SOIN - Live Issues

Groups unite in gay men's health institute
by Patrick Letellier, PlanetOut Network

Two of the oldest and largest AIDS service organizations in the United States - AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) and the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) in New York - announced on Tuesday the formation of the Institute for Gay Men's Health, a joint project to combat HIV and develop a national health agenda for gay men.

The first partnership of its kind in the country, the project is a response to increasing rates of HIV infection among gay men nationwide, said the institute's new director, George Ayala, a nationally known AIDS expert and researcher.

Both organizations were "wanting to do business differently and to make a bold statement about our concern about increases in HIV infection rates," Ayala told the PlanetOut Network. "We want to freshen up our HIV prevention messages and retool our interventions because we recognize that many of our current messages were developed at a time when the epidemic looked different," Ayala said.

With a staff combining 25 prevention workers from each organization, the institute will be housed in both New York and Los Angeles. The partnership will "combine the energies, resources and expertise of the organizations ... in the epicenters for AIDS cases in the United States ... to prevent and reduce HIV transmission on a broad scale," said Ana Oliveira, executive director of GMHC, in a prepared statement.

Gay Community: High, and at Risk
By Patrick Moore

Next weekend's gay pride festivities in Los Angeles are likely to be the usual rollicking celebration of battles won and hardships overcome. The gay community is rightfully proud of its response to the first decades of the AIDS epidemic. And we have reason to rejoice in ongoing civil rights advances. But, as we celebrate, there is still a vexing problem we need to come to terms with: the centrality of drugs and alcohol to gay culture.

Exhausted from decades of struggle, gays have been reluctant to openly discuss the problem of substance abuse. But now an array of studies suggests that drug and alcohol abuse is a central factor in the rise of new HIV infections among gay men over the last several years. Which means the problem can no longer be ignored.

Twenty-five years into the AIDS crisis, nearly every gay man knows that condoms can prevent HIV transmission. But after a few drinks or getting high, condom use can seem a lot less important. And the increasing use by gay men of crystal methamphetamine - which is both cheap and disinhibiting - raises even more troubling new health issues. As crystal meth use among gay men has spread, a return to risky sexual practices has followed in its wake. Not only does unsafe sex lead to new infections, it can result in reinfections with new strains of the virus, which in turn can lead to drug-resistant strains of HIV.

Changing the relationship of gays to drugs and alcohol won't be easy. Bars and clubs are among the most common places for gay people, particularly gay men, to meet one another. And for many gays, drugs and alcohol have become medications that allow them to be themselves, enabling them to shed culturally induced inhibitions and shame that can stand in the way of a fulfilling sexual life.

In predominately gay neighborhoods, bars and clubs are everywhere. And city governments dependent on tax revenues from these businesses have little incentive to consider their effects. Take the case of West Hollywood. In one particular census tract there, the state's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control suggests that the appropriate number of establishments that sell alcohol on site would be five. There are currently 65 such licensees operating in the area, each of them paying taxes. Perhaps the time has come for a moratorium on new liquor licenses in heavily gay communities, along with leadership at the local level in developing social alternatives to bars and clubs.

J.L. King - good-looking, standing 6 feet tall and cleanshaven with cocoa colored skin - is used to turning heads. He gets hit on often. By women and men. He's cool with that.

What he's more anxious about is the attention he expects to get in February when the West Loop educator-turned-author releases a book, On the Down Low.

He helped popularize the phrase "living on the down low" or "DL" when he used it in 2001 to describe men like himself: those who have sex with men but do not consider themselves gay or bisexual. They are not effeminate and often have girlfriends or wives who are unaware of their double lives.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention connected black men on the down low with the rise of HIV infection rates among black women.

Because they don't identify as bisexual or gay, DL men are less likely to heed safe sex messages targeted at those groups, posing a health risk to themselves and their female partners, the CDC said. Heterosexual sex is the main method of HIV transmission for black women ages 25 to 34.

Blacks, 12 percent of the total population, account for more than 50 percent of new HIV infections each year. AIDS is the second-leading cause of death for black men between the ages of 35 and 44 and the leading cause for black women ages 25 to 34.

Filmmaker Tadeo Garcia, whose independent feature, "On the Down Low," explores the issue among Chicago gang members, says, "Obviously, people don't associate homosexuality with minority groups. It's [perceived as] just like a white thing. The machismo of the Latino community and the black community; we have to keep the standard. But it happens everywhere."

"Its a big to-do about nothing," Garcia said. "It comes down to people being responsible for their actions. It's not fair for the wives or the girlfriends to be contracting this disease.

Having interviewed more than 1,000 men living life on the DL, King has made educating the public about the practice his business.

Offering workshops like "The Five Personality Types of DL Men," the transplant from Atlanta commands up to $4,000 a lecture. His Web site gets 5,000 to 7,000 hits a month.

Random House is printing his book, which he wrote with ghost writer Karen Hunter, who has worked on autobiographies with Al Sharpton, L.L. Cool J and Queen Latifah. E. Lynn Harris provides the foreword.

And in February, King will be featured on "20/20," expected to reach 22 million viewers.

A man stares into a camera, giving a video confessional about wanting to become HIV positive.

"When I thought being positive was a positive thing, I thought I was just going to have a lot of fun, promiscuous, unsafe sex," says Doug Hitzel, then 19. "I didn't know it was going to change so fast. No one told me," he says, in tears.

What Hitzel sought was "The Gift," the title of a new documentary that features conversations with "bug chasers" - men who want to become infected with HIV.

Everywhere director Louise Hogarth goes, the film creates a buzz, because she's exposing a taboo subject in the gay community.

Hogarth, who lives in Los Angeles, will be talking about her 60-minute film at its screening today at the Seattle International Film Festival.

The film, which cost Hogarth around $100,000 out of pocket to make, is booked at 60 festivals around the world. She said response to the film has been good, but there were times when she thought "The Gift" would never be seen.

People told her, "You are attacking a sacred cow. You're going to be in a lot of trouble,'" Hogarth said. "I didn't know if I could get it out. I thought I might get totally blackballed."

More than the shocking phenomenon of seeking HIV, the film, shot in San Francisco, Palm Springs and L.A., is about the controversial practice of "barebacking."

In the words of a gay rodeo drag queen: "Barebacking is basically having unprotected sex. It's like putting a loaded gun to your head."

Southern African leaders have been accused of blaming homosexuals for their countries' problems.

A joint report released in Cape Town by two human rights organisations said that verbal attacks by African leaders had led to a culture of intolerance in their countries.

Human Rights Watch and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) have documented harassment and violence against lesbians, gays and bisexuals in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Their report says that victims have been assaulted, imprisoned, expelled from schools, fired from jobs, denied access to medical care, evicted from their homes, and driven into exile or, in some cases, to suicide.

"When Southern African political leaders like President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe make speeches saying that gays and lesbians are 'worse than dogs and pigs', it should be no surprise that violent attacks follow," said Scott Long of Human Rights Watch, co-author of the report.

"These attacks are just the first step in creating a climate in which all rights are at risk," said Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of IGLHRC.

BOSTON - Chat rooms on gay Web sites are becoming a common place for arranging risky sexual encounters, a survey found, as experts worry about a possible upswing in HIV infections.

Research released Tuesday suggests that for some, the Internet serves the same hazardous purpose as gay bathhouses did in the early 1980s, when the AIDS virus first spread rampantly among homosexual men.

SAN FRANCISCO - More than 1,000 jail inmates in Los Angeles County have suffered painful and aggressive skin infections caused by a bacterium resistant to many antibiotics, medical authorities say. The unusual outbreak over the last year is still not contained.

The same pathogen, which causes fast-growing boils and unsightly abscesses, also appears to have infected dozens of gay men, many of them H.I.V. patients, in Los Angeles and San Francisco, health officials say.

Epidemiologists say the outbreaks stem from the Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium that causes many infections in hospitals and nursing homes.

The emergence of the drug-resistant bacteria staph is the first such outbreak reported in that population.

With infections that outsmart powerful antibiotics on the rise, doctors and public health officials have long worried that they might face an outbreak of resistant bacteria that threaten large numbers of people.

The large, painful skin infections started turning up early last fall among local gay men, then appeared with increasing frequency over the ensuing weeks and months. Although doctors found the symptoms alarming, it took a while to confirm a connection between these cases. Now they know they're facing an emerging epidemic of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or, more simply, staph.

The Stop AIDS Project is under scrutiny again, this time by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for its sexually explicit HIV-prevention programs. Health and Human Services investigated the controversial workshops, with titles such as "Booty Call" and "Great Sex," last year. Now the CDC's new director, Julie Gerberding, has placed the program at the top of her AIDS agenda.

Gerberding plans to send a team to her hometown next week to check whether the federally funded group's curricula is "scientifically sound," according to a letter sent to the Stop AIDS Project. The former UCSF medicine and epidemiology professor could not be reached for comment.

The move could threaten not only the group's federal funding, but HIV prevention programs across the country.


	Groups unite in gay men's health institute Gay.com, June 29, 2004 Gay Community: High, and at Risk Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2004 Life on the down low Chicago Sun Times, December 6, 2003 Filmmaker reveals a controversial 'gift' in gay community Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 24, 2003 African leaders 'scapegoat gays' BBC News, May 14, 2003 Chat Rooms a Meeting Place for Risky Sex Associated Press, February 11, 2003 Mystery Surrounds a Virulent Skin Infection New York Times, February 4, 2003 Skin infection spreads among gay men in L.A. Los Angeles Times, January 27, 2003 L.A. County Copes With Syphilis Outbreak Associated Press, December 27, 2002 Feds probe S.F. AIDS group San Francisco Examiner August 6, 2002 Suggest examples of coverage to raarons@aol.com Please include all necessary links in your e-mail.				Gay.com, June 29, 2004 Groups unite in gay men's health institute by Patrick Letellier, PlanetOut Network Two of the oldest and largest AIDS service organizations in the United States - AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA) and the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) in New York - announced on Tuesday the formation of the Institute for Gay Men's Health, a joint project to combat HIV and develop a national health agenda for gay men. The first partnership of its kind in the country, the project is a response to increasing rates of HIV infection among gay men nationwide, said the institute's new director, George Ayala, a nationally known AIDS expert and researcher. Both organizations were "wanting to do business differently and to make a bold statement about our concern about increases in HIV infection rates," Ayala told the PlanetOut Network. "We want to freshen up our HIV prevention messages and retool our interventions because we recognize that many of our current messages were developed at a time when the epidemic looked different," Ayala said. With a staff combining 25 prevention workers from each organization, the institute will be housed in both New York and Los Angeles. The partnership will "combine the energies, resources and expertise of the organizations ... in the epicenters for AIDS cases in the United States ... to prevent and reduce HIV transmission on a broad scale," said Ana Oliveira, executive director of GMHC, in a prepared statement. Click here for the full-length story [back to the top] Los Angeles Times, June 13, 2004 Gay Community: High, and at Risk By Patrick Moore Next weekend's gay pride festivities in Los Angeles are likely to be the usual rollicking celebration of battles won and hardships overcome. The gay community is rightfully proud of its response to the first decades of the AIDS epidemic. And we have reason to rejoice in ongoing civil rights advances. But, as we celebrate, there is still a vexing problem we need to come to terms with: the centrality of drugs and alcohol to gay culture. Exhausted from decades of struggle, gays have been reluctant to openly discuss the problem of substance abuse. But now an array of studies suggests that drug and alcohol abuse is a central factor in the rise of new HIV infections among gay men over the last several years. Which means the problem can no longer be ignored. Twenty-five years into the AIDS crisis, nearly every gay man knows that condoms can prevent HIV transmission. But after a few drinks or getting high, condom use can seem a lot less important. And the increasing use by gay men of crystal methamphetamine - which is both cheap and disinhibiting - raises even more troubling new health issues. As crystal meth use among gay men has spread, a return to risky sexual practices has followed in its wake. Not only does unsafe sex lead to new infections, it can result in reinfections with new strains of the virus, which in turn can lead to drug-resistant strains of HIV. Changing the relationship of gays to drugs and alcohol won't be easy. Bars and clubs are among the most common places for gay people, particularly gay men, to meet one another. And for many gays, drugs and alcohol have become medications that allow them to be themselves, enabling them to shed culturally induced inhibitions and shame that can stand in the way of a fulfilling sexual life. In predominately gay neighborhoods, bars and clubs are everywhere. And city governments dependent on tax revenues from these businesses have little incentive to consider their effects. Take the case of West Hollywood. In one particular census tract there, the state's Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control suggests that the appropriate number of establishments that sell alcohol on site would be five. There are currently 65 such licensees operating in the area, each of them paying taxes. Perhaps the time has come for a moratorium on new liquor licenses in heavily gay communities, along with leadership at the local level in developing social alternatives to bars and clubs. Click here for the full-length story [back to the top] Chicago Sun Times, December 6, 2003 Life on the down low By Cheryl Jackson J.L. King - good-looking, standing 6 feet tall and cleanshaven with cocoa colored skin - is used to turning heads. He gets hit on often. By women and men. He's cool with that. What he's more anxious about is the attention he expects to get in February when the West Loop educator-turned-author releases a book, On the Down Low. He helped popularize the phrase "living on the down low" or "DL" when he used it in 2001 to describe men like himself: those who have sex with men but do not consider themselves gay or bisexual. They are not effeminate and often have girlfriends or wives who are unaware of their double lives. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention connected black men on the down low with the rise of HIV infection rates among black women. Because they don't identify as bisexual or gay, DL men are less likely to heed safe sex messages targeted at those groups, posing a health risk to themselves and their female partners, the CDC said. Heterosexual sex is the main method of HIV transmission for black women ages 25 to 34. Blacks, 12 percent of the total population, account for more than 50 percent of new HIV infections each year. AIDS is the second-leading cause of death for black men between the ages of 35 and 44 and the leading cause for black women ages 25 to 34. Filmmaker Tadeo Garcia, whose independent feature, "On the Down Low," explores the issue among Chicago gang members, says, "Obviously, people don't associate homosexuality with minority groups. It's [perceived as] just like a white thing. The machismo of the Latino community and the black community; we have to keep the standard. But it happens everywhere." "Its a big to-do about nothing," Garcia said. "It comes down to people being responsible for their actions. It's not fair for the wives or the girlfriends to be contracting this disease. "But it happens everywhere." Having interviewed more than 1,000 men living life on the DL, King has made educating the public about the practice his business. Offering workshops like "The Five Personality Types of DL Men," the transplant from Atlanta commands up to $4,000 a lecture. His Web site gets 5,000 to 7,000 hits a month. Random House is printing his book, which he wrote with ghost writer Karen Hunter, who has worked on autobiographies with Al Sharpton, L.L. Cool J and Queen Latifah. E. Lynn Harris provides the foreword. And in February, King will be featured on "20/20," expected to reach 22 million viewers. Click here for the full-length story [back to the top] Seattle Post-Intelligencer, May 24, 2003 Filmmaker reveals a controversial 'gift' in gay community By Kristin Dizon, Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporter A man stares into a camera, giving a video confessional about wanting to become HIV positive. "When I thought being positive was a positive thing, I thought I was just going to have a lot of fun, promiscuous, unsafe sex," says Doug Hitzel, then 19. "I didn't know it was going to change so fast. No one told me," he says, in tears. What Hitzel sought was "The Gift," the title of a new documentary that features conversations with "bug chasers" - men who want to become infected with HIV. Everywhere director Louise Hogarth goes, the film creates a buzz, because she's exposing a taboo subject in the gay community. Hogarth, who lives in Los Angeles, will be talking about her 60-minute film at its screening today at the Seattle International Film Festival. The film, which cost Hogarth around $100,000 out of pocket to make, is booked at 60 festivals around the world. She said response to the film has been good, but there were times when she thought "The Gift" would never be seen. People told her, "You are attacking a sacred cow. You're going to be in a lot of trouble,'" Hogarth said. "I didn't know if I could get it out. I thought I might get totally blackballed." More than the shocking phenomenon of seeking HIV, the film, shot in San Francisco, Palm Springs and L.A., is about the controversial practice of "barebacking." In the words of a gay rodeo drag queen: "Barebacking is basically having unprotected sex. It's like putting a loaded gun to your head." The poster image for the film is a penis with a gun superimposed in it. Click here for the full-length story [back to the top] BBC News, May 14, 2003 African leaders 'scapegoat gays' Southern African leaders have been accused of blaming homosexuals for their countries' problems. A joint report released in Cape Town by two human rights organisations said that verbal attacks by African leaders had led to a culture of intolerance in their countries. Human Rights Watch and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) have documented harassment and violence against lesbians, gays and bisexuals in Botswana, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Their report says that victims have been assaulted, imprisoned, expelled from schools, fired from jobs, denied access to medical care, evicted from their homes, and driven into exile or, in some cases, to suicide. "When Southern African political leaders like President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe make speeches saying that gays and lesbians are 'worse than dogs and pigs', it should be no surprise that violent attacks follow," said Scott Long of Human Rights Watch, co-author of the report. "These attacks are just the first step in creating a climate in which all rights are at risk," said Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of IGLHRC. Click here for the full-length story [back to the top] Associated Press, February 11, 2003 Chat Rooms a Meeting Place for Risky Sex Internet Chat Rooms Are Common Way to Arrange Sexual Encounters; Experts Cite HIV Risk BOSTON - Chat rooms on gay Web sites are becoming a common place for arranging risky sexual encounters, a survey found, as experts worry about a possible upswing in HIV infections. Research released Tuesday suggests that for some, the Internet serves the same hazardous purpose as gay bathhouses did in the early 1980s, when the AIDS virus first spread rampantly among homosexual men. Click here for the full-length story [back to the top] New York Times, February 4, 2003 Mystery Surrounds a Virulent Skin Infection By David Tuller SAN FRANCISCO - More than 1,000 jail inmates in Los Angeles County have suffered painful and aggressive skin infections caused by a bacterium resistant to many antibiotics, medical authorities say. The unusual outbreak over the last year is still not contained. The same pathogen, which causes fast-growing boils and unsightly abscesses, also appears to have infected dozens of gay men, many of them H.I.V. patients, in Los Angeles and San Francisco, health officials say. Epidemiologists say the outbreaks stem from the Staphylococcus aureus, a bacterium that causes many infections in hospitals and nursing homes. Click here for the full-length story [back to the top] Los Angeles Times, January 27, 2003 Skin infection spreads among gay men in L.A. The emergence of the drug-resistant bacteria staph is the first such outbreak reported in that population. By Jane E. Allen, Times Staff Writer With infections that outsmart powerful antibiotics on the rise, doctors and public health officials have long worried that they might face an outbreak of resistant bacteria that threaten large numbers of people. Now they've found it - in Los Angeles County. The large, painful skin infections started turning up early last fall among local gay men, then appeared with increasing frequency over the ensuing weeks and months. Although doctors found the symptoms alarming, it took a while to confirm a connection between these cases. Now they know they're facing an emerging epidemic of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus or, more simply, staph. Click here for the full-length story [back to the top] Associated Press, December 27, 2002 L.A. County Copes With Syphilis Outbreak LOS ANGELES (AP) - The number of syphilis cases reported by gay men in Los Angeles County has increased 62 percent, representing 360 new cases so far this year, officials said. "The implications are that gay men are having more unprotected sex," said Karen Mall, director of prevention for the AIDS Healthcare Foundation in Los Angeles. Click here for the full-length story [back to the top] San Francisco Examiner August 6, 2002 Feds probe S.F. AIDS group By Adrienne Sanders of The Examiner Staff The Stop AIDS Project is under scrutiny again, this time by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for its sexually explicit HIV-prevention programs. Health and Human Services investigated the controversial workshops, with titles such as "Booty Call" and "Great Sex," last year. Now the CDC's new director, Julie Gerberding, has placed the program at the top of her AIDS agenda. Gerberding plans to send a team to her hometown next week to check whether the federally funded group's curricula is "scientifically sound," according to a letter sent to the Stop AIDS Project. The former UCSF medicine and epidemiology professor could not be reached for comment. The move could threaten not only the group's federal funding, but HIV prevention programs across the country. E-Mail: letters@examiner.com Click here for the full-length story. [back to the top]


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