“Gay shame” is the new ideologically driven narrative the gay ill health sector is pushing onto the gay community.
It stems from a 2005 book “The Velvet Rage” by Alan Downs. In it Downs explores “gay shame” by interviewing a number (not many) of gay men. The idea is that we are all suffering from a deep psychological shame that stems from our sexuality, sometimes without even realising it.
This shame is due to a homophobic society and more importantly our upbringing by our 
parents.
There are four stages in dealing with the “shame” until we become happy homosexuals, however some gay men never reach full acceptance and are trapped in various stages. This ideology has now been pushed onto the history of AIDS in the 80s through the Channel 4 drama “It’s A Sin.” More of that later.
According to Downs we, as gay men, have an innate shame from birth. Born into a homophobic society that hates our very being.
All around is a heteronormative society with affirming images, media and teaching – that to be heterosexual is the “norm” and being gay is wrong. Downs insists the gay child needs a validating environment from parents and, if they don’t, invalidation is a form of child abuse. Apparently parents have a dream for you, a heterosexual life plan. To date, marry and have children with the opposite sex.
The gay child could never be quite good enough for the parents as it smashes their dreams. Damagingly, the gay child is compared less favourably to their straight siblings in the family. We are all born to “fit in” and the gay child suffers from self worth and is a sexually shamed child.
Gay pride is a “myth” as, when the gay child grows into an adult, they have “gay shame” embedded into their psyche.
You will hear time and again from the gay ill health sector that the LGBTQI+++ community has a “high level of mental illness”. This “gay shame” is the narrative and reasoning for the “mental illness”. This manifests itself in drug and alcohol abuse, promiscuity, chemsex, bareback orgies and self destructive tendencies.
In the case of “It’s a Sin,” in the final scene a narrative of “gay shame” is the explanation for why AIDS ripped through the gay community in the 80s and why gay men continued to have unprotected sex even when they knew a condom could save them from a likely death.
Supposedly it accounts for why gay mens’ self worth is so low they want to kill themselves and other gay men through bareback sex. Gay men want to infect themselves with HIV supposedly and even infect others who also have no self worth. They want death and think they deserve to die for being gay, as they believe themselves to be wrong sick and disordered.
This is literally “bugchasing” and “gift giving” defined. Things which the gay ill health sector, claimed were a “myth” until recently.
Yet if the gay ill health sector is now pushing this “gay shame” narrative as featured in “It’s a Sin.” Doesn’t that mean some HIV positive gay men and barebackers have serious mental health issues? After all, they they are reckless risk takers, bugchasers who wanted to be infected and felt they deserved to die?
More chillingly, according to this insidious narrative, when infected with HIV, they turn into gift givers with a desire to infect other gay men with HIV through unprotected condomless sex. So contracting HIV wasn’t “bad luck”, “ignorance” or someone who was in “denial” about HIV existing…
That is the message from Ritchie’s monologue at the end of the series. That he really didn’t give a shit… So who would trust a HIV positive gay man and believe the U=U message that he is undetectable, takes his meds regularly and (crucially) that no condom is required? Would you put your future health in the hands of a gay man who may have a severe mental illness?
It’s certainly food for thought.
More reading:
Pride and prejudice for gay men – The Guardian