Swiss AIDS officials have determined that if you’re taking anti-HIV drugs and you always take the drugs on schedule and your HIV blood tests come back “undetectable” for six months in a row and you don’t have any other sexually transmitted diseases, it is next to impossible that you could transmit HIV during unprotected sex (barebacking).

The Swiss Federal Commission on HIV/AIDS issued its stunning report Jan. 30, which concluded that HIV-positive people who have no detectable viral load as a result of anti-retroviral treatment, apparently, are unable to transmit the virus.

The report said an individual becomes noninfectious if he or she has had an undetectable viral load for six months, doesn’t skip any doses of HIV medication and has no other STDs.

The commission arrived at its position following an extensive review of scientific literature, after prolonged discussions, and upon recommendation of its Subcommission on Clinical and Therapeutic Aspects.

In an English summary of its report, the agency said: “During effective ART [anti-retroviral therapy], free virus is absent from blood and genital secretions. Epidemiologic and biologic data indicate that during such treatment, there is no relevant risk of transmission. Residual risk cannot be scientifically excluded, but is, in the judgment of the commission, negligibly small.

“The commission realizes that medical and biologic data available today do not permit proof that HIV infection during effective ART is impossible, because the non-occurrence of an improbable event cannot be proven. If no transmission events were observed among 100 couples followed for two years, for instance, there might still be some such events if 10,000 couples are followed for 10 years.

“The situation is analogous to 1986, when the statement ‘HIV cannot be transmitted by kissing’ was publicized,” the commission said. “This statement cannot be proven, but after 20 years’ experience its accuracy appears highly plausible.

“Concerning the statement, ‘An HIV-infected person on anti-retroviral therapy with completely suppressed viremia ... cannot propagate HIV through sexual contact,’ however, the evidence is much better than what was available in 1986 regarding kissing.”

Despite bans from the mayor and violent attacks from neofascists, skinheads, Christians and police in 2006 and 2007, Moscow gays will again try to stage a Pride parade this year.

“The authorities have no legal basis for banning the event,” said chief organizer Nikolai Alekseev. “That is why, even if they ban it again, we will still go on the streets to realize our constitutional right to freedom of assembly.”

The parade is set for May 31, after an international human rights conference scheduled for May 30.

A lawsuit regarding Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s ban of the 2006 parade is presently before the European Court of Human Rights.

Last year, Luzhkov unleashed a harsh attack on the parade, saying: “[In 2006], Moscow came under unprecedented pressure to sanction the gay parade, which can be described in no other way than as satanic. We did not let the parade take place then, and we are not going to allow it in the future. Some European nations bless single-sex marriages and introduce sexual guides in schools. Such things are a deadly moral poison for children.”

Activists did not attempt to defy last year’s ban. Instead, they gathered near City Hall on Pride day to protest the ban. A mêlée ensued and several gays and lesbians were beaten and bloodied by Orthodox Christian and ultra-nationalist protesters as hundreds of police officers stood by and watched. Thirty-one people were detained, including members of European parliaments who had traveled to Moscow to support the Pride events.

“On numerous occasions,” said the BBC, “nationalists circled gay rights activists as they spoke with journalists, then reached in to punch or kick the person being interviewed. Police intervened to arrest dozens of gay-rights activists and only rarely detained their attackers.”

“There is no rule of law in Moscow,” said British gay leader Peter Tatchell, who suffered a swollen and bloodied right eye in the mêlée.

“The right to protest does not exist. This is not a democracy.”

Tatchell said “marauding gangs” of “neo-Nazis, nationalist extremists and Russian Orthodox fundamentalists ... infiltrated the gay Pride crowd and began indiscriminately attacking participants. The Moscow police looked on and did nothing.”

Pride participant Claudia Roth, chairwoman of Germany’s Green Party, said, “It has been shown once again today that human rights are systematically abused in [President Vladimir] Putin’s Russia.”

The 2006 Pride events met the same fate. After Luzhkov banned the parade, organizers tried to lay flowers at the Kremlin’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and hold a rally near City Hall. Participants in both small events were violently attacked by neofascists, skinheads, Christians and riot police, and the Pride organizers were arrested. The charges were later dropped.

Three-quarters of Spaniards support the nation’s two-year-old law that lets same-sex couples marry.

Spain is one of six countries that have opened traditional marriage to same-sex couples.

A new Instituto Opina/Cadena Ser poll found that 74.5 percent of respondents support the law and only 18.1 percent want to see it repealed. The remainder had no opinion.

President José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero recently reaffirmed his support for gay marriage, saying, “We will not take one step backward in our defense of tolerance and freedom.”

Pollsters questioned 1,000 Spanish adults by telephone on Jan. 8 and reported a margin of error of 3.1 percent.

Same-sex couples also have access to full marriage in Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, South Africa and the U.S. state of Massachusetts.

By the end of last year, 487 same-sex couples had taken advantage of the Czech Republic’s registered-partnership law, the Czech News Agency reported Jan. 28.

Gay-male partnerships outnumbered lesbian couplings 353 to 134.

Eight of the couples later cancelled their registrations.

The law took effect in July 2006 after the Chamber of Deputies overrode President Vaclav Klaus’ veto of it.

The statute grants many of the rights and obligations of marriage but withholds equality in the areas of adoption, pensions, taxation and joint ownership of property.

Assistance: Bill Kelley