Lesbian teen sues to force school to hold prom
(Jackson, Miss.) A lesbian student who wanted to take her girlfriend to her senior prom is asking a federal judge to force her Mississippi school district to reinstate the dance it canceled.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi on Thursday filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Oxford on …
Closet Case: How Intolerance Fuels Africa’s AIDS Crisis
New research has challenged the long-standing belief that HIV and AIDS in Africa primarily affect heterosexuals. A study published on the website of the British medical journal Lancet found that men who have sex with other men are up to 10 times more likely than their heterosexual counterparts to be infected with the virus — which suggests that the fight against AIDS on the continent may be undermined by widespread homophobia.
Researchers from Oxford University, the Population Council of Ghana and the Kenya Medical Research Institute reviewed AIDS studies conducted over the past few years and concluded that male-male sex was a major blind spot in AIDS research and policy in Africa. Men having sex with other men is far more common in Africa than is socially acknowledged, owing to widespread hostility toward homosexuality, and the phenomenon there is underreported in research and largely ignored in public-health responses to the pandemic. The researchers compiled statistics from a small but growing number of studies conducted in various African countries in recent years that included estimates of HIV prevalence among men who have sex with other men. (See pictures from Africa’s AIDS crisis.)
See Closet Case: How Intolerance Fuels Africa’s AIDS Crisis
TIME
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Aids: Role of Gay Men in Spreading Virus Is Ignored in Africa, Study Finds
The role of gay sex in the transmission of the virus that causes AIDS in Africa has been long ignored, say the authors of a new study in the medical journal Lancet.
While most transmission of the virus in Africa is heterosexual, 19 recent studies of African men who have sex with men show that they have “considerably higher” infection rates than other adult men in their respective countries, said the authors, who were from Oxford University and research institutions in Ghana and Kenya.
These men also have less access to prevention and care; most African countries have allocated no money to gay men, and homosexual sex is illegal in 31 African countries, in four of which men risk the death penalty.
See Aids: Role of Gay Men in Spreading Virus Is Ignored in Africa, Study Finds
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‘Tired’ Fox stepping down from Butler County Children Services Oxford Press
Controversial director sho favors straight over gay parents says he’s ‘tired’ after more than 1½ years on the job and will retire March 31.
Butler County Children Services Director Michael Fox plans to end his epic and controversial career March 31.
Fox said Friday, March 6, in an exclusive interview he’s “tired,” and can do more good as a private activist than an agency director.
“I plan to continue being an advocate for children and families, and doing whatever I can to make the system better,” Fox said. “I think at this point I can be more effective outside the system.”
See ‘Tired’ Fox stepping down from Butler County Children Services Oxford Press
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Out Missouri lawmaker hints at bias in committee spots
Missouri state Rep. Jeanette Mott Oxford, D-St. Louis, was put up for a slot on that body’s Special Standing Committee on Children and Families by the Democratic leadership, but her bid was rejected by the House speaker, Ron Richard, R-Joplin. In a letter to Richard, Oxford wrote: “The only reason cited to me so far as for why I am not on the committee is that ‘some members find me offensive.’ I do not know if this is about my sexual orientation, my stance on Roe vs. Wade, or what.” The Kansas City Star (Mo.)
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