NMAC: National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

Join the National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) in honoring National Native (American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian) HIV/AIDS Awareness Day this year. Held annually on March 20^th, the day is organized by representatives from the Colorado State University’s Commitment to Action for 7th-Generation Awareness & Education: HIV/AIDS Prevention Project, the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona and the National Native American AIDS Prevention Center to encourage Native peoples and communities to “work together, in harmony, to create a greater awareness of the risk of HIV/AIDS to our Native communities, to call for resources for testing and early detection and for increased treatment options, and to eventually decrease the occurrence of HIV/AIDS among Native people.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Native peoples have the highest rate of HIV infection after African Americans and Latinos, though they account for only 1% of the U.S. population. This is a disturbing in light of the disproportionately high rates of HIV co-morbidities, such as hepatitis C and tuberculosis, found in many American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities.

“Stigma is one of the biggest hurdles to HIV prevention, treatment and care in Native communities,” says Brenda Hunt, who is a member of the Lumbee Nation, serves on NMAC’s Board, and is Executive Director of Borderbelt AIDS Resource (BART), in North Carolina. “Many of our people wait to get tested for HIV, and are diagnosed with both HIV and AIDS, or progress to AIDS shortly after their HIV diagnosis.”

This trend has undermined health outcomes for Native people living with HIV, who, according to a 2008 report from the CDC, survive for a shorter period of time after being diagnosed with AIDS than Asians and Pacific Islanders, whites and Hispanics. Socio-economic determinants, including lack of access to quality, culturally-competent health care and education, as well as poverty and homelessness, further undermine the overall health and well-being of many Native communities.

Native gay men and men who have sex with men (MSM) have been hit particularly hard by the AIDS epidemic, accounting for nearly 75% of all new HIV cases contracted through sexual contact and injection drug use among American Indians, Alaska Natives and Native Hawaiians. These numbers are of particular concern following the March 10^th release of the CDC data analysis showing a sharp disparity in rates of HIV and syphilis infection among MSMs relative to the rest of the U.S. population.

Paul Kawata, NMAC’s Executive Director says, “National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day takes place at the start of spring, which symbolizes profound change, new beginnings and birth for many Native communities. I hope we all use this as a time to re-dedicate ourselves to helping to end HIV among American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians, and within all communities of color.”

For more information about National Native HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, click here. Also, download the report, NOT ONE MORE: Recommendations to Improve HIV/AIDS Services to American Indians, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives and Native Hawaiians.

About NMAC
The National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC) builds leadership within communities of color to address challenges of HIV/AIDS. Since 1987, NMAC has advanced this mission through a variety of programs and services, including: a public policy education program, national and regional training conferences, a treatment and research program, numerous publications and a website: http://www.nmac.org/. Today, NMAC is an association of AIDS service organizations providing valuable information to community-based organizations, hospitals, clinics and other groups assisting individuals and families affected by the AIDS epidemic. NMAC’s advocacy efforts are funded through private funders and donors only.

For more information, call NMAC directly at (202) 483-NMAC (6622) or communications@nmac.org. Visit the agency online at http://www.nmac.org/, as well as on http://www.facebook.com/ and on http://www.wikipedia.com/. Pictures and video clips from past NMAC events are available from MyPhotoAlbum.com (nmacpics.myphotoalbum.com/), and http://www.youtube.com/, respectively.



Andrew Harmon: The Trouble with Johnny Weir

According to Andrew Harmon at Advocate.com, “Johnny Weir will always be an attention-seeking brat who loves to wear fur. But he’s also the best thing to ever happen to men’s figure skating.”

There’s a great post about Weir on the Advocate. Below is an excerpt.

“U awake?”

This text message came from Johnny Weir at 2:30 a.m. on March 4. I’ve grown accustomed to receiving middle-of-the-night missives from the figure skater, pretty much every time I try to schedule an interview, which has been five times in the past five years. And while I’ve enjoyed the electronic give-and-take, I have a pathetic track record — 40% — when it comes to actually landing the interview. (We’ve spoken twice on the record — once for a Los Angeles Times piece about male figure skating costumes and a second time to get Weir’s response for an Advocate.com story on the death threats he’d received as a result of the fur he’d used in his costumes prior to the Vancouver Olympics.)

Weir is, as you’d expect, hard to pin down when not under the thumb of coach Galina Zmievskaya, who from the looks of her demeanor on the Sundance Channel reality show Be Good Johnny Weir could have run a Soviet gulag had she been born a few decades earlier. But now Weir was away from Zmievskaya, in Los Angeles for Oscar weekend, and had promised me a post-Olympics chat for this magazine. But by 2:30 a.m. on March 4, I still didn’t have an interview scheduled. I called. Repeatedly. And I even waited in his hotel lobby like a creep. Still, all I got in return were these texts. The content of his messages ranged from innocuous to playful to suggestive to downright overt — the overall gist indicating what we all already know: Johnny Weir is … not straight.

Read more here!

The above was posted with express permission from Advocate.com.

It’s All In the Name…Or Is It?

Members of the LGBT community have been struggling for decades. We’ve been beaten, murdered, arrested, etc., simply for being gay. It wasn’t that long ago that it was illegal in many states and cities for more than 3 gay people to gather in one spot. Sounds a tiny bit like what Blacks have endured doesn’t it?

While I’ll admit there haven’t been any known cases of enslaving LGBT people, I often have thought our slavery came in a much different form. Being forced to stay in the closet out of fear. Fear of being beaten, murdered, ostracized, denied housing and/or employment and so forth. I think one could feasibly justify these actions of intimidation, along with laws that prevent LGBT tax-paying citizens from having the same rights (legalized discrimination) are actually slavery. In my opinion, ’slavery’ isn’t defined by one single action, but many. In fact, I believe one could easily argue that for decades, women were actually mere slaves for their male counterparts.

Now, let’s look at the word marriage. Many opponents of same-sex marriage claim to be so strictly because of the word ‘marriage’. I’ve heard more than several times, “civil unions are fine, but not marriage”…You know, that whole ’separate but equal thing’ that many Blacks have endured over the past several decades.

When it comes to LGBT equality however, at least according to one study, one problem that has arisen and caused a rift between the straight Black community and the LGBT community is the term “Civil Rights”.

According to a post on The Progressive:

The gay rights movement needs to strengthen its ties with the black community. To do so, it should be wary of claiming that marriage equality is the civil rights issue of the 21st century.

Such a claim is a big turnoff, according to a new study from the Arcus Foundation.

It’s supremely tempting to liken the struggle for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights to the civil rights movement. The comparison lends moral authority and historical legitimacy.

But this approach isn’t working.

According to the Arcus study, many black people see the term “civil rights” as referring to a specific political movement, which peaked from the 1950s to the early 1970s. To them, another movement’s adoption of the term dilutes the power and uniqueness of their struggle.

I for one don’t buy into this thought.  Civil, according to the dictionary is defined as, “Of, pertaining to, or consisting of citizens: civil life; civil society.”

And according to the dictionary, rights are defined as, “Having the support of reason or law.”

So, wouldn’t that make Civil Rights something that pertains to citizens having support of the law?

Although I do completely understand there are distinct differences between the Black Civil Rights movement and the LGBT Civil Rights movement, I again see many similarities.  I don’t follow the thought however that the term “Civil Rights” should ever be designated for a specific group.  Whether you are a person of color,a woman, a member of the LGBT community or a purple Martian, if you are a tax-paying citizen of the USA, you should be assured of equality and civil rights.  Civil Rights are for all people and all people should be for Civil Rights.

Being that many people of color still struggle for Civil Rights yet today, and given the past history of the Civil Rights movement, one would think both the straight Black community and the LGBT community would ban together…you know, the simplistic yet realistic idea of strength in numbers.  Unfortunately, people have an unyielding nature to want their struggle to be the worst.  We need to understand, supporting others who have also been oppressed and discriminated against doesn’t lessen our plight, but rather it strengthens our cause.

Cerabino: Gay People Need to Get Guns

I must admit when I first read this post I found it to be somewhat amusing. However after a little more consideration and knowing how politics work in this country, I believe Frank Cerabino is onto something here.

According to his article on the Palm Beach Post:

Gay people need to get guns.

It’s the quickest way they can rise above second-class citizenship in Florida.

Nothing activates state lawmakers more than pleasing the National Rifle Association. If our state lawmakers were made to wear NASCAR-style jumpsuits to display their sponsors, the NRA’s logo would be plastered all over them.

This explains why we have a state law, over the objection of many big businesses, that allows Floridians to bring their guns to work.

It also explains another shoot-’em-up law that removes the “duty to retreat” from any confrontation, giving Florida gun owners greater license to fire at people they consider threats both on the streets and in their homes.

Read more here!

TNG: The Left Behind Anti-Gay

And from one of our favorite GLBT internet sources:

The resurgence in popularity of libertarian values within the modern conservative movement has unintentionally resulted in the marginalization of social-conservative issues within the conservative movement, particularly on issues related to gay and lesbian Americans. Not surprisingly many anti-gay conservatives are concerned their foot hold on the Republican Party and conservative movement is slipping.

More at: The New Gay!

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