ABSTRACT
Historically, medical views of same-sex attraction have been marked by disease, perversion, and psychiatric illness (Bullough, 1974; Foucault, 1976/1978; Katz, 1976). The desire to be in intimate personal relationships with someone of the same gender was seen by the medical establishment as something in need of a cure. In contemporary medical practices, same-sex desire is no longer treated as an inherent disease, but problems still exist in both public discourse and private dialogue. Through discourse, the medical industry marginalizes those with same-sex desire. In interpersonal contexts between physicians and patients with same-sex desire, the patients are confronted with the enduring history of same-sex desire as disease, stigmatization, and perceived disenfranchisement. In this chapter, I explore several of these issues as they relate to communication between gay men and their physicians. I offer four principal arguments: (a) The history of gay men in medical science is defined by illness, (b) the advent of HIV disease has introduced not only a further stigmatization of gay men in the health care system, but also a social construct that reinscribes the gay man's body with illness, (c) gay men are adept at avoiding disenfranchisement by keeping their sexual orientation invisible, and (d) relationships between gay men and medical physicians are characterized by negotiations of power. I begin the exploration of these issues with a discussion of the theoretical perspective I employ in this essay.
