The Tunnel
of Love begins at 7:30 pm Thursday, May 4, in the Grand
Ballroom on the third floor of PSU's Smith Memorial Center.
Admission is free.
More information
about AIDS in Oregon is available from the state health
division's Web site at www.ohd.hr.state.or.us.
This is one circus you might not want to bring the kids
to.
Next month, PSU will host an event known as the Tunnel
of Love, a one-night show described as "a thrilling forum
on gay buttsex" in a circus format featuring such characters
as Dr. Cornhole and Rimmo the Clown.
We are not making this up.
Organizers describe the event as an effort to teach gay
and bisexual men how to prevent the spread of AIDS--or,
in the words of the press release, "to have some laughs
and learn the secrets to a healthy butthole."
The circus is organized by the Gay Life Health Network,
a loose-knit coalition of HIV prevention groups, including
Cascade AIDS Project, Brother to Brother, Queers &
Allies, the Multnomah County Health Department, the Southwest
Washington Health District and community members.
While the circus and its associated publicity material
will doubtless provide abundant fodder for junior-high
locker-room jokes and local shock-jocks, AIDS experts
say the event's outrageous, campy approach is more appealing--and
more effective--than another buttoned-down lecture about
the efficacy of condoms.
"It's geared for gay and bi men," says Alan Rose, a social
services director for a Washington nonprofit agency, who
founded Gay Life. "We want to make sure anal sex is done
safely. We decided to be very forward about it."
Overall, 86 percent of AIDS cases in Oregon involve men
who have sex with men, with unprotected anal sex representing
the main transmission route for HIV.
The Tunnel of Love format was copied from a Seattle organization,
Gay City, which attracted 300 men to a similar event last
year--many more than local health officials could hope
to bring to a standard informational event, according
to Loreen Nichols, Multnomah County's HIV prevention program
manager.
Nichols is at pains to distance the county from the circus,
however. "Our role in it is very minor," she says. "No
county money is involved."
Rose, who says the circus will include audience participation,
emphasized that the group does not intend to promote anal
sex, only to try to educate men about HIV and other pitfalls
of the practice.
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Willamette Week | originally
published April 19,
2000
