Ugandan Gay Rights Activist Recommended For Asylum In The U.S. – VIDEO

Jim Redmond

www.towleroad.com/2014/09/ugandan-gay-rights-activist-recommended-for-asylum-in-the-us-video.html

Torey Carter on International LGBT Leadership
LGBT equality is as much an American issue as it is a global issue. Over 70 countries worldwide still criminalize homosexuality. Torey Carter of the Victory Fund discusses how effective LGBT…

WATCH: Straight Dad Punched For Calling Out Antigay Slurs

A South Dakota man is nursing a black eye and head injury after he confronted a woman he heard use antigay slurs outside a local bar.

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Sunnivie Brydum

election2008.advocate.com/crime/2014/09/19/watch-straight-dad-punched-calling-out-antigay-slurs

Embracing the Reproductive Rights of HIV-affected Couples: It's Time
Pinned to the bulletin board over my desk is a birth announcement with stunning photos and the quote, “I prayed for this child and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him – 1 Samuel 1:27.” Next to it is a card with a photo of a couple embracing and the words, “Thank you for believing in us.” Then a black and white photograph my teen daughter took at a first birthday party, chubby baby arms grabbing at the birthday cake on the highchair tray. These mementos give me goose bumps. Witnessing someone’s dream come true is a gift. I once joined a couple and their baby. As the parents ate their salad amongst the bustle of San Francisco’s financial district lunch crowd and took turns holding the baby, I looked around wishing everyone could perceive this great love. I wondered what it is like to be this child — to grow up having been so wanted, so planned for, so desired.

While condoms have been the gold-standard HIV prevention method, when HIV-affected couples want to have a baby, they must necessarily consider other options, weighing the risk of possible HIV transmission with their natural desires to have a child. Assisted reproductive technologies, such as sperm washing combined with intrauterine insemination or in vitro-fertilization, have been offered to HIV-affected couples through some fertility clinics, but many couples are unable to access these services due to cost or location.

Assisted reproductive technologies are not always necessary. Data from recent clinical trials now offer additional options to reduce sexual HIV transmission, expanding the safer conception methods available for HIV-affected couples.

First, HIV-positive individuals who take antiretroviral medications and have their virus fully suppressed reduce their risk of transmitting HIV to a partner by 96%, a strategy known as treatment as prevention. Second, data from pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) trials demonstrate HIV-negative individuals adherent to taking antiretroviral medication dramatically reduce their risk of acquiring HIV. In fact, there were zero HIV transmissions to PrEP research participants who took four or more doses per week. Based on these data, timed intercourse with or without PrEP provides effective, lower cost choices for HIV-positive male/HIV-negative female couples to conceive. When engaged in care with a knowledgeable provider, HIV-affected couples can plan for a pregnancy where the woman, and thereby the infant, remains HIV-negative.

Even with this tremendous news, HIV-affected couples experience stigma related to their fertility desires from friends, family and medical providers. Many HIV-positive men in our Bay Area Perinatal AIDS Center‘s PRO Men (Positive Reproductive Outcomes for HIV-positive Men) initiative, based at San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center’s Ward 86 HIV Clinic, report a desire to have a child. But they also say they’ve never been asked by their providers whether they want to have a child. In nearly every support group, one theme emerges: I just wish people understood. I wish people knew I can be like Magic Johnson. I wish people knew about an undectable viral load and the possibilities for having a family.

The truth is the story has changed from one of risk reduction and permission giving to one of possibility and hope. It’s time our collective knowledge and attitudes caught up with the science. We’ve arrived at new point in the HIV epidemic — a compelling opportunity to harness the available behavioral and biomedical interventions toward the elimination of sexual HIV transmission. HIV-affected couples can have healthy sex lives and families.

The photos of the families on the bulletin board above my desk are living proof.

www.huffingtonpost.com/shannon-weber/embracing-the-reproductive-rights-of-hiv-affected-couples_b_5774512.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

HRC Calls Out Larry Jacobs and Paul Cameron

HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/hrc-calls-out-larry-jacobs-and-paul-cameron?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

Clay Aiken Casts Shade Upon Your Naked Selfies: They “Deserve” To Be Leaked

Clay Aiken/Facebook

Clay Aiken, the former American Idol runner-up now running for Congress in North Carolina, says celebrities victimized by the recent nude photo hacking scandal and “anybody who takes inappropriate pictures of themselves deserve exactly what they get.”

The 35-year-old single father made the comment to a Washington Post reporter yesterday in a move that will likely (not likely) please the progressive young Democrats he’s currently attempting to woo in his home state.

Like a true politician, Aiken also conveniently forgot to mention that he was the victim in a similar situation back in 2007, when he was publicly outed after a former butt buddy provided the press with some super sexxxy photos. “I’ve got a mirror if I want to check something out,” he said.

So as not to come off as totally heartless, he added that “of course whoever [stole and released the photos] should be hogtied,” and that “it’s unfortunate that we don’t have Internet security right now or the laws in place to protect people from pirating that stuff.”

Ok! Thanks, Clay!

Matthew Tharrett

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/9yAKjMjkDdc/clay-aiken-casts-shade-upon-your-naked-selfies-they-deserve-to-be-leaked-20140919

News: Beyoncé, Bent-Con, Home Depot, Fox News, ISIS, Chick-fil-A

Kyler Geoffroy

www.towleroad.com/2014/09/news19.html

Southern Governor Fights Same-Sex Marriage — And Lesbian Divorce

Governor Phil Bryant has aligned himself with the anti-gay group in opposing the state’s sole challenge to its marriage ban.

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Matt Baume

election2008.advocate.com/politics/marriage-equality/2014/09/19/southern-governor-fights-same-sex-marriage-%E2%80%94-and-lesbian

Why Posttraumatic Stress Could Make Women More Susceptible To Food Addiction
By Rachael Rettner, Senior Writer
Published: 09/18/2014 10:36 AM EDT on LiveScience

Women with symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may be more likely to have food addiction, or a feeling of dependence on food, new research suggests.

In the study, researchers surveyed more than 49,000 female nurses ages 25 to 42 and asked the women whether they had ever experienced a traumatic event, such as childhood abuse, the violent death of a loved one, or a miscarriage or stillbirth. Researchers then asked the women who had experienced such an event whether they had also experienced PTSD symptoms as a result of the trauma. Those symptoms could include losing interest in activities that were once enjoyable, and feeling isolated or distant from other people.

Participants were also asked whether they experienced symptoms of food addiction, such as frequently eating when they were not hungry, feeling sluggish or fatigued from overeating, and having physical withdrawal symptoms when they cut down on certain foods. The researchers considered women to have a food addiction only if they reported at least three of the condition’s symptoms. [8 Tips for Fighting Sugar Cravings]

Overall, 66 percent of those who had experienced a traumatic event reported at least one symptom of PTSD, according to the study.

The researchers also found that 8 percent of all women in the study had food addiction. But this disorder was more common among those with PTSD symptoms: Nearly 18 percent of women with 6 to 7 symptoms of PTSD had food addiction, compared to 6 percent of women who had no PTSD symptoms during their lifetime. (Although the study did not ask whether a doctor had diagnosed the women with PTSD, people with four or more symptoms of PTSD may have the condition, the researchers said.)

The link between food addiction and PTSD symptoms was strongest among those whose PTSD symptoms occurred before age 10.

Previous studies have found that people with PTSD are at increased risk for obesity, and the new study provides one explanation for that link: People with PTSD may use eating to cope with psychological distress, the researchers said.

“Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that observed links between PTSD and obesity might be partly explained by a tendency to use food to self-medicate traumatic stress symptoms,” the researchers, from the University of Minnesota, wrote in the Sept. 17 issue of the journal JAMA Psychiatry.

However, because the study did not ask women when they started experiencing symptoms of food addiction, the study cannot determine which came first, the PTSD or the food addiction.

If studies that follow people forward over time can replicate the new results, “these findings suggest that interrupting the pathway from PTSD to obesity may require psychological and behavioral interventions that address dependence on eating to cope with distress,” the researchers said.

Follow Rachael Rettner @RachaelRettner. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

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