The invitation arrived in Tokes Osubu's e-mail inbox on Monday, and the contents astounded him: Black and Latino men were being invited to attend a gay sex party this weekend where condoms would be banned. Show up with a condom, the invitation said, and you'll be asked to leave.
"I was shocked and disgusted," said Osubu, executive director of Gay Men of African Descent, a Harlem-based nonprofit group battling the HIV/AIDS epidemic among black gay men.
Osubu sent the party's promoter a letter urging him to reconsider the policy, and the group plans to protest Saturday outside the East Harlem building where the party is scheduled to be held.
The party comes just weeks before the 25th anniversary of the AIDS epidemic and at a time when black men are facing startlingly high HIV infection rates. Nearly half of black men who have sex with men are HIV-positive, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates.
"I'm sick of 18-year-olds coming in here HIV-positive," Osubu, 46, said in his East Harlem office. "It's got to stop."
"We want to send a strong message to (the party's promoter) and promoters like him that it's unacceptable, and to the larger community that we're not all complicit in this behavior. We're not just idle bystanders."
The invitation lists an address and apartment number and a cell phone number. On Friday, the promoter returned a message seeking comment but refused to identify himself and repeatedly said the party was private.
(Keep Reading: 365gay.com)
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