The Advocate April - May 2015

STRIBILD is a prescription medicine used as a complete single-tablet regimen to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before. STRIBILD does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS. What is STRIBILD? STRIBILD is a prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before. STRIBILD combines 4 medicines into 1 pill to be taken once a day with food. STRIBILD is a complete single-tablet regimen and should not be used with other HIV-1 medicines. STRIBILD does not cure HIV-1 infection or AIDS. To control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses you must keep taking STRIBILD. Ask your healthcare provider if you have questions about how to reduce the risk of passing HIV-1 to others. Always practice safer sex and use condoms to lower…

Neuroscience is discovering that the more often stories are told, the further they stray from reliability. The more the sparkly flourishes and surprising turns (the things that make stories riveting) take precedence in our tales, the deeper those details take root in our brains and sear into our neural pathways. They do it in ways that actual mundane facts cannot. (An aside: This morning I listened to a podcast in which several journalists discussed NBC news anchor Brian Williams and his fabulous—as in incredible, as in not to be believed—story about being in a helicopter hit by rocket-propelled grenade. One panelist said that every journalist’s thought upon hearing that story was, There but for the grace of God go I, and despite having never reported from a war zone, I…

Jeremy Lybarger interviewed family and colleagues of those killed in Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 for this issue (p. 42). He is a journalist who has written for Mother Jones, Salon, OUT, Guernica, Bookforum, and many others. He lives in San Francisco. Caitlin Donohue profiled would-be immigrants to the U.S. for this issue (p. 52). She is a Mexico City-based freelance writer and photographer, founder of 4UMag.com, and staff writer at Rookie. She writes about gender warriors, hip-hop princesses, and rebel lucha libre wrestlers. To be a part of her world, stalk her at @caitlindonohue on Twitter, @byrdwatch on Instagram. Andrew Holleran interviewed Larry Kramer for this issue (p. 36). He is the author of Dancer From the Dance, Grief, and Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited. He lives in Florida and…

QUEEREST CITIES IN AMERICA 2015 Neither our intent (to foster frank discussion in parts of the country not known for being LGBT-friendly), nor how many times we wrote that we’re specifically not looking for obviously queer hotspots, can circumvent expressions of outrage (and copious cursing). Justin Tanner writes, “This is a huge, shameful load of shit! Boulder is the straightest, whitest place I’ve ever been. I’ve lived here for five years and I’m moving back to Portland partly because there is no gay community or culture here… I’ve had issues with coworkers, classmates, and strangers, and gotten in fights because someone called me a faggot.” Steven Gonzalez pulled no punches about a former Number 1 city: “Salt Lake is not like the rest of Utah. It’s far more diverse and…

How can an undocumented immigrant survive living in the United States for more than 20 years without a work permit? If you ask Rayita, he will say that it has not been easy. He has been in the United States for the past 21 years, and at various times he has worked in factories, cleaned apartments, and sold cosmetics to hair salons. He has sold empanadas on the street and ice cream at the beach. He has been a telephone company telemarketer, and a busboy and waiter at a number of restaurants. He has been on the catering staff of big-money events but says that as he has gotten older the phone has stopped ringing because event organizers want younger guys. His dream is to find a stable, better-paying job,…

The three of us squeezed tight on a motorbike tearing through the hectic noontime traffic in Kampala. The boda-boda driver wore no helmet but weaved around the cars as if he did. I sat in the back, fingers clenched, clutching the tail of the bike and hoping not to fall off. The man between the driver and me was in constant steady conversation with him. He wanted to know if we were safe. Not safe in the sense of crashing into oncoming traffic, but safe as in whether this was a neighborhood that threatened LGBT Ugandans. Ronald does this everywhere he goes. Ronald (not his real name) is a LGBT activist in Uganda, one of the world’s most antigay nations. He is also an editor on the team that recently…