Unintended consequences: evaluating the impact of HIV and AIDS on sexuality research and policy debates Conseqüências não-intencionais: a avaliação do impacto do HIV/AIDS sobre a pesquisa em sexualidade e o debate de políticas

The HIV epidemic has had a profound impact on how we think about, talk about, and carry out research on sexuality. The epidemic opened up a wide range of approaches and methodologies within sexuality research, helping to encourage more open public discussion and debate concerning sexuality, sexual values, and sexual norms. Sexuality became one of the key contested spaces of public discourse in a previously unimaginable way, and both conservative and progressive forces have entered the debate in ways that have had a lasting impact on sexual policies in the last two decades. The current article seeks to briefly evaluate some of these important changes. It suggests that recent advances have decelerated or become more timid, while emphasizing the continued importance of seeking to address sexuality as a central issue within the context of HIV and AIDS. Although such developments may have been unintended, the ways we respond to the epidemic can have a significant impact (for better or worse) on how issues related to sexuality and sexual health are addressed. HIV; Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome; Sexuality; Public Policy Introduction For more than 25 years now, the HIV epidemic has had a profound impact on the ways in which we think about, talk about, and carry out research about sexuality. In the wake of the epidemic, a profound transformation took place in the field of sexuality research, with new space opening up for a wide range of approaches and methodologies, and it is impossible to imagine the current state of knowledge in the field of sexuality studies without taking account of the impact that the epidemic had in relation to this field of research. This, in turn, has helped to stimulate a new openness for public discussion and debate concerning sexuality, sexual values and sexual norms. Sexuality became one of the key contested spaces of public discourse in a way that would have been previously unimaginable, and both conservative and progressive forces entered into the debate in ways that have had a lasting impact on sexual politics over the past two decades. This article seeks to briefly evaluate some of these important changes. Yet it also suggests that in recent years these advances seem to have slowed or become more timid, and it emphasizes the continued importance of seeking to address sexuality as a central issue within the context of HIV and AIDS. It suggests that even though these developments have perhaps been unintended consequences of the evolving epidemic, the ways in which we respond to it can have an important impact, for ARTIGO ARTICLE