Chicago HIV report sparks reaction

The Chicago Public Health Department’s alarming report, released Friday, that suggests the HIV infection rate among gay men in Chicago is nearly 20% has drawn varied responses from Chicago’s gay and lesbian community.
ChicagoPride.com surveyed a number of gay men on a busy Saturday night in Boystown.
From Waveland to Buckingham, the responses were varied with one common undertone that gay men no longer think HIV is a death sentence. And despite extensive media coverage on the recently release report, many were unaware of the report and its contents.
“I’m not at all surprised by these statistics.” Said thirty-something Al joined by Jared and Jamie outside of the Center on Halsted. “The fact that a lot of our own community members are not aware of their status is probably because of their fear of knowing.”
“We are very closeted in the U.S. regarding educating our youth,” added Jaime.
Some do not believe the numbers and conclusions published in the report.
“You can work the numbers however you want,” said Matthew a bartender at Buck’s. See Chicago HIV report sparks reaction

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After the break-up, what about the lake house?

IT was a perfect party — vodka lemonade on a dock overlooking a lake, dozens of close friends, a cool misty night in the country a couple of hours north of New York.

Inside, the house spoke of a passionate interest in style, and of a committed relationship. Silhouettes of the couple who owned the house hung on a wall in the master bedroom; the couple’s nickname — Benford — was spelled out in large letters leaning against a wall in the kitchen.

But the couple, Benjamin Dixon, 31, and Bradford Shellhammer, 33, who had planned the evening as a commitment ceremony, had broken up three months earlier. Still, with airplane tickets purchased by some of the guests, a catering deposit paid and a house they haven’t been able to sell, they figured it made sense to go ahead and have a party anyway.

Their tale of lost love has a familiar arc — love sparks, then blooms; lives intertwine; moments are lost and misunderstandings creep in; eventually the two begin to live as strangers — and an epilogue that has become increasingly familiar as well, as unwanted houses become prisons rather than cocoons.

Rather than being a glossy testament to their taste and their partnership, their house in Stanfordville, in Dutchess County, is now a dead weight that entangles them and makes it impossible to move on. Having bought it and an apartment in Manhattan at the height of the real estate boom (and having made an agreement with a third partner in their lake house property not to sell it until December 2009), they are left with joint custody of two large mortgages. They are also left with two carefully decorated homes filled with one-of-a-kind accessories found on eBay and quirky furnishings by high-end designers like the Dutch collective Droog that are reminders of what came before and, Mr. Dixon said, “big reminders of what was supposed to be.”

See After the break-up, what about the lake house?
New York Times

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Whose Holocaust? Plan to Recognize Gay Victims at Memorial Sparks Row

A plan to memorialize gay male victims of Nazism amid a collection of memorial stones for Holocaust victims in a quiet half-acre patch of Brooklyn has provoked an outcry.

New York State Assembly Member Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn Democrat whose many Orthodox constituents include numerous Holocaust survivors, has decried the planned addition as a distortion of the Holocaust’s meaning with regard to Jews.

“It’s easy to say, let’s include everybody, let’s be universal, diversity is great,” he said. But he added, “It just isn’t fair. It diminishes and really dilutes what the Holocaust is.”

Hikind and the Holocaust Memorial Committee, steward of the tiny Holocaust Memorial Park in the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn, are calling for the park’s memorial stones to be restricted to Jewish victims of Hitler. But the plan, approved by the city’s parks department, to commemorate non-Jewish victims of the Nazi regime there is proceeding thus far.

On June 9, representatives of the International Association of Lesbian and Gay Children of Holocaust Survivors, which proposed the addition, could be found combing the bayside memorial to measure unmarked stone pillars and determine if memorial text could be carved on them, association co-chair Rick Landman said.

The altercation raises a question that Jews have faced with increasing frequency: Whose Holocaust is it, anyway? Roma Gypsies, the disabled and gay men were among those also especially targeted by the Nazis. According to historians, though, only Jews and Roma were targeted for annihilation. Altogether, the Nazis are estimated to have murdered some 11 million from their coming to power in 1933 until their downfall in 1945.

Flanked by Emmons Avenue and Shore Boulevard, at the easternmost end of Sheepshead Bay, the memorial, built in 1997, consists of a tall eternal flame sculpture — engraved with a short statement on the Holocaust and the nations affected by the genocide — surrounded by two adjacent gardens of stone markers, each of which features either a paragraph or two of history or a list of victims’ names.

For $360 per engraved line, donors to the non-profit Holocaust Memorial Committee can pay to have a victim’s name printed on one of the stone markers. The registration form for this service, found on the committee’s Web site, asks donors to provide the victim’s name and a brief history of his or her Holocaust experience. The committee then meets to verify the authenticity of the proposed inscription, committee treasurer and past president Alfred Gollomp said.

Gollomp complained that in signing on to the IALGCHS proposal, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and the city’s parks department were ignoring a memorandum that gives the Brooklyn-based group control over the park markers.

See Whose Holocaust? Plan to Recognize Gay Victims at Memorial Sparks Row

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Miss California sparks outrage over gay marriage remarks

Mixing a beauty pageant with politics is a recipe for disaster. You could make a strong case for it, anyway.

The two merged last night at the site of the Miss USA pageant in Las Vegas. The result was similar to the fallout after the Miss Teen USA pageant in 2007 when Miss South Carolina gave the greatest non-answer answer perhaps in American history. Both times the non-winner of a pageant got all the attention the next day.

Outrage

But unlike the pageant two years ago, the contestant in the crossfire didn’t give a nonsensical (and wildly entertaining) answer. The contestant last night, California’s Carrie Prejean, was too articulate in the minds of many and led to some flaring tempers (similar to Janeane Garofalo’s flare-up on Keith Olbermann’s show the other night).

The question posed to the contestant couldn’t be any more incendiary: gay marriage.

Asked judge Perez Hilton to Prejean, “Vermont recently became the 4th state to legalize same-sex marriage. Do you think every state should follow suit. Why or why not?”

Observers quickly learned that in Hilton’s mind there was only one correct answer. And Prejean picked the wrong one.

“Well I think its great that Americans are able to choose one or the other,” she said. “We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. And you know what, in my country, in my family, I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there but that’s how I was raised and that’s how I think it should be between a man and a woman. Thank you very much.”

Prejean was greeted with a mixed reaction from the audience. Boos followed by applause. And the reactions didn’t stop at the pageant. It went into overtime.

Worst answer

Perez then blasted her on his video blog calling it the “worst answer in pageant history.” He also made comments that he has since apologized for. Now he’s asked her out for coffee to “talk.”

The directors of the Miss California pageant condemned her answer on Monday morning.

“As co-executive director of Miss CA USA and one of the leaders of the Miss CA family, I am personally saddened and hurt that Miss CA USA 2009 believes marriage rights belong only to a man and a woman,” wrote Keith Lewis on Hilton’s blog. “Although I believe all religions should be able to ordain what unions they see fit, I do not believe our government should be able to discriminate against anyone. Religious beliefs have no place in politics in the Miss CA family.”

Sticking by it

Does she regret the answer? Not at all.

“I was raised in a way that you can never compromise your beliefs and your opinions for anything,” she told AccessHollywood.

Further, she informed the entertainment site that her sister is a gay rights activist in the Air Force. By the way, her sister was more sympathetic than Hilton.

“She was just in my hotel room and she said, ‘Sis, I’m not offended by anything that you said. We have two different opinions and I love you because of it. I love you because you stood up for what was right, and it’s not a matter of being gay or not gay, it’s a matter of you competing for Miss USA and getting a question and answering it to the best of your ability.”

On one area both Hilton and Prejean agree: her answer killed her chances of winning the competition.

“She lost it because of that question. She was definitely the front-runner before that,” Hilton told ABCNews.com

“It did cost me my crown,” she concurred. “I wouldn’t have had it any other way. I said what I feel. I stated an opinion that was true to myself and that’s all I can do.”

See Miss California sparks outrage over gay marriage remarks @ Christian Science Monitor - Also:

Miss USA Scores Controversy, Not Ratings E! Online -
Perez Hilton ‘Floored’ by Miss California ABC News -

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Those crazy heterosexuals: Playboy Apologizes After Virgin Mary Cover Sparks Outrage

Playboy magazine apologized for a controversial cover featuring a scantily-clad woman resembling the Virgin Mary, Reuters reported.

The December edition was published Thursday, just before the Mexican festival honoring Mary known as the Day of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

Playboy Enterprises Inc., based in Chicago, released a statement Friday explaining that the company did not approve the cover because the Mexican version of the magazine is published by a licensee, according to Reuters.

“While Playboy Mexico never meant for the cover or images to offend anyone, we recognize that it has created offense, and we as well as Playboy Mexico offer our sincerest apologies,” the company said.

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Aiken Sparks Reports Of Romance With Broadway Dancer

Former “American Idol” singer Clay Aiken has sparked reports he’s dating a fellow Broadway star, just two months after revealing to the world he is gay.

Aiken revealed he was gay to People magazine in September as part of a photo spread featuring him and his new baby son, Parker, who was born in August.

According to reports the star has a new boyfriend, Broadway dancer Reed Kelly, who currently stars in hit musical “Wicked.”

 See Aiken Sparks Reports Of Romance With Broadway Dancer
San Francisco Chronicle,  USA