LGBT Health Care
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Why the U.S. House's Health Reform Bill is Good News for Gay Rights
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Sen. Tom Coburn is Not a Legitimate Voice for a Gay Publication
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Can Hitler, Stalin and Saddam Hussein Prevent AIDS?
It's Time to End the Federal Ban on Gay Blood Donations
Published September 09, 2009 @ 03:52PM PT
In 1983, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) instituted a discriminatory rule on blood donations that prohibited sexually active gay men from donating blood. The thinking at the time, which was far more rooted in homophobia than medical fact, was that the majority of gay men were diseased and their blood contaminated with HIV.
Twenty-six years later, the U.S. still operates under this outdated and discriminatory policy, which leaves countless numbers of patients stuck without a blood or bone marrow donor. That's why it's welcome news that states like California are taking up the call to push the FDA to end the ban on gay blood and bone marrow donations.
In California this week, the State Assembly passed a bill called the U.S. Blood Donor Nondiscrimination Resolution, which (while symbolic) would urge the federal government to do away with the 1980s ban on gay blood and bone marrow donors. Equality California (EQCA), among other groups, have been helping to champion this bill all along, arguing that the fears about HIV transmission that resulted in the prohibition are no longer warranted.
"Today, a better understanding of the disease and significant innovations in blood screening technology make the fear of HIV/AIDS spreading through the blood supply nearly nonexistent," EQCA says. "The three major U.S. blood donation agencies, the American Red Cross, the American Association for Blood Banks, and America’s Blood Centers have found that the lifetime blood donation ban on men who have had sex with men is medically and scientifically unwarranted."
That's the key point, right? Banning gay men from donating blood is not preventing HIV transmission, it's just fostering discrimination. And this comes at a time when blood supplies continue to dip to dangerously low levels. As EQCA notes, this year alone California had a record low four-hour supply left of Type-O negative blood, while in January some hospitals in New York had to ration their blood supplies for fear of running out.
California's State Assembly took the right step here. It's a step that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius -- who oversees the FDA -- should be paying attention to. If not for equal rights, then for the greater good of public health.
(Photo courtesy of Garrett Albright's photostream on Flickr.)
Blogging Positively: A Citizen Media 101 on HIV/AIDS
Published August 27, 2009 @ 03:09PM PT
What do you get when you combine a network of bloggers seeking to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic in a meaningful way online? The answer is Blogging Positively, a collection of case studies, interviews, and tips about citizen media related to HIV/AIDS.
Blogging Positively links together over 200 different bloggers from around the world - from India to Argentina to Burma, the United States, Australia and Canada - blogging about the HIV/AIDS pandemic, and the role that online writers and netroots activists can play in mobilizing around public health efforts to combat the disease.
Brian Finch from Canada's "Acid Reflux" blog/blog reality show sums up the significance of Blogging Positively pretty concisely.
"The Internet facilitates technological activism. It gives control and voice to the individual, to express onself in the way he or she deems fit. It is taking back power, creating a voice that is not defined by others. Personally, it is a way to define myself outside of the small box of HIV, to exist outside of the disease paradigm," writes Finch. "The more people are writing openly about their status, the more other people will see that they too can take risks. An online, 'open' presence serves as a role model for others."
Blogging Positively is a role model. It's a unique capacity building resource that draws together blogs, podcasts, and online photo and video sites to create new powerful opportunities for activists aiming to spread awareness about HIV/AIDS, and end the social stigma all too often associated with the disease.
Catholic Church Gives Millions to Fight Gay Marriage. Why Won't They Give Money for Health Care?
Published August 24, 2009 @ 05:49AM PT
The Catholic Church gave more than $500,000 to help enact a same-sex marriage ban in Michigan. The Catholic Church gave $200,000 directly (and up to $1 million more through networks like the Knights of Columbus) to efforts to take away marriage equality in California, by supporting Proposition 8 like gangbusters. This year, the Catholic Church is expected to give up to $2 million (they've already donated more than $100,000 to date) to take away marriage equality in Maine, spending yet more money to take away civil rights for gays and lesbians.
If the Catholic Church can spend all that money on an issue like same-sex marriage, why can't they spend any money or give any institutional pull to help pass national health care, one of the Church's priorities?
Politics certainly seems to be the short answer, given that the institutional bishops have become really close to a political party in this country whose members by and large oppose national health care. Instead of wading into the debate about health care and how health care impacts poverty, education, immigration, and many other supposed priorities of the Church, Catholic bishops and many Catholic organizations have instead spent the past decade focusing on a series of 'non-negotiable' issues that have become increasingly less controversial for the American public: same-sex marriage, euthanasia, and stem cell research. There's also abortion, too, and while that remains a touchy subject in some parts of the U.S., most of the country still believes that women should have the ability to determine their reproductive health.
Makes one wonder if the Catholic Church in this country, while still a source of money for very conservative causes, is watching its political influence dry up. Last week Obama gathered numerous faith groups together to talk about universal health care. There were Jewish organizations, Methodist organizations, Baptist organizations, Muslim organizations, and evangelical organizations in the fold. But no Catholic Bishops.
On paper, the church supports universal health care. On paper, the church supports a public option. On paper, the church says that ending poverty is a fundamental issue of our time.
But in practice, the Church is spending millions of dollars to take away the civil rights of gay and lesbian people in places like Maine, instead of supporting national health care for all. Our country is having the largest conversation about health care in nearly twenty years, but the Church is more concerned about whether Lutherans will accept gay clergy.
Misplaced priorities? Well, if the sky is blue....
Activism, Art, and the HIV/AIDS Crisis
Published August 20, 2009 @ 05:23PM PT
How do you commemorate the fear, anger, hope, challenges, activism, and organizing that occurred at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the U.S. more than twenty years ago? If you're the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, you host a whole semester's worth of programming and exhibits looking at the impact that groups like ACT UP had, and the vivid images that captured the country's attention and changed the way that HIV/AIDS was viewed.
Before there was social networking, there was guerilla marketing. And as the Carpenter Center points out, that tactic was deployed quite effectively by ACT UP, as well as artist collectives like Gran Fury, the Silence = Death Project, and Fierce Pussy (to name a few). These groups used the power of art to fight against HIV/AIDS, and specifically to fight against government inaction and stereotypes that made up the early history of the disease in this country. Whether it was explaining that kissing doesn't cause HIV/AIDS, or whether it was telling the Catholic Church that condoms protect against sexually-transmitted diseases, these orgs put their artwork where their politics were, so to speak.
"ACT UP’s demonstrations in the late 1980s and early 1990s reflected the group’s outrage against a governing establishment that ignored HIV/AIDS as a national health crisis; that failed to secure funding for medical research, treatment, and education; that profited from inflated costs for therapeutic drugs; and that perpetuated homophobic misrepresentations of HIV and AIDS," writes the Carpenter Center.
The exhibit itself? Well, it'll feature classic ACT UP advertising campaign posters, as well as a suite of over 100 video interviews with surviving members of ACT UP New York. Those interviews form the crux of an oral history project that captures a diverse movement birthed during the darkest days of HIV/AIDS. These are the organizers and activists who "transformed entrenched cultural ideas about homosexuality, sexuality, illness, health care, civil rights, art, media, and the rights of patients," and made the world a little - scratch that, a lot - better for everyone fighting against the disease.
In other words, the exhibit at the Carpenter Center will pull together some of the best social artwork of the last thirty years: the artwork and ad campaigns that helped end misinformation about HIV/AIDS, that brought about new strategies of political organizing, and that helped give voice to those living with HIV/AIDS. Better yet, it should help draw the connections between the organizing and activism at the height of the 1980s, and how lessons learned during that movement can be applicable now.
The Malaysian Government Thinks that Homosexuality Causes Swine Flu
Published August 09, 2009 @ 06:05AM PT
Every so often there's a story on the global health circuit that is so absurd, it causes our proverbial record to scratch. Like the time that South Africa's former Health Minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, said that ingesting lemon juice and potatoes could help treat HIV. Or when evangelical groups like Word Relief, who received millions of U.S. federal dollars in PEPFAR funding under President George W. Bush, told people in countries like Mozambique, Kenya and Haiti that condoms don't work to prevent STDs.
Well, now it's time to count Malaysia's government-run news service as part of the global health lie factory. Today they're out with an article from a physician that says homosexuality and masturbation make the body an easy target for Swine Flu (otherwise known as H1N1). The scary part is that the news service in question, Bernama, runs their stories in nearly every part of the country. Lies and misinformation, get ready to spread.
The doctor at the center of the article, V. M. Palaniappan, used to teach ecology at the University of Malaysia. Maybe he should have stuck with ecology instead of wading into the waters of global health. Here's his rationalization behind his theory, which almost reads like a non-sequitor from Alaska's former governor. Check it out:
Dr. V. M. Palaniappan said that homosexuality and masturbation caused the body to develop friction heat which in turn, produced acid and made the body hyperacidised.
"Thus, the body becomes an easy target for H1N1 infection," he told Bernama, emphasising however, that normal sexual union between members of the opposite sex was absolutely safe....
Ah, yes. It's only the homosexual sex that causes friction heat. Must be all that dance music we listen to while getting it on...
Two words come to mind. Medical crackpot. Yet the government of Malaysia gives this guy a voice with which to reach people across the country, and offer medical advice. I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that Malaysia criminalizes homosexuality with penalties ranging from twenty years in prison to whippings and beatings. Or that Malaysia's ruling political party is so vehemently anti-LGBT, that they even have a sub-section of the party known as the "People's Anti-Homosexual Voluntary Movement."
Anyone else thinking that we could start a reality show under the title of, "When Countries Attack Global Health"?
The Ad Campaign that Says AIDS is Washington, D.C.'s "Katrina"
Published August 04, 2009 @ 12:31PM PT
The D.C.-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation is taking the staggering statistics about Washington, D.C.'s HIV/AIDS rate, and turning them into an ad campaign that shows how devastating the disease is inside the Beltway. The ad campaign, "AIDS is D.C.'s Katrina," is up and running on dozens of bus shelters throughout the D.C. area, and depicts an image of former President George W. Bush surveying the damage from Hurricane Katrina from the windows of Air Force One. In the foreground, however, a cardboard sign vividly says, "AIDS is D.C.'s Katrina."
Powerful stuff. Especially given the statistics that lie behind the ad. The HIV/AIDS rate in Washington, D.C. is higher than several African countries, at nearly 3% of the total population, and clinics in D.C. have seen a 232% increase in the number of cases they're diagnosing. Those types of statistics certainly deserve and merit a vivid public advertising campaign.
Here's what Michael Weinstein, the head of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, had to say about the campaign:
Katrina quickly came to symbolize the Bush administration's neglect and indifference of some of America's most vulnerable citizens. Today, 56,000 new HIV infections each year in the United States, a 40% increase from last year, symbolizing neglect and indifference -- and the failure of our U.S. HIV prevention efforts.
The fact that Washington, D.C.'s HIV prevalence rate is now higher than some hard-hit African countries is an indictment of how the CDC has failed to lead in HIV prevention efforts. When this news about Washington's HIV rate first broke in March, President Obama remained silent. Despite his silence on AIDS to date, we hope this ad will prod President Obama to act forcefully on AIDS, and we remain hopeful he will be the change that we can believe in -- and urgently need -- on AIDS.
Prodding Obama to change domestic policies related to HIV/AIDS care is also the vision behind a related Web site, changeaidsobama.org, which seeks to use the images in the advertising campaign to pressure the Obama administration into adopting serious policy reforms to address high rates of HIV/AIDS, including overturning a ban on federal funding for needle exchange programs (a pledge Obama made during his Presidential campaign, but one that he's backed off of since taking office).
Click here to view an ad for changeaidsobama.org. Check out their message, and if you agree, check out their action section and send a letter to President Obama asking him to be the "change we can believe in" on HIV/AIDS.
The decimation and destruction of Hurricane Katrina is still being felt four years later. For those suffering from HIV/AIDS, it's been 28 years. In both instances, government response was slow, inadequate, and disastrous.
Is Tobacco the Number One Cause of Death Among Gays and Lesbians?
Published July 25, 2009 @ 04:35PM PT
Rumors have been there for a while now that smoking rates among LGBT people were phenomenally higher than smoking rates among straight people. There's now evidence to back this theory up.
A study coming out in the August 2009 issue of Tobacco Control shows that gay men and lesbians are radically more apt to light up a cigarette than heterosexual men and women. The folks behind the study are researchers with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and they have one conclusive sentence to sum up their work: "Smoking is a significant health inequality for sexual minorities."
Here are some bullet points about their study:
- Upwards of 37 percent of lesbian women in the United States smoke cigarettes, which compares to only 18 percent of straight women;
- For gay men it's upwards of 33 percent, whereas approximately only 24 percent of straight men light up; and
- Researchers used more than 20 years of studies and research on the issue of LGBT smoking to inform their findings
Higher smoking rates for gay men and lesbians could be having a disastrous impact on public health for LGBT Americans. Joseph Lee, one of the lead researchers of the report, had this to say:
Likely explanations include the success of tobacco industry’s targeted marketing to gays and lesbians, as well as time spent in smoky social venues and stress from discrimination.
These aren't new phenomena. Groups like the National LGBT Tobacco Control Network have formed to try and put a dent in the rates of smoking among LGBT populations, and to point out concerning marketing techniques to get queer people - especially younger LGBT people - to smoke. Groups like these are important to curbing high rates of smoking. Because as well all know, prolonged smoking causes a torrent of diseases, and that torrent of diseases often results in death.
That's not a fact lost on the researchers. Here's Lee again:
Tobacco is likely the number one cause of death among gays and lesbians.
The American Cancer Society estimates that at least 30,000 LGBT people die each year from smoking-related illnesses. And that's a conservative estimate.
Much more information on the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill study can be found online at Tobacco Journal's Web site. While the results can be a little upsetting to read, they're meant to help inform folks about the health consequences unique to LGBT folks from smoking. And while studies like this are grim, they do help in spreading a culture of public health in LGBT circles.
