World AIDS Day

[tazber]

Posted: 12/1/07 at 12:53am

December 1st. Today.


Resource sheet

Updated On: 12/1/07 at 12:53 AM

[Kristie-K2]

Posted: 12/1/07 at 12:57am

Bless everyone who is living with HIV
Blessings to my friends who have died from Aids

[mauriposa]

Posted: 12/1/07 at 12:57am

Thanks for the reminder, Taz.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 12/1/07 at 9:08am

It just snuck up so quick this year; I haven't even started my World AIDS (all caps) Day shopping yet.

[best12bars]

Posted: 12/1/07 at 9:49am

Is there an "It's World AIDS Day, Charlie Brown!" special yet?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/1/07 at 10:01am

[PalJoey]

Posted: 12/1/07 at 10:02am

[SueleenGay]

Posted: 12/1/07 at 12:37pm

It seems like a life time ago that we first heard about the gay cancer. We have lost so many, come so far yet still have so far to go.
I will be remembering all we have lost, and although a day does not go by that I don't think about those I have personally lost, today is a day to stop and think about everyone this disease has touched.

HOWEVER, although the red ribbon on the White House looks pretty, RIBBONS ARE NOT ENOUGH.

[TheatreDiva90016]

Posted: 12/1/07 at 1:17pm

Yes! I remember when I did Roseanne, and I was wearing two pins, a red ribbon (That I had made out of bugle beads) and a pin that said DIVA on it. She said, "Ooh, I want that pin!" so I went to give her the ribbon and she said, "No, I want the Diva pin. I think the ribbons are nice and everything, but I think that most of the people that wear them don't actaully DO anything to help."

So, I asked her to be a person who does something.

It was the 'Gay Wedding episode' where Martin Mull married his BF. I asked Roseanne if she would autograph something for a benefit I was MCing the following week. She grabbed the big heart that was on the set that said something about Gay Love, and autographed it and let me auction it off.

That is one great woman.

[mauriposa]

Posted: 12/1/07 at 2:20pm

A friend just linked this to me, so I thought I'd share.
Light to Unite 2007

[tazber]

Posted: 12/1/07 at 3:46pm

That's a beautiful site mauri, thanks.

[AbbaRabbit]

Posted: 12/1/07 at 5:58pm

i bought this postcard at my first ever true colors conference when i was a senior in high school. it's not specific to world AIDS day but i thought i would post it anyways.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 12/1/07 at 7:05pm

It is with the quintessence of florid prose that I note dejectedly that this thread has about half the number of replies as does a thread proudly announcing that someone walked out of a Julie Taymor move. One is left to ponder with wonderment and puzzlement what has led society over this predicament of a precipice?

[orangeskittles]

Posted: 12/1/07 at 9:12pm

Showtime is showing a bunch of documentaries and movies about HIV on their various channels.

[Elphaba]

Posted: 12/1/07 at 10:19pm

"HOWEVER, although the red ribbon on the White House looks pretty, RIBBONS ARE NOT ENOUGH."

well said Sueleen

[DG]

Posted: 12/1/07 at 11:37pm

Hey, Namo - bite my ass.

And my observation is that this board is showing the perfect example of 'taking care of your own' - or is that 'only caring about your own'.

This is WORLD AIDS Day, and what little is referrenced in this SHORT thread is US gay men - besides the requisite snark, of course.

They're a minority in the world's debit column on this page.

[etoile]

Posted: 12/2/07 at 1:25am

And perhaps some don't post in threads such as these because, although they remember, look to a future, care for and about those afflicted, and mourn, well perhaps some things are too personal, too close, too raw to want to discuss. Perhaps an element of wanting to deny, or mortality, plays into things. Perhaps a "there but for the grace goes I' plays into some threads.

Sometimes a thread is stalwartly enough it can stand on its own without needing anyone to post.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/2/07 at 2:27am

Oh, for F*CK's sake. Call me a selfish queen, but yeah, the first thing I think of is the gay community when I think about AIDS. I think about my friend Lee, who died in 2001. I think about my exes, Tyler and David, neither of whom I've heard from in years and have no idea if they're dead, alive or somewhere in between. I think about the people I've met peripherally throughout the years. I do think about AIDS throughout the world. I think about Africa, and my heart breaks at the destruction of that continent. Then I think about all the money that does go to Africa and I wonder why my tax dollars don't go further to help those living with at home.

I guess the big gay chip on my shoulder gets bigger and bigger as the years go on, but sometimes I think we forget that in this country, a lot of people still think of AIDS a gay problem, and therefore a problem not worthy of break a sweat on our behalf.

Why does it always seem like the gays always have to qualify their support for their own by reminding everyone that they still care about others?

I mean, Christ, I've known of and been afraid of AIDS since I was about ten years old. I grew in a world where I was already a part of a group that was being held accountable for this scourge.

I'm all for pointing out the shallowness and misplaced values of people on this board, and there are days when I feel like I hate just about each and every member of the so-called gay community, but I just don't see what's wrong with gay people thinking about other gay people on World AIDS Day.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 12/2/07 at 11:47am

Hey, Namo - bite my ass

Nah, I'm not into that. But I will say, DG, that your 8th and 9th Steps should be something to behold. Also, I'm psyched to see that the near-invisibilization of gay men in discussing the AIDS epidemic has trickled down and affected the rhetoric of even someone as admittedly ill-informed as yourself.

The problem is that AIDS is still a gay problem but discussion of it has been silenced. At the last International AIDS Conference held in Toronto, gay attendees (and we're talking researchers, doctors, scientists, consumers) were left wondering why they barely saw themselves or heard of experiences like theirs from the dais. The truth is, they knew why. It's easier to deal with AIDS as something over there, on the other side of the globe.

But in a more deadly sense, the fact is that research and innovation in the US has been hamstrung for the last 7 years. If you're looking for funding through the CDC on program development/evaluation and/or such possible innovations such as microbicides for prevention, you can NOT put the words "gay men" or "anal sex" in your proposals. Or literature. (Which is a shame, because the possibility of effective anal microbicides is a tantalizing, yet barely researchable, possibility on the pallet of potential prevention strategies- look DG, I'm writing just like you!) And believe you me, this isn't what the actual human beings at the CDC want to do, it's what they HAVE to do with today's restrictions.

So, DG, why don't you just continue to wrong-headedly tsk-tsk "younger gay men" for seroconverting and resignedly announce "we failed" as you have done in the past, rather than making your erroneous assertion that gay men get too much attention?

We'll see what comes out of the National HIV Prevention Conference in Atlanta that starts tomorrow. I hope that DG doesn't get his wish that the "minority in the world's debit column" (FYI, Mary, we're a minority in 95% of the columns that exist in the world) doesn't get shuffled aside there. It would make even less sense there, since this is about HIV in the U.S. and HIV is still largely an issue among men who have sex with men. But, as I said, gay men have been rendered nearly-invisible and unmentionable.

Just so we're clear.

[colleen_lee]

Posted: 12/2/07 at 1:16pm

Gay men still make up over 70% of new infections in the U.S. every year, so there is good reason why the gay community is so inwardly focused when it comes to this issue. It is affecting that particular population in a very different way.

But it is time for all communities to take ownership of this disease the way the gay community has done. The African American community, in particular, needs to begin 'taking care of their own' as AIDS has become the number one cause of death among black women 25-35. And though 75% of these women are contracting the disease through heterosexual intercourse, HIV and AIDS are still dirty words throughout the black community. And as long as talking about this disease remains taboo, I am willing to bet that infection rates as well as deaths from the disease continue to rise.

For most in this country AIDS is something that affects "them", when are people going to stand up and realize that this affects "us".

[romantico]

Posted: 12/2/07 at 3:46pm

Liz Taylore has a great editorial in the weekend USA's Today.


In AIDS pandemic, 'No one is immune'

By Elizabeth Taylor

It is inconceivable to me that in the year 2007, there remains a need to designate an annual day to mark a health pandemic that has reached global proportions and continues to claim millions of lives each year.

My memory of the crisis goes back more than 25 years, when unexplained cases of enlarged lymph nodes in gay men were first observed by physicians. Terms like "gay cancer" sent shockwaves throughout the nation. No one knew what this was or how to stop it.

Fear continued to brew as the mysterious virus spread among heterosexual hemophiliacs, injection drug users and blood transfusion recipients. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) established the term "acquired immunodeficiency syndrome." In 1983, AIDS cases were reported in 33 countries, claiming more than 2,000 lives.

I knew this crisis needed attention and money to create public, governmental and media awareness. When I first started fundraising back then, the entertainment industry shied away — the stigma was great. Since then — well, the statistics are staggering

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/11/in-aids-pandemi.html

[colleen_lee]

Posted: 12/2/07 at 3:50pm

People still just don't get it.

I don't know if it's due to the fall of in education or the decrease in media attention as the disease has become more treatable but so many people continue to live in this bubble of "it can't happen to me."

I was looking at some World AIDS Day videos posted on youtube, and the comments on their are disgusting. The youth of our world think this is a disease that only happens to "fags, whores and drug users."

These are the kids most at risk. These are the kids who aren't going to get tested and are going to continue to spread the disease. All the while repeating the mantra "I can't happen to me."

BRING BACK AIDS EDUCATION!

[MotorTink]

Posted: 12/2/07 at 3:59pm

I agree with you completely colleen.

I am in my mid 20's and I believe at least 50% of the people I know my age range still have never gotten an STD test. I don't know if it is because of the "I'm invincible" attitude, "I'm too scared to know" attitude, or the feeling that it is still taboo. But either way, it saddens me.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 12/2/07 at 5:18pm

I think it's probably a little bit of both. For me, I grew up in the age of AIDS and I knew that gay sex was in my future, so I've always subjected myself to a pretty stringent testing regimen. I'm neurotic and a hypochondriac, too, which probably helps me stay on schedule.

Most days I feel that this is so much bigger than anything I can do, other days I'm pissed off that I don't do more and other days I'm pissed off others don't do more.

Today - and I realize that it's actually the day after, though - I'm STILL thinking about AIDS in my own backyard, because maybe that really is all I can do and something that, on some level, I've been thinking about for twenty years.

Virtually every single person on this board has the ability to find out their status. Maybe that's all I can hope for.

While I do get what's behind the "I don't want to know" mentality, I don't understand why you wouldn't want to know. Maybe it's that "People don't believe it's a death sentence" meme anymore that I never bought in the first place, but that's a whole other story.

I once dated a guy who had had unprotected sex about a year before in a rather skeevy environment. He even felt flu-like symptons a week or two later. For a year he went through hell, wondering if he had maybe contracted HIV and what was he going to do if he did? I just thought it was insanity to me and couldn't comphrehend how worrying yourself into hysteria by not knowing could in any way seem more preferable to actually knowing what was going on with your own body.

I know plenty of gay men who do seem to suffer from some sort of "AIDS burnout" and I really do get it. I resent having to grow up in a time where the thought of sex was always inexorably think with death. I resented being told by a friend of mine when I was 15 that it was god's punishment. I resent that often when I mention going on a date, my well-intentioend co-worker will say, with meaning, "Be careful." HIV stigmatizes many of us who don't have it, so isn't it a form of self-victimization to not take responsibility for your own body?

Every time this comes up I feel like I always wind up being misunderstood, so let me just say, I DON'T blame anyone for anything. I just don't understand a lot of the time. I chalk that up to living an atypical life, I suppose, but it's still just how I see it, but at the end of the day, I'm just a receptionist.

[MotorTink]

Posted: 12/2/07 at 5:49pm

I guess the other thing that puzzles me is the "selfishness" factor. It is not only your life in question, but the lives of the people you are intimate with - and this is true no matter what sexual orientation you are. I mean, yes, if you are having unprotected relations with someone - both parties involved are at fault and risk of any outcomes. Those are the subconscious decisions you make. I just don't know. I beat myself up over this all the time when talking to friends. I get all worked up but then second guess myself that maybe it isn't that big of a deal if I am the only one concerned. Which I guess can be a lot of people's thoughts when trying to think of what they could do towards the problem as a whole. I know the saying is "all it takes is one person" or "ever effort helps", but sometimes it is so hard to believe that.