One of the biggest LGBT head advocates is also into pedophilia
FDA Recommends Ending Lifetime Ban On Blood Donations From Gay Men
FDA Recommends Ending Lifetime Ban On Blood Donations From Gay Men
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal health officials are recommending an end to the nation’s lifetime ban on blood donations from gay and bisexual men, a 31-year-old policy that many medical groups and gay activists say is no longer justified.
The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday it favors replacing the blanket ban with a new policy barring donations from men who have had gay sex in the previous year. FDA officials said that policy is supported by research and would put the U.S. in-line with other countries including Australia, Japan and the U.K. The lifetime ban dates from the early years of the AIDS crisis and was intended to protect the blood supply from what was a then little-understood disease. But many medical groups, including the American Medical Association, say the policy is no longer supported by science, given advances in HIV testing. Gay activists say the lifetime ban is discriminatory and perpetuates negative stereotypes of homosexual men.
The agency will recommend the switch in draft guidelines early next year and move to finalize them after taking comments from the public, FDA officials. FDA Deputy Director Dr. Peter Parks declined to give a timeframe for completing the process but said, “we commit to working as quickly as possible on this issue.”
All blood donations are screened for HIV, however, the test only detects the virus after it’s been in the bloodstream about 10 days. That allows a brief window when the virus that causes AIDS can go undetected.
According to government figures, men who have had sex with other men represent about 2 percent of the U.S. population, yet account for at least 62 percent of all new HIV infections in the U.S.
Tuesday’s announcement is the culmination of years of government discussions re-examining the ban. Last month a panel of blood safety experts convened by Department of Health and Human Services voted 16-2 in favor of doing away with the lifetime ban. The panel recommended moving to a one-year ban, which bars donors who have had male-on-male sex during the previous 12 months.
Some gay activists said Tuesday that policy remains unrealistic and will still stigmatize gay and bisexual men.
“Some may believe this is a step forward, but in reality, requiring celibacy for a year is a de facto lifetime ban,” the organization Gay Men’s Health Crisis, a New York-based nonprofit that supports AIDS prevention and care, said after the announcement.
The FDA implemented the ban in 1983, when health officials were first recognizing the risk of contracting AIDS via blood transfusions. Under the policy, blood donations are barred from any man who has had sex with another man at any time since 1977 — the start of the AIDS epidemic in the U.S.
The push for a new policy gained momentum in 2006, when the Red Cross, the American Association of Blood Banks, and America’s Blood Centers called the ban “medically and scientifically unwarranted.” Last year the American Medical Association voted to oppose the policy.
Patient groups that rely on a safe blood supply, including the National Hemophilia Foundation, have also voiced support for dropping the ban.
John Waters To Release Family-Friendly Remake Of Pink Flamingos, You Know, For Kids
John Waters To Release Family-Friendly Remake Of Pink Flamingos, You Know, For Kids
“I’ve always said that if you took out the sex and the violence, that it is a children’s story because it’s the battle of the gross-out, and that’s what most kids’ books are now,” John Waters recently told the NYT about his upcoming plans to turn his 1972 cult classic Pink Flamingos into a family-friendly story.
“Kiddie Flamingos” will feature an all-kid cast, who will “wear candy-colored wigs, cat-eye glasses and at least one pencil-thin mustache (drawn on, of course)” while they are filmed doing a table read of the new script.
We’re having a hard time imagining how the film could be toned down, but Waters insists he’s adapted the script to a G level.
That means no obscenities and more rewrites than we can count. That whole impregnating hitchhikers and then selling their babies plot line? Now it’s children stealing talking dolls from wealthy families.
But while foul language and overt grossness may have been removed, don’t think for a second that Waters is trying to lose his edge.
He hopes the result is “even more perverse than the original, because it’s transforming innocence into a whole new kind of joyous, G-rated obscenity.”
“Kiddie Flamingos” will be on view Jan. 9 through Feb. 14 at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan.
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New Evidence Leads To Arrest In 25-Year-Old Murder Case Of Transgender Woman
New Evidence Leads To Arrest In 25-Year-Old Murder Case Of Transgender Woman
Santa Ana Police made new ground in the 25-year-old murder case of transgender woman Carla Leigh Salazar after DNA evidence led to a new suspect reports The Advocate. Santa Ana police arrested 63-year-old Douglas Gutridge, an acquaintance of Salazar, on Dec. 9 and charged him with Salazar’s murder. in June 1989, Salazar, then 35 years old, was stabbed to death in her Santa Ana, Calif. home and the case soon went cold.
Thanks to further advances in technology, new DNA evidence was uncovered linking Gutridge to the murder. Police contacted Gutridge 18 years after the murder and Gutridge volunteered a DNA sample in 2009. However, the evidence alone was not enough to detain him. Five years later, advances in forensics place Gutridge inside Salazar’s apartment at the time of the murder and show the placement of his hands on the victim’s body. The new Orange County Cold Case Homicide Task Force was established in July to address the area’s more than 1,000 cold cases with Salazar’s case listed at the top of the task force’s list; it’s the team’s first arrest. Salazar’s friends and family never expected to see Salazar’s murder solved, including friend Christine McFadden.
Said McFadden:
“She deserved justice, she didn’t deserve to die. She was the total essence of love and compassion and friendship. She didn’t have a mean bone in her body … When I got that call from detectives, hope came into my heart. But I won’t be completely at peace until he’s put away.”
Police are currently holding Gutridge on $1 million bail and faces a maximum of 25 years to life in state prison. Gutridge’s arraignment is scheduled for Jan. 2. Salazar’s former husband, Robert Dougherty, expressed relief in Gutridge’s arrest.
Said Dougherty:
“It’s a relief. I want other families to be able to feel that too.”
Anthony Costello
Entrevista Javier Checa. Secretario LGBT Partido Andalucista
Entrevista Javier Checa. Secretario LGBT Partido Andalucista
Entrevista al Candidato a la Alcaldía de Málaga, Javier Checa, y secretario LGBT del Partido Andalucista para el canal Orgullotv.com.
A friendly reminder
Investing in Children
Investing in Children
From diapers to college, our expert will help you prepare for the costs of having kids
Advocate.com Editors
www.advocate.com/business/advocate-money-minute/2014/12/23/investing-children
Russell Elliot, Queer R&B Artist, Engaged In Kickstarter Campaign
Russell Elliot, Queer R&B Artist, Engaged In Kickstarter Campaign
Is there a place for a queer voice within the world of R&B?
Elliot Russell is a self-identified pansexual feminist engaged in a Kickstarter campaign to fund a record with a queer framework that also respects women.
Called “Reimagining R&B,” the campaign from this New York-based artist is slated to culminate in a 4-song EP. In an industry often slammed for being rooted in misogyny and homophobia with little to no queer representations, Elliot’s work has the potential to be groundbreaking.
The Huffington Post chatted with the artist this week about his campaign and what he is trying to accomplish.
The Huffington Post: What is your vision for this EP?
Russell Elliot: The Russell Elliot EP is a step towards honoring the writer’s commitment I have tattooed on my wrist: “tell it like it is.” If half of the authenticity, fearlessness and honesty I hope to channel into this project comes through to listeners, I will be a happy, happy man. Ultimately, my vision is to speak candidly about my own experiences (in love, lust, frustration, indignation, etc.) with a clarity and confidence I wouldn’t have been able to unearth in another time and space.
The hip hop and R&B communities have historically been noted for being rooted in misogyny and homophobia. How do you aim to combat this through your work?
R&B is a tough genre for queer voices because of this. I’m voicing my own experiences — the likes of which I haven’t heard much in R&B (shout out to you, Frank Ocean, for being one of the great exceptions). I hope that one day someone who feels alienated in the current R&B climate will come to feel included because they hear a voice like mine talking about a life like mine. Sometimes cultural change is also about what we don’t say — or refuse to say. I refuse to demean / debase / objectify / reduce other people. I hope my music can exemplify that we don’t need to do these things to have a hit R&B record.
How does your identity as a pansexual feminist inform your work?
My identity as a pansexual feminist informs my work insofar as it informs my identity. The same is true of me being a musician — it all informs what I do as I tell stories from my lived experience. I’m so happy that my music, the stories I tell and the worldview I create through can contribute to important growing dialogues on cultural change.
Head here to check out Elliot’s campaign “Reimagining R&B.”
Supreme Court to Consider Sixth Circuit Marriage Cases at January 9 Conference
Supreme Court to Consider Sixth Circuit Marriage Cases at January 9 Conference
Justices will decide whether to hear marriage cases from Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan and Tennessee alongside previously distributed Louisiana case
HRC.org
HRC Publishes Its Tone-Deaf, Annual Corporate Equality Index
HRC Publishes Its Tone-Deaf, Annual Corporate Equality Index
It’s the most listicle time of the year, which is to say that it’s the holiday season and publications across the internet are putting out end of the year lists (we’ve got a couple of great ones here, here, and here.) Never one to miss out on a party, the Human Rights Campaign has published its annual Corporate Equality Index, a roundup of the “Best Places to Work for LGBT Equality.”
One might assume, given the somewhat odd naming, that the list would focus on companies working to further LGBT equality. One would be wrong. Rather, the CEI is a choice selection of large companies with fairly strict non-discrimination policies on the books. The problem, as Jordan Kreuger explains in the Huffington Post, is that the index is more or less an exercise in tone deaf corporate nonsense:
“There’s no consideration of the larger picture of a corporation’s actions, its misdeeds, or how working for a company on this list oftentimes means working directly for, or closely with, enemies of equality.”
Abercrombie & Fitch, Comcast, and Chevron all made the list. It doesn’t take the most media-conscious person to know that none of these companies has the strongest of track records when it comes to being objectively “good.”
Charles Pulliam-Moore
www.towleroad.com/2014/12/hrc-publishes-its-tone-deaf-annual-corporate-equality-index.html
