Here’s a little something I wrote for the relaunched Nightcharm.com.

It’s kind of weird to see today’s critics of Truvada making the same arguments as critics of The Pill in the 1960s. Or even foes of the more recent HPV vaccine. Then again, there’s something timeless about being a prudish, judgy, short-sighted asshole.

Some people hate Truvada. Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, famously dismissed it as “a party drug,” as if that’s inherently a bad thing. (Then again, I think of champagne as a party drug, so what do I know?) But neither Weinstein nor his fellow critics can deny the science behind Truvada, and that science now says that the drug is virtually 100 percent effective at stopping HIV.

Instead, Weinstein et al. make moral arguments against Truvada — the same moral arguments used 50 years ago to prevent women from taking control of their own bodies and sexual lives. Those arguments were wrong then, and they’re wrong now.

The truly moral thing to do is to remember the millions of people who would never have suffered, never have died, if they’d had the chance to take Truvada. The truly moral thing to do is to get the drug into the hands of the still-living and still-HIV-negative.

Let me repeat: Truvada is the most effective HIV-prevention tool on the planet. As with any other tool, users have to follow instructions, but if you’re able to do that, Truvada is Plan A for guarding against HIV. Condoms, serosorting, and all the other good and not-so-good strategies people use, those are Plan B….

[Continued at Nightcharm.com, which is far more safe-for-work than it used to be]