ABSTRACT
It has been argued in recent years that younger gay men may be increasingly and disproportionately at risk of HIV infection. Although previous research has investigated the attitudes of gay men generally, and of young people (usually implicitly assumed to be heterosexual), towards HIV and safer sex, relatively little attention has focused on young gay men as a group. Several studies in the US have investigated unsafe sex among young gay men (Hays, Kegeles and Coates, 1990,1991,1992); Hays, Kegeles and Coates claim that their results further confirm the findings of other American studies, that there is evidence of a correlation between younger age and greater ‘sexual risk-taking’ among gay men. Various factors are suggested as contributive: younger men in the early stages of ‘coming out’ may not be fully gay-identified and therefore not perceive themselves to be in a ‘risk group’; negotiation of safer sex may be hampered by a lack of social skills caused by inexperience in interpersonal relationships; the young may have heightened feelings of invulnerability to risk; and younger men may perceive AIDS to be a problem of older men.
