House Committee Shuts Down ENDA for 2014

Another session of Congress will likely end before the House addresses legislation to protect LGBT workers.

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Michelle Garcia

www.advocate.com/politics/2014/12/04/house-committee-shuts-down-enda-2014

Generations of HIV

Each generation of gay men has the distinct experience of being uniquely impacted by HIV. One of the best-understood and often explored generational experiences of HIV is the early years — a time when the disease violently and unexpectedly emerged in the community. For those of us who come of age after those events, HIV didn’t arrive to alter the world, as we knew it. It was the world, as we knew it. For our entire experience, HIV has been incidental to our lives.

The AIDS generation endured unimaginable horrors. I still marvel that they kept our culture and community alive through those war years. That really is the only way I can think to describe it- war years. Many, many lives were lost, incalculable pain was endured, and the injustices of the world were magnified. But the war wasn’t won it was simply transformed.

I am part of the gay post-war generations. Only this wasn’t the post war years of GI Bills, swimming pools, and shiny new cars. It was more like post war East Berlin — a world of guard towers, barbed wire, and machine guns. These were our cold war years living under the specter of a totalitarian regime and fearing death, not from secret police or nuclear annihilation, but from a raging epidemic. That was our daily life. It was less a life of resistance and more one of co-existence.

Growing up, I knew fear all too well. When I was 12 I saw one of the first TV movies about gay men and AIDS, As Is. I attentively watched the gay men in the film and while I didn’t call myself gay then, I knew that I liked other boys and that this story was about me. In a pivotal scene, one man discovers a KS lesion on the back of his lover and they realized the impending horror. Immediately, I went to the bathroom to frantically examine my back for KS. I hadn’t even has sex yet but I understood a very simple fact. I was like those men and AIDS is what happens to those men, to men like me.

Coming of age in the midst of the epidemic meant that HIV was a constant in our lives and continues to be for the generations that came after me. For many of us, then and now, HIV isn’t a mater of if but a matter of when. HIV seems more like modern gay male conscription.

The HIV generations never had the benefit of cultivating a sexuality or sexual identity in the absence of a killer disease. It’s a necessity of the human spirit to be free, to explore, and to express your sexuality. As young gay men, we never got that opportunity because death and disease was around every corner, as well as fear, shame and guilt.

We were bequeathed “safe sex” by a well-meaning older generation. It became our catechism and we had to make sense of the fact that our sex wasn’t just dirty and immoral but it could kill us. We inherited a world of AIDS activism while some of us also perceived that a strong case was never really made for the value of the lives of gay men, in particular gay men of color. It was easier to gain resources and funding by talking about the “innocent victims,” such as housewives and little boys. Saving gay men was a secondary, less talked about benefit, even though we were, and continue to be, the majority of all infections.

These dynamics and the conditions of the epidemic doomed us to intergenerational discord. When I tested positive as a young queer man in 1998 I was called, “irresponsible,” “stupid,” “disrespectful of those who came before,” and even a charge that’s ubiquitous today – “complacent.”

Young gay men are not complacent. Complacency is not driving the epidemic. For the post-AIDS generations, HIV is a constant in our lives and it’s never far when we are having sex, or looking for sex, or thinking about sex. We have different relationships to the epidemic compared to those who came before. And for young gay men today, their world may look different, their choices around sex, condoms and PrEP may look different, and their activism may look different. But it’s a profound misunderstanding of the experience of young gay men to call it complacency.

Misunderstandings are common between the generations. The problem is that over the past 30 years, we haven’t had great relationships between the generations. Perhaps one of the more poignant losses of the epidemic is the loss of a relationship between the generations.

When I was coming of age there was no one there to mentor me or my contemporaries. Potential mentors were either dead or were, understandably, too traumatized to offer mentorship. Gay men my age relied on our peers or ourselves. And as luck would have it, we were the perfect generation to take care of it on our own — we were latchkey kids. In our minds, we already had the skills to make our way in the world. So we did the best we could and many of those intergenerational relationships went uncultivated.

Sadly, my generation only repeated this cycle when the next generation came along. We didn’t have mentors, we’d done it ourselves, so why or how would we mentor those who came after us? The era of disconnection persisted.

But the cycle can be broken and the bridges can be repaired. We can’t bring back the dead or turn back time but together we can determine the course of our community. We can choose to invest in reciprocal intergenerational relationships. We can reconcile our different relationships to the epidemic and foster a community that prioritizes empowerment, self-determination, and resiliency over stigma, fear and condemnation.

So whether it’s gay pride month, or World AIDS Day, or just an average Thursday, we can decide that we are going to commit to building relationships, improving communication and strengthening communities between the generations. In the past thirty years we’ve accomplished so much. Investing in this endeavor could be one of our greatest and lasting achievements.

www.huffingtonpost.com/alex-garner/generations-of-hiv_b_6265508.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

Toledo Passes Extension of Hate Crime Laws

This week, the Toledo City Council voted to expand the city’s current hate-crime law to include protections against violence motivated by actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity or disabilities.
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/toledo-passes-extension-of-hate-crime-laws?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

You’ll Never Guess Where It’s Still Legal For Kids To Be Forced Into Ex-Gay Therapy

The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) in 1973.

Numerous national health organizations in the United States have stated that there are zero scientific demonstrations of conversion therapy’s efficiency in the last forty years, and many institutions — among them the American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, and the American Psychological Association — publicly discredit the practice.

And somehow, Washington, D.C. is set to become the third place in the country to ban conversion therapy as a treatment for minors.

Which is baffling if you think about it. We have a discredited practice that’s been proven to do far more damage than good being used to “treat” something that is widely understood to not be a disorder in the first place.

We’ve experienced a tidal wave of marriage rights that have granted same-sex unions in 35 states, but if you’re a gay 15-year-old and you don’t live in California or New Jersey (and soon to be D.C.), your parents can still force you to undergo ex-gay therapy.

It’s time to do away with the ugly blemish of conversion therapy.

You need look no further than ex-gays’ reaction to the news in D.C. to see how damaging their attitude is. The so-called “Voice of the Voiceless,” an ex-gay group, released a press release, the headline of which reads, D.C. Council Passes Reparative Therapy Ban for Minors, Gay Pedophiles Applaud.

While there’s no actual example they use of a “gay pedophile applauding,” here’s the warped logic they follow, taken verbatim from their press release:

“Tuesday’s unanimous decision by the D.C. Council is a victory for gay pedophiles everywhere, but especially in the District,” commented Christopher Doyle, President of Voice of the Voiceless (VoV). “Now that sexually abused and confused minors will no longer have the ability to see a licensed mental health provider in the District to help them reduce unwanted same-sex attractions due to sexual molestation, there will be less reports of sexual abuse by D.C. children, because they will increasingly be indoctrinated by D.C. -based organizations, such as HRC, that they are born gay and may not seek out treatment for their homosexual feelings brought on by pedophiles such as HRC’s Terry Bean.”

It should be noted that Terry Bean was arrested and faces charges of sodomy and sexual abuse for having relations with a 15-year-old. And that’s just not good for a number of reasons. But does that make him a pedophile? No. Pedophiles are attracted to prepubescent children. Ephebophilia describes a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to individuals in later adolescence (generally ages 15-19).

But ephebophile doesn’t have quite the same ring as pedophile. Still, they use Terry’s past and the truly wacky notion that molestation reports will somehow decline if minors aren’t able to seek ex-gay therapy as a way of building a twisted reality.

To anyone on the outside looking in, they’re clearly wrong. Gay conversion therapy is clearly wrong. Allowing professional authority figures the right to damage children by shaming their same-sex attraction is clearly wrong.

So why is it still legal in 48 states?

The Southern Poverty Law Center is one organization trying to change that. Hopefully there are more Sam Wolfes out there in the world:

Related stories:

An Ex-Gay Therapist Was No Match For This Amazing Harvard Law School Student

A Disturbing Undercover Look At How Conversion Therapy Tries To “Cure” Gayness

Grieving Mother Says “Gay Conversion Therapy Killed My Son”

Dan Tracer

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/EOvQo4GqV2c/youll-never-guess-where-its-still-legal-for-kids-to-be-forced-into-ex-gay-therapy-20141204

Trans Teen Wins Discrimination Lawsuit Against Maine School District

Charles Pulliam-Moore

www.towleroad.com/2014/12/transgender-teenager-wins-discrimination-lawsuit-against-maine-school-district.html

U.S. Trans Activist Deported From Australia as Reality Show Tries to Film

The saga continues for Monica Jones, who is now fighting alleged ‘procedural misconduct’ by Australian immigration officials who she claims alerted a reality TV show that she would be deported.

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Mitch Kellaway

www.advocate.com/politics/transgender/2014/12/04/us-trans-activist-deported-australia-reality-show-tries-film

Why Patti Stanger Deleted Grindr Off Perez Hilton's Phone, Told Him To 'Stop Having Sex'
The upcoming season of “Millionaire Matchmaker” shows Patti Stanger fixing up celebrities large and small, from Dina Lohan to “Chilli” of TLC. Another bold name on Stanger’s matchmaking roster: Perez Hilton, for whom the third-generation matchmaker had to take a particularly determined approach.

“I say no sex before monogamy, and I told Perez this and I said look, you’re going to have to stop having sex. No Grindr!” she recounted in a Wednesday HuffPost Live interview. “[I said] give me your phone — I took it out of his phone!”

And while Stanger laments the gay community’s preference “to get frisky first,” she celebrates their ability to be so accepting and adaptive.

“They’re so colorful and they’re open,” she said, referring to the gay community. “If one [match] doesn’t work, I’m onto the next one, where the straight community’s a little bit more like ‘I want this one to work’ and beat a dead horse. So the gay community keeps moving.”

Tune into this season of “Millionaire Matchmaker” premiering this Sunday, Dec. 7th, at 9:30 on Bravo.

Watch more from Patti Stanger’s hilariously blunt conversation with HuffPost Live here.

Sign up here for Live Today, HuffPost Live’s new morning email that will let you know the newsmakers, celebrities and politicians joining us that day and give you the best clips from the day before!

www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/04/patti-stanger_n_6270152.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

HRC Urges FDA Panel to Ends Blood Ban

Earlier this week, the FDA Blood Products Advisory Committee met to review scientific data related to reconsideration of the blood donor deferral policy.
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/hrc-urges-fda-panel-to-ends-blood-ban?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed