LGBT health survey shows trouble spots
BOSTON. The largest survey to date comparing the health of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community to heterosexuals and non-transgender residents showed sharp health disparities.
The statistics:
In a survey of nearly 1,600 Massachusetts residents:
- Almost 31 percent of transgender citizens reported considering suicide in the past year, compared to just 2 percent for heterosexuals and 4 percent for gay or lesbian.
- Nearly 35 percent of transgender citizens said they were threatened with physical violence during their lifetime by an intimate partner, almost three times the rate of non-transgender residents.
- Just 45 percent of bisexual women said they had never had a mammogram, below the 59 percent of heterosexuals and 58 percent of lesbians.
- Bisexuals reported the most days binge drinking, having four or five drinks in a sitting an average of nearly two times in the past 30 days. Bisexuals also reported smoking marijuana nearly twice as often as heterosexuals.
See LGBT health survey shows trouble spots
Metro.us
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US May Lift Entry Ban on HIV Patients
For more than two decades, anybody who is HIV positive has been prevented from entering the United States. But with President Barack Obama’s support, the ban will likely expire soon, with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) taking public comments until August 17. The department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will then make the final decision. “We’re trying to end the stigma and the discriminatory practice for a disease that doesn’t warrant exclusion for coming into this country,” said the director of the CDC’s division of global migration and quarantine, Dr. Martin Cetron. “We have to appreciate this is not a threat we face from abroad.” He acknowledged that “HIV is clearly a public health disease of significance,” but added that simply letting somebody with HIV into the country does not “immediately pose a risk to the public.”
The proposal could allow an average of about 5,000 HIV-infected people into the United States each year. And according to a CDC estimate published in the federal register, the lifetime medical costs of those admitted in just the first year would total almost $100 million. The United States is one of about 15 countries that prevent entry of HIV-positive patients, though it is possible to obtain a waiver under certain conditions. See US May Lift Entry Ban on HIV Patients
The New American
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The Stonewall generation looks back
It’s been a grueling journey from the deep closet to the equal-marriage battles of today. But it’s also remarkable that that journey has taken place within the space of typical American’s lifetime.
Older LGBT people have seen—and created—enormous changes in our society. A timeline produced by SAGE for the 40th anniversary …
Tags: 40th Anniversary, Enormous Changes, Equal Marriage, Grueling Journey, Lgbt, Lifetime, marriage, Sage, Timeline, Typical AmericanBoth black and gay: Internal rights fight
It was already challenging enough for Cornelius Jones Jr. to grow up being black in the racially-tense South.
But facing the prejudices of the people outside the African American community wouldn’t be the hardest struggle of his life. Even from the young age of 5, Jones had a sense of the obstacles he would face on the inside.
“I didn’t want to be associated with the weakness and nastiness that gay people were defined by in my neighborhood,” Jones remembers of his time growing up on a predominantly black street in Richmond, Va. “In my neighborhood, church and school, gays were constantly shunned, ridiculed and picked on.”
When he was 15, Jones moved to Washington, D.C. to stay with family friends and attend a performing arts high school — “and also to get away from the constant bullying I received,” he said. But they soon learned that he was gay and he was kicked out of the house. It was then that he had to confront his parents with his real identity.
His mother gave him one piece of advice: “Do what you do behind closed doors.”
It would be a lifetime of pain and struggle that would teach him that his mother’s advice was no way to awaken a black community deeply rooted in religion to the rights of gays. And it would be events like the passage of Proposition 8 — the anti-gay marriage measure in California that 70 percent of blacks voted for — that would be a platform for him to open the doors.
See Both black and gay: Internal rights fight
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Margaret Cho geared up for ‘Dead’
Comedienne Margaret Cho knows a great deal about Hollywood’s obsession with body image.
The once-zaftig actress is co-starring in a new series for Lifetime titled “Drop Dead Diva” about a brilliant plus-size attorney who finds her body inhabited by the soul of a shallow wannabe model.
The Sony Pictures Television-produced show debuts July 12 and stars Broadway actress Brooke Elliott as lawyer Jane Bingum.
Cho plays Bingum’s gal Friday, Terri, and it’s a more serious role than fans might expect of Cho, known for her irreverent, and often political, humor.
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Pizarro: Activist Cleve Jones to make an appearance in San Jose - San Jose Mercury News
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Pizarro: Activist Cleve Jones to make an appearance in San Jose
San Jose Mercury News, USA Well, the real Cleve Jones will be in San Jose Thursday night to discuss his lifetime of social activism, especially for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community and victims of HIV/AIDS. His 8 pm talk will be at the Billy DeFrank LGBT … |
Larry Kramer Blasts Yale’s ‘Conspiracy of Silence’ on Gay History
When more than 300 Yale alumni and their guests arrived at Yale for the University’s first-ever lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender alumni reunion this weekend, they found not only camaraderie, but also controversy.
The first-ever recipient of the GALA Lifetime Achievement Award, gay activist Larry Kramer ’57, harshly rebuked the University for its treatment of gay history as an academic field during the three-day reunion, which was jointly organized by the LGBT alumni association Yale GALA and the Association of Yale Alumni. At a dinner ceremony Saturday, Kramer said the University has wrongly relegated the study of gay history to LGBT studies, arguing that there is a significant semantic difference between gay “history” and gay “studies.”
Declaring that queer and gender theories are “relatively useless,” Kramer — who was among the first to call for action against the AIDS crisis — said gay history has been “hijacked” by queer theorists.
Kramer and Yale have clashed before; in the mid-nineties, Yale rejected a sizable gift from Kramer to create either an endowed chair in gay and lesbian studies or a student center for gay students. In 2001, Kramer’s brother, Arthur Kramer ’49, gave a $1 million gift in Larry’s name to found the Larry Kramer Initiative for Gay and Lesbian Studies, which was closed after five years when the gift was spent.
In order to demonstrate the importance of gay history, Kramer declared that he believes many prominent American historical figures were gay, including George Washington, the famous explorer Meriwether Lewis, Abraham Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth.
The study of gay history is therefore important as a means of promoting acceptance for LGBT individuals, Kramer said.
“The plague of AIDS was allowed to happen because most of the world hates us,” he said. “They don’t know we’re related to Washington and Lincoln.”
While alumni sat attentively throughout the speech and gave Kramer a standing ovation, some said afterwards that they were standing not necessarily out of agreement with Kramer, but rather out of respect for his activism in the wake of AIDS.
“He’s been a provocateur all of his career, since the AIDS crisis,” said Ken Demario ’64. “I don’t know if this was an appropriate forum for as nasty a broadside as his was against the University.”
In a brief interview after the speech, Provost Peter Salovey said he agreed that the study of LGBT history is important.
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Gay Montclair University Student Protests Ban on Donating Blood
A 20-year-old sophomore at Montclair State University, Weinstein signed up to donate blood last November at a Red Cross blood drive on campus because, he said, “I thought it would be a nice thing to do.”
But when Weinstein, who is gay, answered “yes” on a questionnaire asking whether or not he had had sexual relations with another man since 1977, American Red Cross volunteers running the drive told him that he was ineligible to be a donor.
“My initial reaction was absolute shock. I thought, there’s no way,” Weinstein, a Randolph native, said last week.
For the past several months, blood supplies around New Jersey have hit critically low levels. Karen Ferriday, a spokeswoman for Community Blood Services in Oradell, said blood stores, which optimally provide three to five days worth of blood, have fallen to half-day supplies for the past several months.
Still, donors like Weinstein have found themselves turned away from donating because a Food and Drug Administration regulation born at the height of the AIDS scare in 1983 still places a lifetime ban on blood donations by gay and bisexual men.
Women who have had sex with a gay or bisexual partner are out, too.
See
Gay Montclair University Student Protests Ban on Donating Blood
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Pioneers in Splitsville
Hillary and Julie Goodridge of Massachusetts, America’s first same-sex husband and wife — wife and wife, husband and husband, whatever — are divorcing, nearly two years after they announced they were separating.
Recall how advocates for years had claimed same-sex marriage would be good for the institution historically reserved for a man and a woman because so many homosexuals are in committed, loving relationships with their lifetime partners.
Of course, about the time the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court was dabbing lemon juice on the back of the state Constitution to reveal the “homosexual marriage OK” message John Adams scribbled there in invisible ink in 1780; and Mr. and Mrs. — Ms. and Ms., Mrs. and Mrs., Mr. and Mr., whatever — Goodridge were tying the knot, the Institute for Marriage And Public Policy was reporting (and the news media were suppressing) research showing the divorce rate among same-sex couples in Sweden was about twice that of heterosexuals. MORE
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Praise For ‘Bobby’
Praise For ‘Bobby’
There may be some flaws in Lifetime’s “Prayers for Bobby,” but that doesn’t mean it won’t kick you in the emotional gut.
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