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The deadly secret; Rudolph Carn finally faced it (cont. page 2)
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His research has found that white men who have sex with men are more likely than blacks to leave their families and communities, particularly small towns or rural areas, and move to gay enclaves in major cities, which provide a safe haven. In Atlanta, Midtown neighborhoods are home to many white gay men.
In New York, it's Chelsea or Greenwich Village; in San Francisco, the Castro district. There is no such community, however, for African-American men who may be less willing to live outside black neighborhoods. "The African-American community provides them support to deal with racism they experience in the general population and in the white mainstream gay community," said Peterson.
Peterson said that negative attitudes persist in the African-American community for two reasons. First and foremost, he said, the influence of religion and the church -- which has a history of being intolerant of homosexuality -- is strong in many African-American families. The second reason, he said, can be attributed to the number of ineligible male marriage partners because of high imprisonment rates among black men, high premature-death rate and homosexuality.
Still, homophobia seems no greater in the black community than it is in the mainstream community, Peterson and others said.
A Gallup Poll conducted in mid-May of 1,000 people bears this out: 47 percent of African-Americans and 43 percent of whites do not believe homosexuality should be considered an acceptable alternative lifestyle. Pollsters say that a 4 percent difference is not significant.
"The big differences we find are by age and gender," said Frank Newport, editor of the poll. "Men are significantly more homophobic than women. They always have been. And older Americans are more homophobic than young people.
"Newport said there's been a slow but gradual liberation of straight Americans' attitudes about homosexuality. "About half of all Americans give accepting responses to questions about homosexuality today, significantly higher than polls found in the Reagan years," he said.
Joe Stokes, professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said the truth is that no one knows how prevalent homophobia is, and "anyone who thinks they can answer is delusional."
Stokes, who has done a lot of work with historically black churches on Chicago's South Side, said people give different answers publicly from what they say privately.
"Everyone knows it's there," Stokes said. "But there's this kind of tacit agreement not to talk about it.
"That silence makes it more difficult to reach and support gay and bisexual men and women of color, Peterson and others said. "It leads men to feel that they are not accepted, that they have less worth than heterosexuals, and causes them to feel self-rejection," he said. "The more men feel that they are worthless, the less likely they are to take precautions to avoid HIV infection."
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