Peter's POZ Blog

Prop 1 in Maine is a week away.  Let's not lose this one like we lost Prop 8, by sitting back, hoping for the best, and only becoming active after the vote.

You can do something now.  Donate online to No On 1 (I did, months ago).  If you can't afford a donation, they have various ways to volunteer, including calling potential voters from your own phone (for those outside Maine, the Courage Campaign is organizing these national calls).  No On 1 is also providing free hotel space and car-pool options to those who join their ground campaign:

For the final long campaign weekend we're going to give you a FREE place to stay in a local hotel if you can work at least two volunteer shifts.

All you need to do is drive or rideshare to Maine to help protect marriage equality. Our friends at Drive at Equality have made it easy to sign up on their website.

We've never been this close to victory -- but with the polls showing this race dead even, we can't do it without your help. Can you take a short trip to make history?

http://www.driveforequality.org

It doesn't matter if you have a car or not - when you sign up at the Drive for Equality website, just check a box on the form for a rideshare request to post on our interactive board.  You'll join the dozens of volunteers who are coming to Maine to be a part of our Get Out The Vote team, and the thousands of Mainers who are volunteering to protect marriage equality here.

Every person who volunteers will fill a critical role on our team-- we need to talk to hundreds of thousands of Maine voters in the final days of the election and make sure they vote NO on 1 and protect our state's marriage equality law.

Will you join us here and make a big difference?

http://www.driveforequality.org

No experience is required, and we'll help you make the trip by providing your housing and by helping to match drivers with riders. If you are traveling as a group, or in a carpool, we will try to match you in a shared room with your group. All that we ask is ALL participants sign up at the Drive for Equality website.

You can help us defeat Question 1 and protect marriage equality in Maine. In just 7 days, voters in Maine will choose the direction of the national marriage equality movement.

The polls are close, but we can win if we have enough volunteers to turn out all our voters. You can make the biggest difference by driving (or riding in a carpool) to Maine for all or any part of GOTV from Friday the 30th through Election Day on the 3rd.

Sign up to Drive for Equality to Maine. Your short trip will make a big difference.

http://www.driveforequality.org

Darlene Huntress
Field Director
NO on 1 / Protect Maine Equality

P.S.-- Can't make it to Maine but want to help from home? Join Call for Equality, our virtual phone bank program, and help contact voters from your home or office. All you need is a phone and an internet connection to make a difference. Sign up here:

http://protectmaineequality.org/callforequality

If you need a little extra push to get involved, join the half a million people who have been inspired by Philip...

Now the Catholic League has dittoed the futile smear campaign tying Kevin Jennings to ACT UP.  Bill Donohue, their president (or according to Kathy Griffin, "one man in a room with a computer"), describes ACT UP as a "homosexual urban terrorist group."

Gotta love it.  For the record, ACT UP never hurt a fly.  We were studiously nonviolent.  That said, would a pie in Donohue's face count as nonviolent?  Oh, come on... please... pretty please?

They're running out of ammo.  The right-wing nuts that have been trying, and miserably failing, to bring down Kevin Jennings, Obama's "safe schools czar," are now trying to use ACT UP as a smear (see WorldNetDaily).  It seems Kevin was one of many supporters for a currently running exhibit at Harvard titled ACT UP New York: Activism, Art, and the AIDS Crisis, 1987-1993, which the wingnuts are calling "radical porn" (click on the exhibit poster for a closer look).  Even worse, he may have even been a member of ACT UP way back when.  The horror!

You see, by wingnut logic, that means Kevin actively supports each and every thing every past member of ACT UP has done (or will do), including the condom on Helms' house (yup, they mention this), dropping the Eucharist (also mentioned), and saving millions of lives (oops, they missed this one).

This is another Jennings smear which really isn't one.  ACT UP membership was and always will be a badge of honor.  Just as the wingnuts have lost the battle to smear the memory of Harvey Milk, they will fail in their efforts to tarnish other glorious moments in our history.

We will not be shamed.


(hat tip, Rex Wockner)

Love this new ad from the folks at MoveOn...

In case you've avoided listening to the hateful right-wing media machine (basically Limbaugh plus his parrots at FOX) - and who could blame you - they've been orchestrating a disgusting smear campaign against a hero of mine, Kevin Jennings.  Kevin was the founder of GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, which has done more to protect gay kids than any group in our history.  As soon as President Obama appointed Jennings the Assistant Deputy Secretary for the Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools, he's had a target on his back from homophobes with microphones.

After they successfully forced out Van Jones, Obama's "green jobs" adviser, the talking heads on right-wing radio and FOX have set their sights on Jennings.  They've repeatedly called him a "pervert," and made completely false claims that he's a proponent of statutory rape and a supporter of NAMBLA.  These and other malicious smears have been repeatedly debunked, but they just keep saying them day after day, week after week.  This past week got even worse, as 53 House Republicans joined the lynch mob.

Thankfully, it looks like Obama is standing by Jennings, for now.  But in case any of his advisers (are you listening, Rahm?) are getting cold feet, they should understand this.  Kevin Jennings is an unimpeachable hero in the gay rights movement.  The work he has done is worthy of sainthood.  If Obama fails to fully defend Jennings at any point during this disgusting and probably endless onslaught, then he will cross a line in the sand with the gay community he'd be wise to avoid.  We will go from being annoyingly impatient to your worst political nightmare.

Just sayin'.

So thanks for showing some spine during this modern day McCarthyism.  Please don't lose it. 

And Kevin, we've got your back.  I'd imagine these past few weeks must have felt frightening at times, but please know that you are an inspiration for all who fight for justice and equality.  Your dignity and courage in the face of hate, both recently and during your life's work, offer an example for how we will ultimately win.

The AIDS Treatment Activists Coalition (ATAC), of which I'm a member, issued report cards on the nine major pharmaceutical companies with HIV drugs on the market, and most aren't exactly graduating with honors (the average grade was C-minus).

ATAC graded each company on drug development, pricing, access to medications (often through things like drug co-pay programs), marketing, and whether the companies give the community the opportunity to influence how they run their clinical trials.  Each company was also given an aggregate grade.

We praised companies like Merck and Tibotec for the way they do business, giving both the highest grade handed out (a B, although I actually thought Merck deserved an A-minus), while taking Roche and Abbott to task for various poor policies (Abbott got a much deserved F for its Norvir pricing fiasco).

The New York Times ran a great story in its business section last week covering the report card release.

What will hopefully come through loud and clear is that while we're very grateful for the life-saving meds that pharma has produced, and we acknowledge that progress in HIV has been stellar compared to many other diseases, we're far from done.

The drugs were never designed or priced to be taken life-long, and we need pharma to work closely with the community to ensure that progress toward something better than daily-treatment-for-life becomes a reality in the not-to-distant future.

Below is the summary report card.  More detailed reports can be found on ATAC's website.

The cynical among us might call this a stalling tactic, or more foot dragging.  I'd call it an essential first step.  On Friday, the following press release was released by the Obama administration:

WASHINGTON - President Obama today announced the launch of the National HIV/AIDS Community Discussions, a series of events to be held across the country. These events, hosted by the White House Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP) will offer the public a chance to provide input as the White House works to fulfill the President's pledge to develop a National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS). The first event, the Atlanta HIV/AIDS Community Discussion, will be held on August 25th at the 2009 National HIV Prevention Conference.

"HIV remains an serious challenge to the American people and I am committed to developing an effective National HIV/AIDS Strategy," said President Obama. "The National HIV/AIDS Community Discussions will provide an opportunity for members of the public to give their input on how we can best address this crucial issue. With the insights from communities across the country, we will have a strategy that is focused on the goals of reducing HIV incidence, getting people living with HIV/AIDS into care and improving health outcomes, and reducing HIV-related health disparities." [read more here]

So why can't Obama just announce a national strategy and get started on it?  AIDS experts and activists have been pushing for this for decades now - isn't there a consensus on what we need to do?

Not exactly.  With the exception of needle exchanges - the proven HIV prevention strategy for IV drug users - there is little consensus on how to reduce infections among other at-risk groups.  Now that the safe-sex culture among gay men from the early AIDS years is seriously fraying, most proposals for addressing their rising infection rates (changing HIV testing laws, serosorting, recommending immediate treatment for anyone HIV positive, PrEP, etc.),  are still being hotly debated.  The same holds true for reducing infections among African Americans, women, and other at-risk groups.

I've got my own opinions on things we should try, but getting all our ideas on the table for discussion is a good first step.  I just hope these discussions aren't like the recent town-hall meetings on health care reform, where only the loudest are heard.  While HIV treatment activists have done a good job of learning and promoting science-based policies, the same can't be said for many of our prevention activists.  I, for one, will be listening closely to our boring epidemiologists and scientists with long track records in HIV prevention research.

Kudos to Michael Petrelis for pushing me and other ACT UP alumni to lobby the New York Times for a much-deserved obit for Robert Hilferty, which ran in today's New York edition on page B12 (see it here online).

As Michael aptly says, "never doubt that a handful of queens can change the world, and get something into the New York Times when they put their minds to it."

Great news -- ACT UP San Diego is reforming to fight California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's HIV/AIDS budget cuts (he basically wiped out their entire HIV prevention program, along with other life-saving services like viral load testing for those on treatment).

Long live ACT UP!

(nice website, too -- click the graphic to see it)

It's definitely the worst picture of me ever taken, but how could I not post it?  Can't a blogger try to ride a media frenzy?  I would have posted it sooner, but it took me a while to find.

In 1998, I had a short chat with Michael Jackson, and the proof is above.  We were both at a small amfAR benefit in LA to honor Dr. Arnold Klein, Jackson's dermatologist (and possibly one of his drug suppliers, or the biological father of some Jackson children?).  I had never heard about Klein until this night, but apparently amfAR was founded in his LA home, and his website claims he's raised "over $300 million for HIV research and care."

But this isn't about Klein -- it's about Michael and me.  He came with his wife at the time, Debbie Rowe, but for an awkward moment, I saw him standing alone during the cocktail reception.  So I walked up and introduced myself.  I thanked him for his AIDS charity work, and told him I was amfAR's token HIV positive board member.  He was painfully shy.  I asked him what he was up to these days, and to be honest, I don't really remember his reply -- something about a casino project I think.

A few seconds later, the amfAR photographer asked for our shot, and my best buddy Michael put his arm around me, with his un-white-gloved hand on my shoulder, and smiled.


Addendum:  I just Googled "michael jackson casino," and it turns out my memory was pretty good -- he was planning to open one.