Indholdsfortegnelse for June - July 2015 i The Advocate

STRIBILD is a prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before. STRIBILD can also replace current HIV-1 medicines for some adults who have an undetectable viral load (less than 50 copies/mL of virus in their blood) and whose healthcare provider determines that they meet certain other requirements. STRIBILD does not cure HIV-1or 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 can also replace current HIV-1 medicines for some adults who have an undetectable viral load (less than 50 copies/mL of virus in their blood) and whose healthcare provider determines that they meet certain other requirements. STRIBILD combines 4 medicines into 1 pill to be taken once a day…

After months of petitioning from HIV/ AIDS advocates, officials with Los Angeles County’s Division of HIV and STD Programs (DHSP) presented a county-wide implementation plan for PrEP during a mid-March public meeting. The announcement came after activists, including Craig Thompson, CEO of AIDS Project Los Angeles, charged the county with delaying the creation of a campaign designed to educate HIV-negative gay and bisexual men about PrEP and providing them with access to medication. Thompson says it was a complicated political issue for county officials and that “like most bureaucracies, they don’t want to have to deal with it.” “There’s enough conversations now where people are starting to get PrEP… and the interest is growing very rapidly,” Thompson says. “We have encouraged [Los Angeles] County to take that first step and…

The book and exhibition, See Me: Picturing New York’s Homeless Youth, is the result of a year-long collaboration with 15 homeless LGBT young people from the Reciprocity Foundation, a nonprofit organization that works with homeless, runaway, and foster care youths to advance their education and well-being. Over the course of two years, acclaimed photographer Alex Fradkin spent time with his young portrait subjects, building relationships and teaching them the photography skills that would allow them to depict their desires and anxieties, the spaces in which they live, and the few possessions they hold dear. “I have learned that they have something powerful to say about being human,” Fradkin says of his subjects. “Just look into their eyes in these portraits. You will feel their message.” The images will premiere in…

Those familiar with certain gay party scenes on either coast have probably already run across the work of filmmaker Leo Herrera, whether it was projected onto the wall at a circuit party or shared breathlessly across Facebook during Pride season. His three-to-ten-minute clips and trippy party visuals are catnip for a small subset of gay men: the new generation of club freaks, PrEP-equipped HIV/ AIDS activists, sex-positive sluts, and LGBT history buffs. Often commissioned by nightlife promoters and queer film festivals, many of his short clips swirl around visual effects of pulsing, symmetric genital kaleidoscopes, or full-body capes that swallow the bodies wearing them in slow motion (and are created by Herrera’s fashion-designer brother Allan for pieces like Leo’s Frameline Film Festival 2011 trailer). Rosebuds of floral and anatomic persuasions…

On March 25, Marc Benioff, CEO of global cloud computing company Salesforce Inc., tweeted, “We are forced to dramatically reduce our investment in IN based on our employee’s & customer’s outrage over the Religious Freedom Bill.” The following morning, he followed up that tweet with another: “Today we are canceling all programs that require our customers/employees to travel to Indiana to face discrimination.” Immediately in the wake of Indiana governor Mike Pence’s signing of that state’s religious freedom restoration act in March, celebrities (Miley Cyrus, Stephen King, Audra McDonald, Bill Maher, Ashton Kutcher, and others) and religious organizations (the United Church of Christ, Presbyterian Church [USA], the Sikh Coalition, the Islamic Society of North America, Religious Action Center of Reformed Judaism) spoke out against the law. Sporting organizations (the NBA,…

Holy Joseph Smith! Utah? That pretty much sums up initial acclaim for the housing and employment LGBT nondiscrimination law signed by the Beehive State’s Republican governor Gary Herbert on March 12. The product of negotiations involving the ACLU, LGBT groups including Equality Utah, Democratic and Republican legislators, and the Mormon Church, the “Utah Compromise” was hailed by even the liberal Boston Globe as a “model for other red states.” But wows became yowls as details emerged. The new law exempts not only all religious entities, along with their “affiliates,” but even the Boy Scouts. A companion law lets county clerks opt out of solemnizing same-sex marriages if they provide stand-ins and perform no marriages at all. Eric Ethington of Web site LGBTQNation complained of “a Trojan horse for the religious…

Though the practice is denounced by the Obama administration and every major medical institution in the United States, only New Jersey, California, and Washington, D.C., have bans on so-called gay-conversion therapy. But because the laws refer to minors and state-licensed practitioners only, many are left without a basis for lawsuits. A current case working its way through the Garden State, however, may set a precedent that undermines the credibility of quack organizations and could provide grounds for victims to gain justice. Four young men, Michael Ferguson, Benjamin Unger, Chaim Levin [below], and Sheldon Bruck, are suing Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH), a conversion therapy service, for damages incurred during participation and afterward, as a result of the lasting trauma. Rather than focusing on its questionable practices—the plaintiffs described…

There is a crisis facing the LGBT communities, as pressing as teen suicide, as complicated as substance abuse, and as critical to our collective futures as the fight to end HIV, and it is intrinsically bound up in all three. Homelessness among LGBT youth has become endemic in the United States, and if we don’t act soon the ramifications will haunt queer communities for generations. The number of LGBT youth living on the streets is staggering. The Williams Institute put out a report several years ago that estimated a full 40% of all homeless youth are LGBT. This figure is widely agreed upon, but as Mark Erwin, director of community development at the Ruth Ellis Center, near Detroit, says, “…no one truly knows how many LGBTQ youth are experiencing homelessness…

Human and LGBT rights organizations are hailing the U.S. State Department’s choice of Randy W. Berry as the nation’s first LGBT human rights envoy. He will be tasked with advancing the State Department’s initiatives globally to protect the human rights of LGBT people, responding to discrimination and violence, and working with LGBT activists. “We looked far and wide to find the right American official for this important assignment,” wrote Secretary of State John Kerry in a statement in late February. “Randy’s a leader. He’s a motivator. But most importantly for this effort, he’s got vision. Wherever he’s served—from Nepal to New Zealand, from Uganda to Bangladesh, from Egypt to South Africa, and most recently as Consul General in Amsterdam—Randy has excelled.” The idea of appointing a special envoy for LGBT…

In 1983, in Oregon, two men, Alfred Smith and Galen Black, were fired from their jobs as substance abuse counselors at a drug rehab clinic. A supervisor got wind that the men had been using peyote, a powerful psychoactive drug made from a small cactus said to trigger hallucinations and feelings of deep introspection. Disgruntled and jobless, the drug counselors applied for unemployment benefits, but the state rejected their claim, citing work-related misconduct. Taking peyote is illegal in Oregon, as it is in most states. But the men were both members of the Native American Church, where peyote is used in religious ceremony, and the Oregon Court of Appeals reversed the decision, stating that to deny the men unemployment benefits based on the religious use of a controlled substance violated…

Back in February, the Grammy Awards telecast proved that performers could be out, proud, and honored at the same time. On the show, out country singer (and nominee) Brandy Clark sang the vulnerable ballad “Hold My Hand,” resulting in no controversy whatsoever. And the night’s big winner was openly gay Sam Smith, whose remarks at the podium addressed the great results he got when he decided to be himself (which clearly included his open sexuality). Smith also took the time to wryly express gratitude to the guy he fell in love with en route to creating his victorious music. “Thank you so much for breaking my heart,” deadpanned the plaintive British singer, “because you got me four Grammys!” Finally, the waters had been tested enough that much of the public…

Uganda’s most prominent rights activist, Frank Mugisha, was in New York in March to accept a humanitarian award from Riverdale Country School and, on behalf of his organization, Sexual Minorities Uganda, to sue American Christian extremist Scott Lively for conspiring with Ugandan politicians and religious leaders to foment anti-gay hysteria. Lively’s influence is tied to the “kill the gays” legislation in that country. The case will likely go to trial in January 2016. If you manage to get him convicted of crimes against humanity, what change do you think that will bring? Because it is a civil case, he won’t go to prison, but he will have to pay for the damages my organization has suffered because of his conspiracy with Ugandan politicians. Our goal is not actually about the…

Widely celebrated earlier this year as one of the United States’ first out trans news correspondents, Zoey Tur is once again a hot topic among trans rights supporters, but the tone has become decidedly less triumphant. The trouble began after Tur appeared on HLN’s Dr. Drew On Call to discuss Planet Fitness’s decision to revoke a patron’s membership for complaining about the presence of a trans woman in the locker room. Asked to comment on the controversy, Tur said, “I think people have a right to be concerned, and I think there should be private [changing] areas.” Tur went on to speculate that Carlotta Sklodowska, the unwitting trans woman at the center of the controversy, was actually a male-identified cross-dresser expressing a “sexual fetish.” Responding in The Huffington Post, Gender…

On Feb. 18, Kate Brown, the new governor of Oregon, became the first self-identified bisexual head of state in American history. Earlier in the month, then-governor John Kitzhaber and his fiancée, Cylvia Hayes, became the subjects of a criminal investigation amid corruption charges, and he resigned. As Oregon does not have a lieutenant governor, in her former position as secretary of state, Brown was next in line to take the gubernatorial reins when Kitzhaber stepped down. Brown began her political career in the Oregon state house of representatives in 1991, and shortly after The Oregonian newspaper outed her. In a short essay she wrote for OutHistory.org, she chronicled the fallout from that revelation, including the standard-fare assaults on bisexuality that were hurled at her. Her parents flew to Portland from…

A decade ago, two young Latvians, fresh from volunteering at Stockholm Pride, decided the time was right for Riga to host its own festival. They planned a small parade through the capital’s old town and applied to the city council for permission. Perhaps without quite realizing what it was getting itself into, the council accepted the proposal. Latvia was to get its very first public LGBT event, and no one knew what to expect. That changed when a local Catholic church caught wind of the plans. Incandescent with anger at the idea of homosexuals flagrantly capering past their sacred space, the church united with some equally outraged politicians to ban the event. The council conformed in a decision that drew widespread media reportage. Riga Pride was now national news, and…

I’m from a small town in rural Idaho and when I was 12, I started hanging around the office of the local weekly newspaper, the Independent Enterprise. (Or as my aunt Luanne still lovingly calls it, the “Spitwad.”) Soon the editor gave me a school beat column, and a few years later, I became editor of our high school newspaper. In high school, I’d attend my English and journalism classes in the morning, and then I’d often skip the rest of the day and go work on newspaper stuff. We didn’t have computer, Google, or even the Internet. I learned to type on a manual typewriter and I produced the newspaper on something popular in the 1980s called a Video Display Terminal. Things moved so swimmingly for me in the…