Today’s San Francisco Chronicle features the following piece on the dangers a community of black men, who are hiding their sexual activities (activities with other men) from the women they sleep with, are unintentionally creating.

Health officials have worried for years about the high rate of HIV among African Americans. Now the federal Centers for Disease Control is examining how one group, known as men on the “down low,” could be spreading the disease among black women.

Men on the down low have sex with other men while keeping a heterosexual public identity. Recent books and articles about black men on the DL, as it is also called, have raised concerns that they pass HIV to unsuspecting wives and girlfriends.

But because the down low is defined by secrecy, almost nothing is known about the number of men of any race who are on the down low, how many have HIV or AIDS, or their sexual activity.

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I previously posted on this topic here.