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88 Revue sexologique / Sexological Review
For homosexual partners, the data suggest that for male
respondents, homosexual contacts are twice as likely to be non-IDUs.
This finding is consistent with the epidemic in Sydney spreading from
homosexually active men to IDUs. It may also provide one
explanation as to why the growth of the HIV epidemic in its first ten
years in Australia has been slower in IDUs compared with that in
other developing countries. A corollary of this is that there will be
potentially greater spread of HIV in non-IDU heterosexual people
when the pool of infected IDUs enlarges. For female respondents, the
tendency is for the converse to occur (i.e., for lesbian contacts to be
more likely with other IDU women). These data on same-sex contacts
(13.3% for males, 12.2% for females for the last contact) are higher
than general population estima tes of the number of men in the
general Australian population who report same-sex contact with
other men in their lifetime (11.2%; 6.1% in the past year: Ross, 1988)
and even higher for women who reported sex with another woman
in their lifetime (4.6%; 2.7% in the past year in the same study).
It must be emphasized that the identification of the sexual
orientation of partners (where this is known by the respondent) is
likely to be based on admission of self-identity of the partner or sore
other form of disclosure rather than by observation of their sexual
behaviour, and thus same-gender sexual contacts with apparently
heterosexual partners is reported. This could also be a function of
error variance, and thus these data, particularly those where small
percentages are reported, should be interpreted with caution. Further,
because of the stigmatized nature of homosexual (and to a lesser
extent bisexual) contacts, the tendency is probably toward under­
reporting. Nevertheless, it is of interest that around three-quarters of
the sample were able to give sufficient detail about sexual partners to
make an assessment of possible partner involvement in potentially
risky sexual activities.
In estimating level of risk in sexual contacts of IDUs, a critical
variable is whether the nature of the sexual contact was such as to
potentially transmit HIV. We have reported that for this sample,
between a quarter and a third of the time heterosexual men use
condoms for vaginal sex with aH partners, and between a quarter and
a half of the time heterosexual women use condoms for vaginal sex
with aH partners (Ross, Wodak & Gold, 1992), with there being lower
proportions for regular partners and higher proportions for
homosexual and to a lesser extent bisexual men for penetrative sex.