Who said it? Pat Robertson? Fred Phelps? No, it was Matt Foreman, outgoing director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, in a ”State of the Movement” address he delivered on Feb. 8.

Today, right now, more than 45 percent of African-American gay and bi men in key urban areas are infected with HIV, with a 33 percent increase in new diagnoses among our brothers under age 30 over the past six years. Today, right now, African Americans are nearly 10 times more likely than white people to be diagnosed with AIDS.

The response – internal to our community and external – is appallingly racist. Internally, when these numbers come out, the “established” gay community seems to have a collective shrug as if this isn’t our problem. Folks, with 70 percent of the people in this country living with HIV being gay or bi, we cannot deny that HIV is a gay disease. We have to own that and face up to that.

Foreman is not the first gay activist to buck the politics of AIDS in order to focus attention on the highest number of victims.  A little over a year ago, the Los Angeles-based Gay and Lesbian Center launched a provocative AIDS awareness campaign with the slogan, “HIV is a Gay Disease.  Own it.  End it.”

The campaign drew cat-calls with many critics saying such frank talk would ratchet up anti-gay bigotry. Others were more measured, such as one columnist who wrote, “Time will tell whether the in-your-face approach to shaking everyone out of complacency translates to a resurgence of bigotry and stigmatism – and whether the number of lives of young L.A. men saved outweighs that.”

With Foreman’s statement, it appears some gay activists are now ready to admit that suppressing the epidemiological facts about AIDS is no longer worth the high cost in lives.