April 2009 Archives

Swine flu hysteria has infected the media, even though it remains to be seen if swine flu itself infects the public at large. Everywhere I turn there's an exaggerated headline or a screaming talking head telling me I should be scared. HIV scares me. Swine flu, not so much.

The evidence so far has been less than compelling to me that the current swine flu crisis deserves the hype. Swine flu has a long way to go before it kills the thousands of people every year that die from the common flu or HIV/AIDS.

In saying this, I am by no means downplaying the potential for swine flu to become our worst nightmare. But if all I had to go by was media coverage, I could be led to believe that swine flu indeed already is our worst nightmare. At this time, that's thankfully not true.

Well, it's not yet true here in the United States. However, in Mexico it's pretty darned close. At the very least, it's just a run-of-the-mill nightmare for them, especially in Mexico City. The sight of people as far as you can see wearing surgical masks is unsettling.

On Twitter and elsewhere, I've seen tweets that have been retweeted over and over again comparing swine flu and HIV. There are variations, but generally they say something like: "Some people get swine flu and everyone is buying masks. Millions get HIV and people still aren't wearing condoms." There is definitely truth in that sentiment.


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What has President Obama achieved for HIV/AIDS in his first 100 days? He appointed Jeffrey Crowley as director of the Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP) and nominated Eric Goosby as the U.S. global AIDS coordinator, who will run the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR).

After years of inactivity, ONAP has a leader. After years of abstinence-only restrictions, PEPFAR is poised to support other options. These are great developments, but they are only steps in the right direction. (For example, how about the Department of Health and Human Services finally lifting the HIV travel ban?) The heavy lifting is yet to come.

Here's a reminder of what Obama has promised us on HIV/AIDS (from WhiteHouse.gov):

• Promote AIDS Prevention: In the first year of his presidency, President Obama will develop and begin to implement a comprehensive national HIV/AIDS strategy that includes all federal agencies. The strategy will be designed to reduce HIV infections, increase access to care and reduce HIV-related health disparities. The President will support common sense approaches including age-appropriate sex education that includes information about contraception, combating infection within our prison population through education and contraception, and distributing contraceptives through our public health system. The President also supports lifting the federal ban on needle exchange, which could dramatically reduce rates of infection among drug users. President Obama has also been willing to confront the stigma -- too often tied to homophobia -- that continues to surround HIV/AIDS.

• Empower Women to Prevent HIV/AIDS: In the United States, the percentage of women diagnosed with AIDS has quadrupled over the last 20 years. Today, women account for more than one quarter of all new HIV/AIDS diagnoses. President Obama introduced the Microbicide Development Act, which will accelerate the development of products that empower women in the battle against AIDS. Microbicides are a class of products currently under development that women apply topically to prevent transmission of HIV and other infections.

I hope that Obama follows through on all of these promises, but especially his commitment to "develop and begin to implement" a national AIDS strategy this year. We can't afford to wait a moment longer.
   


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William Masters and Virginia Johnson (a.k.a. Masters and Johnson) were arguably the most influential husband-and-wife team of sex researchers. A new book claims that their assertion of being able to convert gay and lesbian people into straight people may have been a big lie.

Their 1966 book Human Sexual Response is often cited as a spark for the sexual revolution of the 1960s. So when they published their 1979 book Homosexuality in Perspective, it gave much credibility to the "gay conversion" concept.

Author Thomas Maier claims in his new book Masters of Sex that there were serious doubts about the validity of the Masters and Johnson "gay conversion" research even before the 1979 book was published.

Maier claims that the doubters included none other than Virginia Johnson. Here's an excerpt from an article by Maier in Scientific American about Johnson's doubts:

"That was a bad book," Johnson recalled decades later. Johnson said she favored a rewriting and revision of the whole book "to fit within the existing [medical] literature," and feared that Bill simply didn't know what he was talking about. At worst, she said, "Bill was being creative in those days" in the compiling of the "gay conversion" case studies.

This is absolutely appalling for numerous reasons. However, the most disturbing reason is that the Masters and Johnson "gay conversion" case studies are still cited by religious conservatives to justify their belief that they can "cure" homosexuality.

For example, the Catholic Medical Association released a report in 2006 that repeatedly cites the Masters and Johnson research. The report supposedly "counters the myth that same-sex attraction is genetically predetermined and unchangeable, and offers hope for prevention and treatment."

I sincerely hope that if indeed the Masters and Johnson "gay conversion" case studies are nothing more than a fraud that mainstream scientific organizations will make a point of spreading the truth.

As GLBT people, we shouldn't have to be fighting this fight. How we are the way we are is still up for debate (perhaps), but as far as I'm concerned the question of whether we can change our sexual orientation or gender identity has only one answer. No, we can't.


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When the HBO series True Blood debuted last year, I was hooked. I'm eagerly awaiting the beginning of the second season in June (below is a preview).

As a reminder, here are my posts so far exploring vampires as kindred spirits to those of us living with HIV/AIDS:

Virtuous Vampires
"Vampires fascinate me. I developed a taste for them after I was diagnosed with HIV in 1992. What we had in common--the fear that people had of our blood--coaxed my curiosity."

Who Ordered the Hamburger with AIDS?

"The best moment was put in by short order cook Lafayette, who is by far the coolest gay character currently on television. He doesn't take crap from anyone. Lafayette isn't a vampire and he doesn't have HIV/AIDS. However, he is openly gay in rural Louisiana. So, it's no surprise when a bunch of drunk hooligans send back a hamburger deluxe because they said 'it has AIDS' according to the waitress. It's also no surprise how Lafayette responds."

Are You Being Safe?
"After seeing Twilight this weekend, I realized that abstinence can be sexy ... It was a pleasant surprise to witness a mother ask her daughter about safer sex in a movie with abstinence as a theme."

An Open Letter to Robert Pattinson
"Dear Robert: I loved your performance in Twilight as the vampire Edward Cullen. I'm not a teenage girl, but I do admit to swooning whenever you were on screen. I can only imagine how hard it must be for you as the heartthrob of the moment. Nonetheless, I do wish you had consulted with me before uttering the word 'AIDS' in the way you did recently."

Watch a sneak peek from season two of True Blood:




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In a previous post, I shared my nervousness about an overdue colonoscopy. Thankfully, I'm polyp and cancer free. This is obviously great news to my ears, but I'm all too aware that this outcome is not the final word.

I've had polyps before and will most likely have them again. Add in my family history with my HIV and I'm nowhere near being off the hook for colonoscopies into the foreseeable future. Not a pretty picture.

There's only so much medicine that a spoonful of sugar can help. If only those two quarts of MoviPrep could taste and behave more like beer, then I'd probably have a much different attitude about it all.

I know, the alternative to regular colonoscopies is the risk of waking up one day to a cancerous tumor I could have prevented. So, I'll continue to consent to the torture, I mean simple procedure, but I won't stop dreading it.

Click here to see this silly video on dosing instructions for MoviPrep:

























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Mercifully, I was spared the first-hand trauma of witnessing the multitude of AIDS-related deaths in the 1980s. However, I was not spared the second-hand trauma of hearing about them. As a newly out gay man when I was a freshman at New York University in Greenwich Village in 1987, it was impossible not to know that a plague was among us.

Although I was aware that death was a frequent visitor to my community, I was able to physically and emotionally keep him at a distance until my HIV diagnosis in 1992. From that point on, he and I were the best of friends. More like in a love-hate relationship sort of a way, but I hope you get what I mean.

Not unlike with many relationships as the years move on, death and I grew apart. That is, until recently. They say that deaths come in threes. After three recent deaths of people I knew, I find myself again in the shadow of death. Just when you think death has moved on, he taps you on the shoulder and whispers his existence in your ear.

The tragic circumstances of these three recent deaths created an eery echo in my brain. I'm highly aware of death again in a way that I haven't been since the 1980s. I can only imagine the horror of this feeling amplified in the minds of those who went through three deaths back then not in the timespan of three months but in three weeks or even in three days.

Now that we've gone through the ritual that old friends go through of getting reacquainted, I hope that death and I can forge a more balanced relationship. I realize that I was wrong to ignore him. I hope death realizes I'm not ready to make the ultimate long-term commitment.

For a conversation about the connection between wellness and death, please read my interview with Chodo, an HIV-positive Buddhist monk, in the March 2009 issue of POZ.



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Traditional media coverage of HIV/AIDS usually disappoints me, so I'm pleased to acknowledge an article by columnist Daniel Shoer Roth of El Nuevo Herald, the Spanish-language sister publication of The Miami Herald.

Translated into English, "Rejection painful for gay men with HIV" asks a question that strikes close to the heart of people living with HIV--"When is the best time for a gay man who is dating to reveal his HIV/AIDS status?"

To get answers, the writer attended a group therapy session for gay men at the Miami Beach Community Health Center. The answers he received were varied, including one person who tells potential dates immediately and another person who waits a few dates. Homophobia and AIDS phobia were mentioned as major contributors to stigma against HIV-positive gay men.

No new ground was broken by this article. However, it was heartening to see these topics discussed openly in a Spanish-language newspaper (and for an English-language newspaper to reprint it from a Spanish-language newspaper).
 


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Pope Benedict XVI recently said that "[HIV/AIDS is] a tragedy that cannot be overcome by money alone, that cannot be overcome through the distribution of condoms, which even aggravates the problems."

I shared my views on that quote in a previous post. For now, let's just say that I totally disagree. Thankfully, I'm far from the only one who disagrees with the pope on this issue.

In an effort to add some levity to the discourse on this issue, Patrick Boivin has created a YouTube video depicting a showdown between the pope and Jesus himself.

Some people may find this video offensive, but I'm obviously not one of those people.

Watch the video:

Hat tip to The Huffington Post for this story!
 

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The struggle to advance LGBT civil rights continues to take surprising turns. The Iowa Supreme Court on April 3 decided unanimously that barring same-sex couples from marriage was unconstitutional. Marriage for same-sex couples in Iowa will be allowed starting on April 24.

Iowa is only the third state nationwide that allows same-sex couples to marry. As a native New Yorker, I have a bias toward believing that certain places in America are more conservative than others. I always considered Iowa as one of those places, but in this case, at least, I was wrong.

I believe in marriage for same-sex couples for many reasons, none more important than equality. However, there is one reason that doesn't get talked about much because of all the hubbub. And it's a conservative-inspired reason at that.

Marriage encourages couples to settle down. Settling down leads to fewer sexual partners. Fewer sexual partners decrease the spread of HIV. In other words, marriage as prevention. It may seem far fetched, but I do think the logic train on that line of thinking is sound.

LGBT civil rights have been implanted into the geographic heart of America. Let's hope that it spreads from there into the hearts of all Americans.



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Pedro: The Movie will premiere on MTV on April 1. Written by Dustin Lance Black, the Oscar-winning screenplay writer for Milk, the movie depicts the life of the late Pedro Zamora. He was an HIV-positive activist and a former cast member of MTV's reality show The Real World.

Born in Cuba, Zamora immigrated to the United States during the 1980 Mariel boat lift. He found out at the age of 17 that he was HIV positive after donating blood to the Red Cross. He became an AIDS educator, which prompted him to take his message to a national television audience.

The MTV producers probably got more than they had anticipated when Zamora joined the cast. His health deteriorated on camera. He died in 1994 at the age of 22 the day after the final episode aired.

I remember watching that season in awe of Zamora. My being newly diagnosed at the time and both of us being gay, HIV positive, from Cuban families and about the same age (I was two years older), I felt a great kinship with him. I don't know if I could have done what he did. I admired his courage.

Zamora was featured on the cover of the third issue of POZ. Although he was a reality-show star, his contribution to the culture was not trivial. The reviews on the movie itself are mixed, but nonetheless Zamora deserves to be remembered.

Watch a trailer for the movie:




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