Monthly Archives: September 2014
Chris Kluwe Takes On NFL & Ray Rice Investigation
Chris Kluwe Takes On NFL & Ray Rice Investigation
Chris Kluwe says it’s ironic that a league that is so dependent on instant replays is having a hard time with a different type of video evidence.
Annie Hollenbeck
www.advocate.com/sports/2014/09/17/chris-kluwe-takes-nfl-ray-rice-investigation
Coming Out of the PrEP Closet
Coming Out of the PrEP Closet
Each morning, I take a pill called Truvada to protect me from becoming infected with HIV. This strategy, also known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, reduces the risk of HIV infection by up to 99 percent if the pill is taken once a day. This makes PrEP one of the most effective HIV-prevention measures in existence. After consulting with my physician, I went on PrEP to further protect and take personal responsibility for my health. I’m HIV-negative, and I want to remain that way.
I recently decided to be public about my use of PrEP in order to raise awareness about this relatively new tool for preventing HIV. It’s important to encourage people at risk for HIV to talk to their medical providers about all the tools and methods available for preventing infection, including PrEP, and to choose the methods that are best for them.
As an elected official, disclosing this personal health decision was a hard but necessary choice. After all these years, we still see enormous stigma, shame, and judgment around HIV, and around sexuality in general. That is precisely why I decided to be public about my choice: to contribute to a larger dialogue about our community’s health. I have the honor of representing a district that includes the Castro — ground zero for the HIV epidemic. I represent a community that has been profoundly impacted by HIV, with a large number of HIV-positive people — nearly one in four gay men in San Francisco is HIV-positive — and an even larger number of people at risk of becoming positive. As an elected official in this role, I have an obligation to do everything in my power to support those living with HIV, increase public awareness about effective HIV prevention, and reduce stigma and shame.
My journey to PrEP was a long one. I came to terms with myself as a gay man when I was 17 years old in 1987, at the height of the HIV epidemic. Many gay men were getting sick and dying. Like many in my generation, I came of age associating sex with illness and death. That association — with all the fear, anxiety, guilt, and shame that go along with it — is still very real for many of us.
As time has gone by, I’ve seen people become healthier, and I’m continually in awe of those who have survived the epidemic and thrived. Yet new HIV infections continue — 50,000 annually in the U.S., and over 2 million annually worldwide. Despite all our prevention efforts, I continue to know people who’ve remained HIV-negative for 20 or 30 years, only to become HIV-positive. I regularly meet young men, some barely out of high school, who have the virus.
None of this is preordained. People don’t need to continue to get infected, and we know that PrEP has the potential to help stop the epidemic in its tracks by ending new HIV infections. It’s one pill a day, with few side effects for most people.
Condoms remain critically important for HIV-prevention efforts, but they have their limits, as demonstrated by the continuing new infections after 30 years of robust prevention efforts. Only one in six gay men uses condoms consistently and effectively enough to be fully protected from HIV. For those who do use them consistently, condoms offer significant protection but have a failure rate, and condom usage among gay men reduces HIV risk by 76 percent, not 100 percent.
Given the challenges many gay men have with consistent condom use as well as the continued risk of HIV transmission even for those who use condoms, PrEP provides a powerful additional level of protection. It’s not a question of either condoms or PrEP. It’s about both important tools.
PrEP has broad support in the public-health community. The World Health Organization and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have recommended its use by those at risk for HIV, including gay men. The state of New York and the San Francisco Department of Public Health have adopted PrEP as a core prevention strategy. The HIV advocacy community overwhelmingly supports PrEP. Most insurance companies cover it fully despite its considerable cost, precisely because it is so effective at preventing a serious illness for which there is no cure.
Some aren’t sold on PrEP. Skeptics question whether people will adhere to a daily pill, which is a legitimate concern. Protection decreases if usage is inconsistent. This challenge can be overcome with effective education, and drug adherence is a challenge that isn’t unique to PrEP.
Some critics also view PrEP as a license for people to engage in risky behavior and assert that it will cause non-HIV sexually transmitted infections to increase. No study to date has shown that those using PrEP increase risky behavior — such as reducing condom usage compared with before using PrEP — and there is evidence to the contrary. Indeed, this line of thinking — that promoting an effective prevention method will lead to irresponsible behavior — resembles some of the phony arguments used to attack the HPV vaccine by suggesting that getting vaccinated will lead young girls down a path to promiscuity. And, since PrEP users are regularly screened for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, PrEP use will increase opportunities for prompt detection and treatment of STIs.
PrEP isn’t only about gay men. Women can benefit tremendously from it as well. Many women are using PrEP to conceive a child with an HIV-positive partner, a new approach dubbed “PrEP-ception.” PrEP can also protect women (and men) in abusive relationships. Too many women — and gay men as well — don’t fully control how or when they have sex, whether their partners use condoms, and what risks their partners are taking elsewhere. People facing these challenges can take control of their infection risk — and essentially eliminate that risk — by using PrEP effectively.
In addition to lack of education and stigma, another significant barrier to fully realizing PrEP’s potential benefits is lack of access. PrEP isn’t cheap, and for the many people who are uninsured or underinsured, cost can effectively deny access. PrEP needs to be easily available to all communities and all income levels through public healthcare programs, including Medicaid. Otherwise we risk accentuating health disparities among our diverse communities.
Many people and organizations have gotten us where we are with PrEP. The University of California San Francisco is responsible for some of the earliest clinical studies of PrEP, and organizations like San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Project Inform, and the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition have been working on the front lines to ensure that the promise of PrEP is fully realized, including advocating for FDA approval, helping establish expanded access programs from the drug manufacturer, ensuring PrEP is covered by insurance plans, and disseminating information to consumers and clinicians.
We know how to end HIV infection. We simply need the political will to ensure that the community has accurate information about and access to all prevention methods, including PrEP. I hope my disclosure can play a role in moving us toward these goals.
Scott Wiener is an elected member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. For more information, visit scottwiener.com.
Phone Banking Poolside for Pennsylvania Non-Discrimination
Phone Banking Poolside for Pennsylvania Non-Discrimination
Last week longtime HRC activist Patty Ellis and Rebecca Tillet hosted a volunteer phonebank in Newtown, Pennsylvania to support the state’s non-discrimination act.
HRC.org
The MacArthur Foundation Has A Long History Of Recognizing Queer Geniuses
The MacArthur Foundation Has A Long History Of Recognizing Queer Geniuses
Alison Bechdel
The MacArthur Foundation awarded nearly two dozen genius grants this week, and there are three fabulous queers among the recipients.
Is “genius” too strong of a word for Mary Bonauto, Samuel Hunter and Alison Bechdel? No, we don’t think it is. After all, we have Bonauto to thank for leading a massive component of the crusade for marriage equality since the ’90s; and Bechdel and Hunter are responsible for some major literary works that are basically required reading.
A native Idahoan, Hunter’s plays include A Bright New Boise, A Great Wilderness and The Whale, all of which feature regular folks whose values are tested by pain and loneliness. The settings are plain and stark, and the characters unassuming. His work kind of makes us feel like we’re watching the play that we only catch a glimpse of at the beginning of Barton Fink: the poetry of real working people whose everyday struggles tell the story of contemporary culture.
If that sounds a little too serious, how about some comic books? You probably know Bechdel for her strip, Dykes to Watch Out For, which chronicled lesbian life for 25 years. Her work isn’t just a collection of funnies, though: she’s a serious memoirist, working in a graphic form. Bechdel was last on our radar when some idiot politicians in South Carolina freaked out when they learned that colleges were assigning a lesbian’s books. She’s also responsible for the Bechdel Test, which determines whether a film respects women by analyzing whether female characters actually speak to each other about anything other than men for a decent length of time.
Mary Bonauto
As for Mary Bonauto, all we can say is that it’s a shame MacArthur doesn’t have a “hero” grant as well, because that’s what she deserves. For literally decades, she’s been litigating for LGBT equality along with GLAD. We also have her to thank, in large part, for the long multi-decade strategy that gradually brought us civil unions, and from there, full marriage. Wherever there’s been a major lawsuit that’s improved our lives, in most cases Mary Bonauto was somehow involved.
These are not, of course, the first queers to be recognized by the MacArthur Foundation.
Last year, gay recipients included Kyle Abraham (a dancer), Tarell Alvin McCraney (a playwright) and Jeremy Denk (a writer and pianist).
Denk’s essays have appeared in The New Yorker, but he’s mostly known for his mastery of the piano. He also looks swell in a bow tie. McCraney’s plays explore growing up poor and black, and how people learn to navigate the worlds into which they are born. And Abraham’s dance is electrifying, such as his show “Pavement,” in which dancers explore the nature of violence.
The same year, they granted $150,000 to Loki Films to produce The Arrivals, a documentary about a gay couple that immigrates from Mexico to the US. This is the same company that produced the outstanding and disturbing documentary Jesus Camp, but as far as we know The Arrivals hasn’t been completed yet.
Junot Díaz
Author Junot Díaz won an award in 2012, and while we are not sure if he’s gay, he did once call noted homophobe Orson Scott Card “a cretinous fool,” so he’s at the very least a good friend.
In 2008, MacArthur awarded $45,000 to the Heartland Alliance for Human Needs & Human Rights, a Chicago organization that used the money to train LGBT leaders working in extremely challenging countries like Nigeria, Sri Lanka and Iraq.
They also awarded conductor Marin Alsop in 2005. Alsop’s partner, Kristin Jurkscheit, is a french horn player, and the couple has a son. The family attracted some controversy — most of it, in our opinion, manufactured — since for a time Alsop was conducting the same orchestra in which Jurkscheit played.
And way back in 1996, Michael Bérubé won a grant for his scholarship, activism, and community leadership. You might not recognize his name, but Bérubé book Coming Out Under Fire is the one of the most important queer works of the 20th century, detailing the closeted lives of service members in World War II.
matt baume
Facebook Refuses To Change Name Policy After Meeting with Drag Queens, Temporarily Restores Deleted Profiles
Facebook Refuses To Change Name Policy After Meeting with Drag Queens, Temporarily Restores Deleted Profiles
After the social network begin enforcing its ‘real names’ policy, requiring that all users go by their legal name online, drag queens who found their accounts shut down were in an uproar and successfully set a meeting with Facebook to discuss the policy. That meeting, also attended by openly gay member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Rudy Campos, took place today and did not result in any change on Facebook’s part. The AP reports:
Facebook said it will keep the accounts active for two weeks so people can decide whether to provide their real names.
Several drag queens and Supervisor David Campos said at a news conference at San Francisco City Hall that they are disappointed that Facebook didn’t change its policy after the two sides met for about an hour Wednesday. Campos said Facebook has agreed to another meeting.
According to The Bay Area Reporter, Campos also added, “After an hour of discussion, we have yet to hear from Facebook they agree the policy is wrong.”
Meanwhile, Sister Roma, one of the most vocal drag queens who has been opposing Facebook’s policy, said she was ready to mount a large-scale protest if necessary, saying, “We’re always ready to go.” For the drag queens and for Mr. Campos, Facebook’s policy represents a real danger for many at risk minorities:
“They’re claiming they’re trying to create a safe environment,” but [Roma] and others have heard from people who have escaped abusive spouses and “the only outlet they have is through Facebook.”
[Heklina] said safety is a concern for her. “I have crazy family members” who she doesn’t want to be able to find her. […]
Advocates said that LGBT employees at Facebook have been pushing their cause, and Roma said, “There are people on both sides of this issue within the company.” […]
“This issue is way bigger than a bunch of drag queens complaining because we can’t use our stage names,” Roma said in a news release. “This policy is discriminatory and potentially dangerous to a variety of Facebook users, including abused and battered women, bullied teens, political activists, sex workers, and especially members of the transgender community; all examples of people who use pseudonyms to ensure their safety and privacy.”
(Photo via Twitter)
Sean Mandell
Melloldy Über Jackson-Show na 3 Parada LGBT de Serrana S.P 14/09/2014
Melloldy Über Jackson-Show na 3 Parada LGBT de Serrana S.P 14/09/2014
Show de Melloldy Über Jackson Filmado de outro Angulo na 3 Parada LGBT de Serrana 14/09/14….
WATCH: Trans Advocate Brynn Tannehill's Powerful Advice on Anger, Allies
WATCH: Trans Advocate Brynn Tannehill's Powerful Advice on Anger, Allies
In her moving keynote speech at TransPride, ‘I Am Real,’ trans veteran Brynn Tannehill talks boldly about anger versus dignity and tolerance versus acceptance.
Mitch Kellaway
Facebook's Name Policy Won't Accept Chase Nahooikaikakeolamauloaokalani Silva
Facebook's Name Policy Won't Accept Chase Nahooikaikakeolamauloaokalani Silva
Chase Nahooikaikakeolamauloaokalani Silva has a bone to pick with Facebook.
Last week, the social media platform froze Silva’s account because of a policy that suspends accounts suspected of fake names. Facebook says they want you to “always know who you’re connecting with,” and the policy was enacted to help “keep our community safe.”
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But his 29-letter middle name is real and the site doesn’t make it easy for him to prove it.
“That’s my name,” Silva wrote in a Facebook post, shortly after he was alerted to make the change. “I am a proud Hawaiian who wants to be able to display my Hawaiian given name.”
Story continues below…
Post by Chase N Silva.
The lengthy name, Silva told HuffPost, means “to be strong and draw strength from heaven above.” His great-grandmother who spoke the Native Hawaiian language fluently selected it for him.
He shortened it on Facebook to just the first letter to appease the policy because he said there was no easy way for him to access his account without first making the change. Then, there’s a series of informational pages and links that lead to a form where users can submit approved documents to confirm their identity.
“We’ve always required that people use their real identity on their Facebook profiles,” Andrew Souvall, a representative for Facebook told HuffPost in an email, adding that people tend to use “fake names to engage in bad behavior” online. “We also recognize that a person’s real identity is not necessarily the name that appears on their legal documentation,” he said, “and that’s why we accept other forms of identification.”
Facebook’s recent policy implementation caused an uproar among performers and drag queens in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community who identify with their stage names online and in real life. After a group of LGBT activists threatened to protest outside of Facebook’s San Francisco office, company officials agreed to discuss their concerns.
Silva, a self-described “proud gay male,” doesn’t plan on contacting Facebook to prove his name, and he says he shouldn’t have to. He believes that Facebook shouldn’t tell its 829 million active users daily what names they can and cannot use.
“Facebook should not be able to dictate what your name is, what you go by, what you answer to,” he told HuffPost. “Aside from the LGBT community, there are rape victims, abuse victims, even teachers, who use aliases because they don’t want people to contact them. It’s a protection of your identity.”
For Silva, his full, given name is a “badge of honor.”
“It’s not a standard name, obviously, in America’s eyes,” Silva, who was born and raised on Oahu before moving to Seattle in 2008, “but that’s the name that I’m proud of.”
Michigan AFL-CIO: ““Discrimination is Not Only Unfair and Un-American, It’s Anti-Competitive”
Michigan AFL-CIO: ““Discrimination is Not Only Unfair and Un-American, It’s Anti-Competitive”
Today Michigan AFL-CIO, a longtime supporter of a fully inclusive nondiscrimination bill, reiterated in an op-ed for The Detroit News its full-throated support of amending the Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity.
HRC.org
