Election Shows the Future Has Arrived in Houston

Early in her victory speech, Houston Mayor-elect Annise Parker addressed the pink elephant in the joy-throbbing room, the history she’d just made as an openly gay candidate for the top office in America’s fourth-largest city.

“All right,” Parker said on Dec. 12, as her partner of nearly 19 years beamed at her side, “let’s get this out of the way. Here’s the announcement that you’ve been waiting for: I am proud, very proud, to have been elected the first, the very first graduate of Rice University to be mayor of Houston.”

Her supporters burst into laughter and cheers at what was a textbook moment for other aspiring lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender candidates. A little humor does indeed go a long way. But in this case, the humor carried with it some Texas-sized truth about why Parker won: Voters appreciated her deep Texas roots.

Parker was born and raised in Houston, graduated from Rice, worked 20 years in the oil and gas industry, then began a political career — serving six years on the City Council, then five as city controller, where she was in charge of billions of tax dollars and oversaw Houston’s investments.

As her campaign website put it, Parker has “Houston Hometown Values.”

More at: The Cap Times!

Poll Shows Parker Pulls Ahead in Houston

Could it be the anti-gay rhetoric being spewed in Texas against Annise Parker, the openly lesbian candidate in the city’s mayoral race, is hurting her rival more than it is her?

According to a post on Chron.com:

Houston’s openly gay city controller has pulled ahead in the race to be mayor of the nation’s fourth largest city, just two days before a runoff election, according to a new poll.

Parker leads former city attorney Gene Locke 49 percent to 36 percent, according to a poll released Thursday by Rice University in Houston.

Parker has never made her sexual orientation a secret or a focal point during her six years on the City Council and the last six years as controller.

But it took a more prominent role in the mayor’s race in the weeks leading up to the runoff as anti-gay activists and conservative religious groups have endorsed Locke and sent out mailers condemning Parker’s “homosexual behavior.”

Rice political science professor Robert Stein, who oversaw the poll, said the attention on Parker’s sexual orientation has probably hurt Locke more than her.

Both Locke and Parker are Democrats, and were two candidates with the most votes in the Nov. 3 election. However a runoff election is required because neither candidate took at least 50 percent of the total vote.

If Parker wins, she would become the first openly gay mayor of Houston, and make Houston the largest U.S. city with an openly gay mayor.

Since November and prior, many church and religious-right groups in the greater Houston area have been promoting Locke over Parker, but have also been slamming Parker because of her sexuality.

Perhaps at one time, and perhaps still in some areas of Texas, the anti-gay rhetoric would have paid off in the largely conservative state, but this could be a sure sign that times are changing and one’s sexuality is NOT the deciding factor in choosing leaders.

Will Dr. Paul Find The HIV Magic Bullet?

Contributed by Lyndon Evans and cross posted at: Focus on the Rainbow -

Until Dr. Jonas Salk introduced the Salk vaccine to fight polio, it was a dreaded disease, one which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt suffered from. The 1952 outbreak was the worst in the history of the United States with nearly 58,000 reported cases of which over 3,000 people died and over 21,000 suffered from mild to severe forms of paralysis, most of which affected children.

I remember when I went to Mill Ridge Elementary School here in Danbury, there was a young girl in my class who suffered from polio and had to wear the standard leg braces of the time back in the early 60’s and used crutches to get around. And I remember getting the vaccine shots in school and also the “sugar cube pill” to stave off polio.

Since the discovery and outbreak of HIV in the 80’s there has been the hope that one day a vaccine would be developed to fight HIV infection.

One such vaccine which was tried, but halted in 2007 is the vaccine trial known as “STEP” and on Monday (November 16) a report was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences which attempted to explain why the vaccine failed.

The recent failure of an HIV vaccine was probably caused by the immune system reacting to the virus ’shell’ used to transmit the therapy around the body. The trial, called ‘STEP’, was halted in September 2007 because preliminary results suggested that people who had been given the vaccine were more likely to be infected with HIV than people who had been given a placebo.

The researchers behind this study, from Imperial College London, King’s College London and Royal Holloway, University of London, say their findings mean scientists may have to rethink other vaccines they are developing for diseases like HIV, tuberculosis and malaria, which are delivered in the same way, using the same virus ’shell’.

The vaccine used an adenovirus, which normally causes the common cold, to enable the vaccine therapy to travel around the body. Harmless HIV genes were then inserted into the virus. It was thought that this would help the immune system to learn to recognise and fight off HIV.

This study suggests that after receiving the trial vaccination, people who had previously built up immunity to the adenovirus had an influx of immune cells called CD4 T-cells homing in on their mucous membranes, as these cells prepared to fight off a new adenovirus infection. Mucous membranes are found in areas including the nose, mouth, vagina and gut. HIV naturally infects CD4 T-cells, so this inadvertently provided HIV with an abundance of potential new homes at the sites where the virus would naturally enter the body during sexual intercourse, thereby increasing people’s risk of infection. (source – Medical News Today)

The researchers say their findings are a warning for scientists developing adenovirus vaccines against other diseases, as the same effect occurs with other, perhaps all, adenovirus subtypes.

Another vaccine trial was reported in September of this year as the first to cut infection rates, A trial HIV vaccine that cuts infection rates by almost a third has provided the research community with some hope following years of setbacks.

The vaccine, a combination of two earlier experimental vaccines that had not reduced infection rates individually, is the first to prevent infection. It was given to 16,000 Thai volunteers in the world’s largest HIV/AIDS vaccine trial, carried out by the Thai government and the United States Army.

The male and female volunteers, all HIV negative and aged between 18 and 30, were split into two groups — half were given a placebo, and half given the vaccine. All were provided with condoms and counselling on HIV/AIDS prevention.

Over the course of the trial, 74 people from the placebo group and 51 in the vaccine group became infected. Scientists say the results are statistically significant — with a 31.2 per cent lower risk of infection for the vaccinated group.

“This result is tantalisingly encouraging,” says Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet. “The numbers are small and the difference may have been due to chance, but this finding is the first positive news in the AIDS vaccine field for a decade.” (source – SciDevNet)

And now Dr. Sudhir Paul in association with the Covalent Immunology Foundation is hoping, along with his team of researchers to find the “magic bullet” to guard against HIV as Dr. Jonas Salk did so many years ago to fight polio.

In his bio at the website of CIF it reads, Scientific principles underlying CIF’s mission have been discovered by Dr. Sudhir Paul and his research team at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, and for the last 12 years, at the University of Texas Houston Medical School. Dr. Paul has proved that abzymes are inherently more potent in attaining inactivation of various targets than traditional antibodies with reversible binding activity. Their work on basic science of antibodies and abzymes, HIV, hepatitis C virus infection, Alzheimer’s disease and hemophilia has been covered in over 150 scientific publications. Dr. Paul has been a professor and researcher for over 26 years, and the recipient of numerous federal grants and awards during his distinguished career, much of which has been devoted to developing abzyme technology.

And in CIF’s mission statement, CIF aims to raise funds for research and education that will rapidly translate the hard earned abzyme and covalent vaccination discoveries into medical benefits. CIF will provide funds for timely completion of expensive drug effectiveness and safety studies required by the Food and Drug Administration. It is estimated that drug development costs can be up to 1 billion dollars. For instance, preventative HIV vaccination trials will require a large investment, as a large number of humans must be tested, and their infection status must be monitored for years. CIF’s mission is to enable this process with support from a broad cross-section of the public. In addition, CIF will support Dr. Paul’s efforts to raise additional governmental funds for the research and development.

While the development of a vaccine to fight HIV will be too late for those who have passed due to HIV/AIDS or who are currently infected, it could one day become a great hope for a worldwide halt to HIV. But with the finding of a successfull vaccine it does bring up the quandary of, if there is a vaccine, will gay men go back to the practice of “unsafe sex” ?

That perhaps is a question for another day, as they say, one step at a time.

Below is a video made by celebrities on behalf of the Covalent Immunology Foundation.

This writer nor Hearst Newspapers endorses CIF, the video is provided as an information point.

NLGJA Selects Students for 2009 National Convention Project

The National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association (NLGJA) announced today the eight undergraduate and graduate journalism students who have been selected to participate in a week-long, intensive journalism education program in Montreal, Canada, this September.

NLGJA’s Student Project is held in conjunction with the association’s 2009 National Convention & 6th Annual LGBT Media Summit, which will take place Sept. 10-13, 2009.

Within a fully integrated newsroom environment, the student participants will work with seasoned journalists to conceive, create and develop stories flowing from panel discussions and presentations at the convention and summit, and also cover larger societal issues and topics relevant to the city of Montreal and the greater LGBT community. Additionally, they will have the opportunity to build their professional networks.

“These eight student leaders are examples of the bright future of journalism, and we are pleased they will join their soon-to-be peers to learn and grow in a real-world setting,” said Michael Tune, NLGJA’s managing director. “They will gain hands-on experience with accomplished mentors in the field. They will also get to meet nationally prominent journals presenting in Montreal and build relationships that can serve them throughout their promising careers.”

The 2009 Student Project participants are:

* Adam Griffiths of Kent State University, who has been editor in chief/art director of KSU’s Fusion magazine since January 2008. His professional newsroom experience includes Harper’s Bazaar UK, Cleveland Magazine and The Washington Post. He is majoring in visual journalism and minoring in LGBT studies.

* Jared Grigsby, a journalism graduate student at Ball State University. This will be Jared’s second year in the National Convention Student Project. He recently completed a summer internship with the Associated Press in San Francisco.

* Ryan McLendon, a journalism graduate student at New York University. He is a Fulbright Commission Scholarship awardee and the most recent winner of NLGJA’s Leroy F. Aarons Scholarship, which provides up to $5,000 in tuition funding to an outstanding LGBT student planning a career in journalism. His professional experience includes CNN, The Village Voice and CityBeat, an alternative weekly in Cincinnati.

* Blair Mishleau of Columbia College Chicago, pursuing an interdisciplinary major involving Interactive Arts & Media and journalism, with a minor degree in American Sign Language. Blair interned with Tribune Interactive.

* David Reinbold of The Pennsylvania State University, pursuing a BA in print journalism and returning to NLGJA’s Student Project for the second year. He has served as a copy editing intern with the Dow Jones Newspaper Fund (The Charleston Gazette) and the Centre Daily Times.

* Mandi Rice, studying comparative languages and linguistics and minoring in journalism at Earlham College. Among other newsroom experience, she was a multimedia intern with The Palladium Item in Richmond, Ind. This is Mandi’s second year with NLGJA’s Student Project.

* Anthony Williams of the University of Texas at Arlington, majoring in broadcast journalism and minoring in Spanish. He interned with The Observer (LaGrande, Ore.) and the Houston Chronicle. He was the fall 2008 president of the UT Arlington chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists.

* Lauren Wright, a visual communications major at Berry College in Mount Berry, Ga., who is returning to the project for the second year. She has served in a variety of editorial positions the student newspaper and currently serves as a graphic designer in the school’s public relations department.

About the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association

NLGJA is an organization of journalists, media professionals, educators and students working from within the news industry to foster fair and accurate coverage of LGBT issues. NLGJA opposes all forms of workplace bias and provides professional development to its members.

Harvard to Endow Position for LGBT Studies

From Durango Herald News:

Harvard University is creating a visiting professorship in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies with a $1.5 million gift from the Harvard Gay and Lesbian Caucus.

It’s certainly about time that something like this has happened. Plenty of programs are really flourishing in colleges and universities all over the country.

Tom Parry, past president of the Caucus, said he believed the professorship will be the first specifically for sexuality or sexual minorities in the United States. The University of Louisville has a chair in race, class, gender and sexuality studies named for lesbian poet and activist Audre Lorde.

Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust said the professorship was “an important milestone” for LGBT studies at the university.

Gay and lesbian studies is a relatively young field of academic study. The first programs began in the 1980s, and the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the City University of New York Graduate Center opened in 1991 as the first university-based research center.

Want to learn about other universities with LGBT studies programs?  Click here!

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