HIV/AIDS remains one of the biggest health issues that the U.S. is confronting today. Hundreds of millions of dollars in private and public funding go to combat the disease each year. But to be effective, far more must be allocated to the specific populations at greatest risk.

One reason we are falling short is that homophobia still channels HIV prevention funding away from the group that most needs it: gay men. We often hear about the changing face of AIDS. That the population now getting infected is disproportionately black and Latino. Black heterosexual women, we know, are particularly hard-hit.

But gay men — especially black gay men — remain at the epicenter of the U.S. epidemic. Of the 50,000 Americans infected each year; more than 60 percent, or over 30,000, are gay and bisexual men. Those of us in the trenches need to make some tough public statements if we are going to stem the tide of infection.

In 2009, only 27 percent of new HIV infections occurred through heterosexual contact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Only 9 percent was due to injection drug use. The lion’s share of new infections—64 percent — occurred among men who have sex with men.

The demographic groups with the highest numbers of HIV infections were, first, white men having sex with men and then black men having sex with men. Third and fourth were, respectively, Latino men having sex with men and then heterosexual black women.

Alarmingly, black gay male infections were almost as high as those among white gay males — vastly disproportionate to their percentage of the population. New infections among black gay and bisexual males age 13 to 29 increased 48 percent from 2006 to 2009.

You might expect that the group hardest hit by HIV — young gay and bisexual black males - would get a proportionate large share of public funding. You would be wrong.

In a 2009 Wisconsin case study, among blacks, male on male sex accounted for 58 percent of AIDS diagnoses that year. Yet black gay men only received 19 percent of targeted tests, and made up only 11 percent of HIV prevention clients.

These numbers are typical. Only 27 percent of HIV education and risk reduction funding was allocated for gay and bisexual men, according to a 2011 Centers for Disease Control analysis. Only 16 percent of National Institutes of Health funding for HIV that was targeted to a specific risk group was allotted to gay and bisexual men, according to a 2011 report by the White House Office of National AIDS Policy.