “low self-esteem,” the failure of traditional AIDS prevention programs to address blacks in culturally relevant language and the “sexual schizophrenia” of black men who are in the closet.

Bisexual men who are in the closet pose a special risk to their female sex partners and their babies, Williams said, adding: “This is a threat to the entire black community.

“The black community and its institutions must become more involved if we are to reduce the risk to women and children, as well as to black men, regardless of their sexual orientation,” Williams said.

“It is time to deal forthrightly with issues of sexuality that the black community has denied or ignored for far too long,” he added.

The survey’s findings will be used to design AIDS risk-reduction campaigns specifically targeted toward black men who have sex with other men--and to document the urgent need for funding such programs.

The men who participated were interviewed in 25 medium and large urban areas by specially trained workers through organizations and in private homes, bars and other gay meeting places.

“Critics and naysayers said it simply couldn’t be done--that this population was too hard to reach,” said Williams, adding that the survey proved otherwise. The next step, he said, is to fund educational campaigns to motivate these men to alter their sexual behavior, saving both lives and dollars.