The African American community should be out raged at recent statistics released relating to HIV. It should also be outraged at the apparent sub-culture that exists called “down-low brothers.” These so-called brothers live by day as heterosexual black men with wives and children yet play at night as homosexuals contracting HIV at alarming rates and spreading the disease to their unsuspecting wives and girlfriends. This secret practice could be one of the most threatening problems facing the African American community to date.

According to an article in the New York Times, recent government studies of 29 states, show a black woman was 23 times more likely to be infected with AIDS than was a white woman, and black women accounted for 71.8 percent of new H.I.V. cases in women from 1999 to 2002. Though new cases of H.I.V. among black women have been stable in the past few years, the number of those who have been infected through heterosexual sex has risen.

Let’s be clear, that increase can be directly traced to the male partner in the relationship. THAT MEANS YOU DOWN LOW BROTHER! Moreover if you are having a same sex relationship you are not bi-sexual. In the words of Brothers Johnson, “Be Yourself to Free your self.”

An estimated 67 percent of black women with AIDS contracted the virus through heterosexual sex. Black women are contracting AIDS, both mates end up dying and often times leave HIV positive children with no support who are products of the relationship. There are some who suggest it is society’s fault that places enormous pressures on black men and forces secrecy. HOGWASH!

These men should stop blaming society due to their selfish sexual perversions. If a man wishes to participate in that lifestyle, that is his choice but when done in secrecy jeopardizing the health, safety and welfare of their female partner’s society must step in not with compassion but stiff justice. Death by gun or HIV is still death and this country punishes those who commit murder.

Moreover, according to the Centers for Disease Control, 30 percent of all black bisexual men may be infected with H.I.V., and up to 90 percent of those men do not know they are infected. That can be interpreted to mean their female counterparts don’t know they are infected either. Those relationships break up and the female finds an unknowing heterosexual male and the deadly cycle continues.

Some would argue safe and protected sex is a must. The only way to stop this HIV conduit is for those down low brothers to drop their selfishness and come clean to your mates.

One sister in the NY Times article stated she views all black men as bi-sexual which should offend heterosexual black males. Down low brothers who spread HIV with no regards to those they infect should be addressed just as vigorously as HIV destroys the human body because if not that secret will destroy the black community. HIV must be stopped!

Here’s a message to down low brothers from heterosexual black men who truly love our sisters.

LEAVE OUR SISTERS ALONE!