Latinos and HIV Radio Broadcast

On World AIDS Day I listened to the radio broadcast that Professor Stern recommended. The interviewee was a man by the name of Joe Zamora who became an activist for gay Latinos and people with HIV in the Los Angeles area after he found out he was HIV positive at age 17. However, a year ago Zamora discontinued his work in the Latino community when he began to see that people he had worked with were purposely having unprotected sex. He spoke of "sex parties" where negative and positive people go to a party and have unprotected sex. The negative individuals go to these parties with the purpose of becoming HIV positive. These people say they do it so that they can take advantage of social services provided by the government, such as social security disability, housing funding and receive free medication. With all these services provided to them, they don't have to work. I was horrified when I heard this. How can people do that to themselves? Do they really think that living with HIV will be better than the life they have now? I am in favor of the government helping those who have been infected with HIV and I think these services are extremely important yet I also believe that those who have knowingly contracted the virus should not be rewarded with these services. It is also very disheartening to hear that an activist that was so passionate about his work for 20 years gave up due to this kind of behavior. Latina/os have made so much progress and are capable of doing so much more. To sit back and abuse social services provided by the government is immoral as well as a step backward in my eyes.