HIV Plus Magazine #96

BEST oF 2013: our INTERACTIVE HALLOWEEN ISSUE

HEALTH +TREATMENT + FITNESS+ PRE V ENTION

REAL LIFE HORROR CRAZY PLACES WHERE HIV Can GET YOU ARRESTED

THE SCREAM KING

NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET STAR MARK PATTON COMES OUT AS HIV-POSITIVE IN THIS EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

PLUS: videos, music, and more!

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013

www.hivplusmag.com

What is STRIBILD? STRIBILD is a prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before. It combines 4 medicines into 1 pill to be taken once a day with food. STRIBILD is a complete single-tablet regimen and should not be used with other HIV-1 medicines.

STRIBILD does not cure HIV-1 infection or AIDS. To control HIV-1 infection and decrease HIV-related illnesses you must keep taking STRIBILD. Ask your healthcare provider if you have questions about how to reduce the risk of passing HIV-1 to others. Always practice safer sex and use condoms to lower the chance of sexual contact with body fluids. Never reuse or share needles or other items that have body fluids on them.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION What is the most important information I should know about STRIBILD? STRIBILD can cause serious side effects: t Build-up of an acid in your blood (lactic acidosis), which is a serious medical emergency.

Symptoms of lactic acidosis include feeling very weak or tired, unusual (not normal) muscle pain, trouble breathing, stomach pain with nausea or vomiting, feeling cold especially in your arms and legs, feeling dizzy or lightheaded, and/or a fast or irregular heartbeat. t Serious liver problems. The liver may become large (hepatomegaly) and fatty (steatosis). Symptoms of liver problems include your skin or the white part of your eyes turns yellow (jaundice), dark “tea-colored” urine, light-colored bowel movements (stools), loss of appetite for several days or longer, nausea, and/or stomach pain. t You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or serious liver problems if you are female, very overweight (obese), or have been taking STRIBILD for a long time. In some cases, these serious conditions have led to death. Call your healthcare provider right away if you have any symptoms of these conditions.

t Worsening of hepatitis B (HBV) infection. If you also have HBV and stop taking STRIBILD, your hepatitis may suddenly get worse.

Do not stop taking STRIBILD without first talking to your healthcare provider, as they will need to monitor your health.

STRIBILD is not approved for the treatment of HBV. Who should not take STRIBILD? Do not take STRIBILD if you: t Take a medicine that contains: alfuzosin, dihydroergotamine, ergotamine, methylergonovine, cisapride, lovastatin, simvastatin, pimozide, sildenafil when used for lung problems (Revatio®), triazolam, oral midazolam, rifampin or the herb St. John’s wort. t For a list of brand names for these medicines, please see the Brief Summary on the following pages. t Take any other medicines to treat HIV-1 infection, or the medicine adefovir (Hepsera®).

What are the other possible side effects of STRIBILD? Serious side effects of STRIBILD may also include: t New or worse kidney problems, including kidney failure. Your healthcare provider should do regular blood and urine tests to check your kidneys before and during treatment with STRIBILD. If you develop kidney problems, your healthcare provider may tell you to stop taking STRIBILD. t Bone problems, including bone pain or bones getting soft or thin, which may lead to fractures. Your healthcare provider may do tests to check your bones. t Changes in body fat can happen in people taking HIV-1 medicines. t Changes in your immune system.

Your immune system may get stronger and begin to fight infections. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any new symptoms after you start taking STRIBILD. The most common side effects of STRIBILD include nausea and diarrhea. Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effects that bother you or don’t go away.

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking STRIBILD? t All your health problems. Be sure to tell your healthcare provider if you have or had any kidney, bone, or liver problems, including hepatitis virus infection. t All the medicines you take, including prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. STRIBILD may affect the way other medicines work, and other medicines may affect how STRIBILD works. Keep a list of all your medicines and show it to your healthcare provider and pharmacist. Do not start any new medicines while taking STRIBILD without first talking with your healthcare provider. t If you take hormone-based birth control (pills, patches, rings, shots, etc). t If you take antacids. Take antacids at least 2 hours before or after you take STRIBILD. t If you are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. It is not known if STRIBILD can harm your unborn baby. Tell your healthcare provider if you become pregnant while taking STRIBILD. t If you are breastfeeding (nursing) or plan to breastfeed.

Do not breastfeed. HIV-1 can be passed to the baby in breast milk. Also, some medicines in STRIBILD can pass into breast milk, and it is not known if this can harm the baby.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch, or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

Please see Brief Summary of full Prescribing Information with important warnings on the following pages.

STRIBILD is a prescription medicine used as a complete single-tablet regimen to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before. STRIBILD does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS.

I started my personal revolution Talk to your healthcare provider about starting treatment.

STRIBILD is a complete HIV-1 treatment in 1 pill, once a day.

Ask if it’s right for you.

Patient Information STRIBILDTM (STRY-bild) (elvitegravir 150 mg/cobicistat 150 mg/emtricitabine 200 mg/ tenofovir disoproxil fumarate 300 mg) tablets #SJFG TVNNBSZ PG GVMM 1SFTDSJCJOH *OGPSNBUJPO 'PS NPSF JOGPSNBUJPO QMFBTF TFF UIF GVMM 1SFTDSJCJOH *OGPSNBUJPO JODMVEJOH 1BUJFOU *OGPSNBUJPO What is STRIBILD? t STRIBILD is a prescription medicine used to treat HIV-1 in adults who have never taken HIV-1 medicines before. 453*#*-% JT B DPNQMFUF SFHJNFO BOE TIPVME OPU CF VTFE XJUI PUIFS )*7 NFEJDJOFT t STRIBILD does not cure HIV-1 or AIDS. :PV NVTU TUBZ PO DPOUJOVPVT )*7 UIFSBQZ UP DPOUSPM )*7 JOGFDUJPO BOE EFDSFBTF )*7 SFMBUFE JMMOFTTFT t Ask your healthcare provider about how to prevent passing HIV-1 to others. %P OPU TIBSF PS SFVTF OFFEMFT JOKFDUJPO FRVJQNFOU PS QFSTPOBM JUFNT UIBU DBO IBWF CMPPE PS CPEZ þ VJET PO UIFN %P OPU IBWF TFY XJUIPVU QSPUFDUJPO "MXBZT QSBDUJDF TBGFS TFY CZ VTJOH B MBUFY PS QPMZVSFUIBOF DPOEPN UP MPXFS UIF DIBODF PG TFYVBM DPOUBDU XJUI TFNFO WBHJOBM TFDSFUJPOT PS CMPPE

t %P OPU TUPQ UBLJOH 453*#*-% XJUIPVU ý STU UBMLJOH UP ZPVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS t *G ZPV TUPQ UBLJOH 453*#*-% ZPVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS XJMM OFFE UP DIFDL ZPVS IFBMUI PGUFO BOE EP CMPPE UFTUT SFHVMBSMZ GPS TFWFSBM NPOUIT UP DIFDL ZPVS )#7 JOGFDUJPO 5FMM ZPVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS BCPVU BOZ OFX PS VOVTVBM TZNQUPNT ZPV NBZ IBWF BGUFS ZPV TUPQ UBLJOH 453*#*-% Who should not take STRIBILD? Do not take STRIBILD if you also take a medicine that contains: t BEFGPWJS )FQTFSB®

t BMGV[PTJO IZESPDIMPSJEF 6SPYBUSBM®

t DJTBQSJEF 1SPQVMTJE® 1SPQVMTJE 2VJDLTPMW®

t FSHPU DPOUBJOJOH NFEJDJOFT JODMVEJOH EJIZESPFSHPUBNJOF NFTZMBUF % ) & ® .JHSBOBM® FSHPUBNJOF UBSUSBUF $BGFSHPU® .JHFSHPU® &SHPTUBU® .FEJIBMFS &SHPUBNJOF® 8JHSBJOF® 8JHSFUUFT® BOE NFUIZMFSHPOPWJOF NBMFBUF &SHPUSBUF® .FUIFSHJOF®

t MPWBTUBUJO "EWJDPS® "MUPQSFW® .FWBDPS®

t PSBM NJEB[PMBN

What is the most important information I should know about STRIBILD?

t QJNP[JEF 0SBQ®

STRIBILD can cause serious side effects, including: 1. Build-up of lactic acid in your blood (lactic acidosis). -BDUJD BDJEPTJT DBO IBQQFO JO TPNF QFPQMF XIP UBLF 453*#*-% PS TJNJMBS OVDMFPTJEF BOBMPHT NFEJDJOFT -BDUJD BDJEPTJT JT B TFSJPVT NFEJDBM FNFSHFODZ UIBU DBO MFBE UP EFBUI -BDUJD BDJEPTJT DBO CF IBSE UP JEFOUJGZ FBSMZ CFDBVTF UIF TZNQUPNT DPVME TFFN MJLF TZNQUPNT PG PUIFS IFBMUI QSPCMFNT Call your healthcare provider right away if you get any of the following symptoms which could be signs of lactic acidosis: t GFFM WFSZ XFBL PS UJSFE t IBWF VOVTVBM OPU OPSNBM NVTDMF QBJO t IBWF USPVCMF CSFBUIJOH t IBWF TUPNBDI QBJO XJUI OBVTFB PS WPNJUJOH t GFFM DPME FTQFDJBMMZ JO ZPVS BSNT BOE MFHT t GFFM EJ[[Z PS MJHIUIFBEFE t IBWF B GBTU PS JSSFHVMBS IFBSUCFBU 2. Severe liver problems. 4FWFSF MJWFS QSPCMFNT DBO IBQQFO JO QFPQMF XIP UBLF 453*#*-% *O TPNF DBTFT UIFTF MJWFS QSPCMFNT DBO MFBE UP EFBUI :PVS MJWFS NBZ CFDPNF MBSHF IFQBUPNFHBMZ BOE ZPV NBZ EFWFMPQ GBU JO ZPVS MJWFS TUFBUPTJT Call your healthcare provider right away if you get any of the following symptoms of liver problems: t ZPVS TLJO PS UIF XIJUF QBSU PG ZPVS FZFT UVSOT ZFMMPX KBVOEJDF

t EBSL iUFB DPMPSFEw VSJOF t MJHIU DPMPSFE CPXFM NPWFNFOUT TUPPMT

t MPTT PG BQQFUJUF GPS TFWFSBM EBZT PS MPOHFS t OBVTFB t TUPNBDI QBJO You may be more likely to get lactic acidosis or severe liver problems if you are female, very overweight (obese), or have been taking STRIBILD for a long time.

3. Worsening of Hepatitis B infection. *G ZPV IBWF IFQBUJUJT # WJSVT )#7 JOGFDUJPO BOE UBLF 453*#*-% ZPVS )#7 NBZ HFU XPSTF þ BSF VQ JG ZPV TUPQ UBLJOH 453*#*-% " iþ BSF VQw JT XIFO ZPVS )#7 JOGFDUJPO TVEEFOMZ SFUVSOT JO B XPSTF XBZ UIBO CFGPSF t %P OPU SVO PVU PG 453*#*-% 3Fý MM ZPVS QSFTDSJQUJPO PS UBML UP ZPVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS CFGPSF ZPVS 453*#*-% JT BMM HPOF

t TJMEFOBý M 3FWBUJP® XIFO VTFE GPS USFBUJOH MVOH QSPCMFNT

t SJGBNQJO 3JGBEJO® 3JGBNBUF® 3JGBUFS® 3JNBDUBOF®

t TJNWBTUBUJO 4JNDPS® 7ZUPSJO® ;PDPS®

t USJB[PMBN )BMDJPO®

t UIF IFSC 4U +PIO T XPSU Do not take STRIBILD if you also take any other HIV-1 medicines, including: t 0UIFS NFEJDJOFT UIBU DPOUBJO UFOPGPWJS "USJQMB® $PNQMFSB® 7JSFBE® 5SVWBEB®

t 0UIFS NFEJDJOFT UIBU DPOUBJO FNUSJDJUBCJOF MBNJWVEJOF PS SJUPOBWJS $PNCJWJS® &NUSJWB® &QJWJS® PS &QJWJS )#7® &Q[JDPN® ,BMFUSB® /PSWJS® 5SJ[JWJS®

STRIBILD is not for use in people who are less than 18 years old.

What are the possible side effects of STRIBILD? STRIBILD may cause the following serious side effects: t 4FF i8IBU JT UIF NPTU JNQPSUBOU JOGPSNBUJPO * TIPVME LOPX about STRIBILD?” t /FX PS XPSTF LJEOFZ QSPCMFNT JODMVEJOH LJEOFZ GBJMVSF :PVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS TIPVME EP CMPPE BOE VSJOF UFTUT UP DIFDL ZPVS LJEOFZT CFGPSF ZPV TUBSU BOE XIJMF ZPV BSF UBLJOH 453*#*-% :PVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS NBZ UFMM ZPV UP TUPQ UBLJOH 453*#*-% JG ZPV EFWFMPQ OFX PS XPSTF LJEOFZ QSPCMFNT t #POF QSPCMFNT DBO IBQQFO JO TPNF QFPQMF XIP UBLF 453*#*-% #POF QSPCMFNT JODMVEF CPOF QBJO TPGUFOJOH PS UIJOOJOH XIJDI NBZ MFBE UP GSBDUVSFT :PVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS NBZ OFFE UP EP UFTUT UP DIFDL ZPVS CPOFT t Changes in body fat DBO IBQQFO JO QFPQMF XIP UBLF )*7 NFEJDJOF 5IFTF DIBOHFT NBZ JODMVEF JODSFBTFE BNPVOU PG GBU JO UIF VQQFS CBDL BOE OFDL iCVGGBMP IVNQw CSFBTU BOE BSPVOE UIF NJEEMF PG ZPVS CPEZ USVOL -PTT PG GBU GSPN UIF MFHT BSNT BOE GBDF NBZ BMTP IBQQFO 5IF FYBDU DBVTF BOE MPOH UFSN IFBMUI FGGFDUT PG UIFTF DPOEJUJPOT BSF OPU LOPXO t Changes in your immune system *NNVOF 3FDPOTUJUVUJPO 4ZOESPNF DBO IBQQFO XIFO ZPV TUBSU UBLJOH )*7 NFEJDJOFT :PVS JNNVOF TZTUFN NBZ HFU TUSPOHFS BOE CFHJO UP ý HIU JOGFDUJPOT UIBU IBWF CFFO IJEEFO JO ZPVS CPEZ GPS B MPOH UJNF 5FMM ZPVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS SJHIU BXBZ JG ZPV TUBSU IBWJOH BOZ OFX TZNQUPNT BGUFS TUBSUJOH ZPVS )*7 NFEJDJOF

The most common side effects of STRIBILD include: t /BVTFB t %JBSSIFB Tell your healthcare provider if you have any side effect that bothers you or that does not go away. t 5IFTF BSF OPU BMM UIF QPTTJCMF TJEF FGGFDUT PG 453*#*-% 'PS NPSF JOGPSNBUJPO BTL ZPVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS t $BMM ZPVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS GPS NFEJDBM BEWJDF BCPVU TJEF FGGFDUT :PV NBZ SFQPSU TJEF FGGFDUT UP '%" BU '%"

EJHPYJO -BOPYJO®

EJTPQZSBNJEF /PSQBDF®

FTUB[PMBN FUIPTVYJNJEF ;BSPOUJO®

þ FDBJOJEF 5BNCPDPS®

þ VSB[FQBN þ VUJDBTPOF 'MPWFOU® 'MPOBTF® 'MPWFOU® %JTLVT 'MPWFOU® )'" 7FSBNZTU®

JUSBDPOB[PMF 4QPSBOPY®

What should I tell my healthcare provider before taking STRIBILD? LFUPDPOB[PMF /J[PSBM®

MJEPDBJOF 9ZMPDBJOF®

Tell your healthcare provider about all your medical conditions, including: NFYJMFUJOF t *G ZPV IBWF PS IBE BOZ LJEOFZ CPOF PS MJWFS QSPCMFNT JODMVEJOH PYDBSCB[FQJOF 5SJMFQUBM®

IFQBUJUJT # JOGFDUJPO QFSQIFOB[JOF t *G ZPV BSF QSFHOBOU PS QMBO UP CFDPNF QSFHOBOU *U JT OPU LOPXO JG ® 453*#*-% DBO IBSN ZPVS VOCPSO CBCZ 5FMM ZPVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS QIFOPCBSCJUBM -VNJOBM

JG ZPV CFDPNF QSFHOBOU XIJMF UBLJOH 453*#*-% QIFOZUPJO %JMBOUJO® 1IFOZUFL®

o 5IFSF JT B QSFHOBODZ SFHJTUSZ GPS XPNFO XIP UBLF BOUJWJSBM QSPQBGFOPOF 3ZUINPM®

NFEJDJOFT EVSJOH QSFHOBODZ 5IF QVSQPTF PG UIJT SFHJTUSZ JT UP RVJOJEJOF /FVEFYUB®

DPMMFDU JOGPSNBUJPO BCPVU UIF IFBMUI PG ZPV BOE ZPVS CBCZ 5BML SJGBCVUJO .ZDPCVUJO®

XJUI ZPVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS BCPVU IPX ZPV DBO UBLF QBSU JO UIJT SFHJTUSZ SJGBQFOUJOF 1SJGUJO®

t *G ZPV BSF CSFBTUGFFEJOH OVSTJOH PS QMBO UP CSFBTUGFFE %P OPU SJTQFSJEPOF 3JTQFSEBM® 3JTQFSEBM $POTUB®

CSFBTUGFFE JG ZPV UBLF 453*#*-% TBMNFUFSPM 4FSFWFOU® PS TBMNFUFSPM XIFO UBLFO JO DPNCJOBUJPO :PV TIPVME OPU CSFBTUGFFE JG ZPV IBWF )*7 CFDBVTF PG UIF SJTL PG XJUI þ VUJDBTPOF "EWBJS %JTLVT® "EWBJS )'"®

QBTTJOH )*7 UP ZPVS CBCZ TJMEFOBý M 7JBHSB® UBEBMBý M $JBMJT® PS WBSEFOBý M -FWJUSB® 5XP PG UIF NFEJDJOFT JO 453*#*-% DBO QBTT UP ZPVS CBCZ JO ZPVS 4UBYZO® GPS UIF USFBUNFOU PG FSFDUJMF EZTGVODUJPO &% *G ZPV HFU CSFBTU NJML *U JT OPU LOPXO JG UIF PUIFS NFEJDJOFT JO 453*#*-% DBO EJ[[Z PS GBJOU MPX CMPPE QSFTTVSF IBWF WJTJPO DIBOHFT PS IBWF QBTT JOUP ZPVS CSFBTU NJML BO FSFDUJPO UIBU MBTU MPOHFS UIBO IPVST DBMM ZPVS IFBMUIDBSF 5BML XJUI ZPVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS BCPVU UIF CFTU XBZ UP GFFE QSPWJEFS PS HFU NFEJDBM IFMQ SJHIU BXBZ ZPVS CBCZ UBEBMBý M "EDJSDB® GPS UIF USFBUNFOU PG QVMNPOBSZ BSUFSJBM Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take, IZQFSUFOTJPO including prescription and nonprescription medicines, vitamins, UFMJUISPNZDJO ,FUFL®

and herbal supplements: UIJPSJEB[JOF t 453*#*-% NBZ BGGFDU UIF XBZ PUIFS NFEJDJOFT XPSL BOE PUIFS WPSJDPOB[PMF 7GFOE®

NFEJDJOFT NBZ BGGFDU IPX 453*#*-% XPSLT XBSGBSJO $PVNBEJO® +BOUPWFO®

t #F TVSF UP UFMM ZPVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS JG ZPV UBLF BOZ PG UIF GPMMPXJOH NFEJDJOFT [PMQJEFN "NCJFO® &EMVMBS® *OUFSNF[[P® ;PMQJNJTU®

)PSNPOF CBTFE CJSUI DPOUSPM QJMMT QBUDIFT SJOHT TIPUT FUD

Know the medicines you take. ,FFQ B MJTU PG BMM ZPVS NFEJDJOFT BOE TIPX JU UP ZPVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS BOE QIBSNBDJTU XIFO ZPV HFU B "OUBDJE NFEJDJOFT UIBU DPOUBJOT BMVNJOVN NBHOFTJVN OFX NFEJDJOF %P OPU TUBSU BOZ OFX NFEJDJOFT XIJMF ZPV BSF UBLJOH IZESPYJEF PS DBMDJVN DBSCPOBUF 5BLF BOUBDJET BU MFBTU IPVST 453*#*-% XJUIPVU ý STU UBMLJOH XJUI ZPVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS CFGPSF PS BGUFS ZPV UBLF 453*#*-% .FEJDJOFT UP USFBU EFQSFTTJPO PSHBO USBOTQMBOU SFKFDUJPO PS IJHI Keep STRIBILD and all medicines out of reach of children.

CMPPE QSFTTVSF 5IJT #SJFG 4VNNBSZ TVNNBSJ[FT UIF NPTU JNQPSUBOU JOGPSNBUJPO BNJPEBSPOF $PSEBSPOF® 1BDFSPOF®

BCPVU 453*#*-% *G ZPV XPVME MJLF NPSF JOGPSNBUJPO UBML XJUI ZPVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS :PV DBO BMTP BTL ZPVS IFBMUIDBSF QSPWJEFS PS BUPSWBTUBUJO -JQJUPS® $BEVFU®

QIBSNBDJTU GPS JOGPSNBUJPO BCPVU 453*#*-% UIBU JT XSJUUFO GPS IFBMUI CFQSJEJM IZESPDIMPSJD 7BTDPS® #FQBEJO®

QSPGFTTJPOBMT PS DBMM PS HP UP XXX 453*#*-% DPN CPTFOUBO 5SBDMFFS®

*TTVFE "VHVTU CVTQJSPOF DBSCBNB[FQJOF $BSCBUSPM® &QJUPM® &RVFUSP® 5FHSFUP®

DMBSJUISPNZDJO #JBYJO® 1SFWQBD®

DMPOB[FQBN ,MPOPQJO®

DMPSB[FQBUF (FO YFOF® 5SBOYFOF®

$0.1-&3" &.53*7" (*-&"% UIF (*-&"% -PHP (4* )&14&3" 453*#*-% UIF 453*#*-% -PHP 5367"%" BOE 7*3&"% BSF USBEFNBSLT PG (JMFBE 4DJFODFT *OD PS JUT SFMBUFE DPNQBOJFT "53*1-" DPMDIJDJOF $PMDSZT®

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ª (JMFBE 4DJFODFT *OD "MM SJHIUT SFTFSWFE 2$

IN THIS ISSUE

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2013 LOOK FOR THE HIDDEN VIDEOS IN THIS MONTH’S STORIES!

8 40 Our cover star Mark Patton in the arms of legendary villain Freddy Krueger best of 2013

6 case studies A Supreme decision, young and broke, three great HIV films, and Paula Abdul talks about HIV.

9

12 Goodbye Brandon Lacey Campos 14 hollywood graffiti gown Everyone from Elizabeth Taylor to Mother Teresa has signed for AIDS.

18 survivors of the plague The first generation with AIDS.

21 grandma rides for hiv 28 does hiv-negative aIDS exist?

22 the sylvester experience A new album introduces the queen of disco to a new generation. Plus, tons of videos of the star, who died of AIDS.

38 positive cruising The kind you do on an ocean liner.

46 Op-eds: It’s not 1984 anymore, why

Alabama needs a sex-ed update, and why clean and positive go together.

54 the last word HIV testing done the right way in the U.S. and wrong way in Greece.

features

32

The Crime of Being HIV-Positive

40

Cover: Nightmare in Holllywood

How corporations, conservatives, and fear turned being HIV-positive into a crime and what we can do about it now. By Todd Heywood Once a promising young Hollywood star, Nightmare on Elm Street’s famous “scream king” Mark Patton talks about his career, being gay in Hollywood, and how it feels to finally tell the world that he’s HIV-positive. By Jase Peeples

On the cover Mark Patton circa 1985, courtesy New Line Cinema

from top: miranda penn turin; courtesy subjec t

30 Comic kenny neal shults

Editor's Letter

M

AGA

Z

I

NE

Diane Anderson-Minshall evp, group publisher Joe Valentino Scott McPherson interactive art director Robert Hébert copy editors Sunnivie Brydum, Trudy Ring senior managers, integr ated marketing ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Boo Jarchow Robbie Imes, Kevin Stec associate Editor Daniel Reynolds MANAGEr, integr ated marketing Steven O’Brien editorial interns David Artavia, Katie Wurtzel Editor in chief

creative director

Peter Di Maso Dave Johnson director, digital media Scott Ragan senior online producer Christopher Harrity manager, application development Alex Lim web production coordinator Joe Okonkwo

lead web architect & developer

creative director, digital media

senior director, client services Stewart Nacht circulation Director Jeff Lettiere fulfillment manager Argus Galindo Production director John Lewis Advertising Production Manager Heidi Medina

HERE MEDIA

Stephen P. Jarchow Paul Colichman cfo Tony Shyngle eVP, GM, Bernard Rook evp, publishing Joe Landry editorial director Lucas Grindley chairman

ceo

EXECUTIVE vice presidents

Joe Landry,

Bernard Rook Christin Dennis, John Mongiardo, Stephen Murray, Alex Paul, Josh Rosenzweig, Joe Valentino vice presidents Greg Brossia, Eric Bui, Steven Capone, Justin Garrett senior vice presidents

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We want to hear from you: Email us at editor@HIVPlusMag.com or write us at HIV Plus, 10990 Wilshire Blvd., Penthouse Suite, Los Angeles, CA 90024. Visit Twitter @HIVPlusMag.

HIV Plus (ISSN 1522-3086) is published bimonthly by Here Publishing Inc., 10990 Wilshire Blvd., Penthouse Suite, Los Angeles, CA 90024. HIV Plus is a registered trademark of Here Media Inc. Entire contents © 2013 by Here Publishing Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the USA.

scream Queen

I

loved horror movies a s a

kid . Some of them I watched through my fingers, daring myself to look even when I was sure there was terror around the corner. And for each franchise (Friday the 13th, Child's Play, Poltergeist) I had a favorite installment (although my preferred Child's Play—Bride of Chucky—was released when I was a full-grown woman). And so it is with Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge, the sequel in which a cute teen named Jesse (played by actor Mark Patton) fights off Freddy Krueger, the supernatural killer who tries to posess Jesse to kill in the real world. What I never realized, or even gave thought to, was what life might have been like for Patton after that movie was made—especially when filmgoers started whispering about just how gay the movie was. Turns out, it wasn't easy for Patton, who eventually retreated from Hollywood until a film crew making a Nightmare documentary tracked him down.

Since then he's experienced a swell of fandom, appearing at conventions and discovering how much fans have missed him. In our exclusive cover interview, Patton comes out as HIVpositive for the first time, and tells us what it's like being gay and HIVpositive today.

Diane Anderson-Minshall Editor in Chief

september /october 2013 •

hiv plus

5

CASE STUDIES

Off Our Backs A policy forcing health groups to adopt the government’s views on prostitution was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

By David Artavia

I

n a 6-2 decision handed down in July, the Supreme Court found unconstitutional a policy that required public health groups fighting HIV and AIDS, among other conditions, to never “promote or advocate the legalization or practice of prostitution or sex trafficking” if those groups wanted to continue receiving federal funds.

The Court ruled that the policy violates freedom of speech under the First Amendment for citizens to hold their own views and speak freely on public health issues. The policy would have required public health organizations to formally adopt a policy opposing sex work in order 6

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to access federal funds. Public health advocates sucessfully argued that the provision would restrict their organizations from interacting with key populations in the fight against AIDS, and leave the organizations in fear of losing often-vital federal funding for presenting a sincerely held belief on a particular issue.

Since 2003, Congress has authorized the appropriation of billions of dollars in funding to these organizations. The policy was written under the U.S. Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act—also known as the Leadership Act. The policy made it mandatory for any public health organization—including those that are privately funded but which

recieve some federal funds—to wholly adopt the government’s views against sex work on an organization-wide level. Private grantees were prohibited from saying or doing anything that the government deemed “inconsistent” with the Leadership Act. The Supreme Court’s decision confirms a 2011 ruling from the Second Circuit’s Court of Appeals, which found that the requirements in the Leadership Act violated constitutional rights and was “impermissibly viewpoint-based,” because it mandated a specific position on a social issue.

“Compelling speech as a condition of receiving a government benefit,” the second circuit wrote in 2011, “cannot be squared with the First Amendment.”

n 1998, Nushawn Williams began a sentence of 12 years in prison after being accused of infecting 13 girls and women in Chautauqua County, N.Y., with HIV—including a 13-year-old and a 15-year-old. The HIV allegations were never heard in court, as Williams agreed to a plea deal in which he would serve 12 years on charges that included

statutory rape and reckless endangerment. But it’s been three years since his sentence was supposed to be completed, and Williams, now 36, is still in prison, reports the Buffalo News.

He is being kept there under New York State’s civil confinement law, passed years after the original plea deal, which allows for anyone with HIV to be confined indefinitely for infecting

a sexual partner. But now Williams’s lawyer, John R. Nuchereno, claims that Williams does not have HIV, based on an electron microscope analysis of his blood by the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine. Since the original case never went to trial, the evidence concerning HIV transmission did not get a public hearing.

Most experts agree that microscopic analysis is not a proper way to test for HIV. Still, more mainstream HIV organizations are interested in Williams’s case, seeing it as criminalization of a disease, instead of Williams himself, and pointing to the disparate sentencing in a similar case. Two years ago, a 20-year-old man from Buffalo was sentenced to one year in jail for having unprotected sex with four adult women and a 15-year-old girl while knowing he was HIV-positive.

“It was similar enough to say, ‘My God, the treatment was so different,’” Nuchereno told the News.

Catherine Hanssens, executive director of the Center for HIV Law and Policy in New York City, said the state’s application of its civil confinement law “is informed by grossly outdated misunderstandings of HIV, and the state should really be ashamed about it.” —David Artavia

Young&Broke

out of the 1.1 million Americans who were HIV-positive in 2009, those between the ages of 25 and 44 also had lower rates for all aspects of care (including taking antiretroviral medications) than older people.

Researchers are still trying to determine the reasons for the differences between age groups, but cost of treatment may well be a factor, with younger people making lower salaries and often burdened with student loan debt.

According to a 2011 analysis by the Pew Research Center, households headed by adults younger than 35 had 68% less wealth than they did 25 years prior. If this

trend continues, it is likely that future generations of HIV-infected individuals will not be able to afford the care they need most.

Hall and her colleagues conclude in the analysis that “additional efforts are needed to ensure that all persons with HIV receive a diagnosis and optimal care to reduce morbidity, mortality, disparities in care and treatment, and ultimately HIV transmission. Ensuring that people stay in care and receive treatment will increase the proportion of HIVinfected individuals who achieve and maintain a suppressed viral load.” —David Artavia

Will a New Arrest Get This Man Out of Jail?

I

Nushawn Williams, accused of knowingly exposing others to HIV, has been in prison for 15 years.

Opposite page: photos.com

Why two thirds of HIV-positive people under 24 aren’t on retrovirals Age plays a significant factor in HIV care, according to a recent report helmed by Irene Hall in JAMA Internal Medicine. In the analysis, Hall and her colleagues found that of the estimated HIVpositive U.S. population between the ages of 13 and 24, only 31% were being treated with antiretroviral medication and 59% didn’t even know they were positive.

The researchers also found that

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Five Questions For Paula Abdul

P

The longtime HIV activist fulfills this fanboy’s dream by answering a few queries about life.

aula abdul, the effusive singer, dancer, and choreographer, is perhaps best known for her eight seasons as a judge on Americal Idol (although MC Skat Kat might disagree). But she’s also a philanthropist who has been involved with a number of causes including AIDS Project Los Angeles, PAWS/LA, Lupus LA, Make a Wish Foundation, and Leeza’s Place. And she’s always used her celebrity as both a pulpit for change and to give back to fans. HIV Plus caught up with Abdul at the red carpet launch of the first national tour for Shaping Sound, a new contemporary dance company, featuring Emmy-nominated choreographers and dance visionaries Travis Wall, Nick Lazzarini, Teddy Forance, and Kyle Robinson. The four men kicked off their 13-city tour with 10 more world-class dancers in a dance extravaganza in Los Angeles. The queen of dance can’t stop raving. —David Artavia

What is it about dance that makes it so fascinating to watch?

It gets in your skin. It’s something that changes your life for the rest of your life. It gets into your heart and it doesn’t leave you.

It’s such an outlet for happiness, for sadness, for everything. You’re able to keep raising the bar.

And this show was amazing.

Coming to see this show is [incredible]. It’s impeccable dance, impeccable dancers, and they’re excited.

Do you think if there were more out gay celebrities in the media, like Travis Wall, it would give young LGBT people courage to be themselves?

Absolutely. I think that people have to feel whole and be themselves, and I really feel that the more you’re able to be yourself, that’s what life’s all about. That’s when you’re able to really be at peace with yourself.

And it pains me when people are suffering that way.

Hugs from all the gays to you.

I feel the love. [Abdul hugs the writer.]

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antoine verglas via facebook

You’ve always been an advocate for HIV awareness. What would you tell young activists today?

I want to say that it’s gotten a lot better, but it’s never to a point where you can stop raising awareness, and keeping people welleducated, supportive, and philanthropic in a sense of giving back and aligning yourself with AIDS Project LA and all of the organizations. It’s definitely getting better, but we’re still not there yet. We’re still not there yet.

Positive At The Movie Theater

Three great films from Outfest, Los Angeles’ annual LGBT film festival, offer glimpses of life with HIV—today and back in 1985 Test Set in 1985 in San Francisco, Test is a breathtaking little film about the early days of AIDS, the first HIV test, and life as a young gay man in a burgeoning artistic career. Comparisons to Parting Glances, the beloved and critically acclaimed ’90s film, are warranted, but Test also has a dancer’s sensibility, a lithe fluidity to the narrative that lends itself well to the story. The lead character, Frankie, is a modern dancer, bullied at work for his lack of masculinity and his inability to be macho on the dance floor (in a dance company filled with gay men, mind you). Frankie’s also trying to become the man he’s meant to be—whatever that is—find love (or sex), and decide whether to get “the” test. It’s a reminder to viewers who are too young to remember what life was like before AIDS, but in a sexy way; like when Frankie and a lover talk about whether they’ve ever used condoms—the answer is no, because in 1985 those are for straight boys—and end up in bed blowing them up like balloons.

And because director Chris Mason Johnson was a former choreographer himself, the scenes of the dancers are always beautiful and captivating, too.

TransVisible: Bamby Salcedo’s Story Outfest marks the world premiere of Dante Alencastre’s documentary about the life of renowned Los Angeles-based trans Latina activist and leader, Bamby Salcedo, following her through personal challenges to a transformative rise to prominence in the local trans community. Salcedo’s story shares the narrative of many trans immigrant women of color—who find themselves trapped by drugs, prison, sex work, and more—but more interesting is how she’s moved through loss and become a resilient advocate for social justice in multiple, overlapping communities her life has touched, including LGBT and HIV-positive people, Latinas, and youth.

Salcedo is currently at the helm of the nation’s largest transgender youth program at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.

TransVisible follows Salcedo’s creation of the life-saving Angels of Change program for trans youth, and her feminist advocacy for the Translatina Coalition. And though we still see the effects of the haunting loss of former partners to drugs or discrimination when Salcedo speaks, it’s clear that she’s a woman who has come into her own in mid-life, rising to greater heights than many in the same stead. And she still seems both lovable and unstoppable. That makes TransVisible a heartwarming and human story—a rarity in a media that still portrays trans women as freaks.

Deepsouth In this riveting look at the healthcare crisis around HIV and AIDS in the rural South, director Lisa Biagiotti’s Deepsouth puts a personal face on the epidemic. There are the women—Monica and Tammy—who run an HIV resource retreat in Louisiana with almost no money, and Josh, a young, gay black man who is trying to stay in college while dealing with HIV, poverty, and cultural ignorance. All compelling stories, but the face that gets you most in this documentary is Kathie, the (presumably 60-something) director of AIDS Alabama, who is constantly lobbying, fighting, cold-calling, speaking, and otherwise working so hard to get money allocated to her state, to her region, that she seems literally worn out at the end. In fact, the film closes on a scene where she wants to go to bed—we want her to go to bed—but there is still so much to be done.

Both sad and maddening, and at times heartwarming, this is a must-see doc for anyone who thinks that AIDS is over, that Obamacare solved everything, or that people of color aren’t adversely affected by the HIV crisis. —Diane Anderson-Minshall september /october 2013 •

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DA ILY DO SE

HIV Dating 3.0

New Rules of Engagement If you’re using HIV rules you learned five years ago, you’re operating with an outdated instruction manual.

By Zach ary Bar nett

T

he first three times I had to tell someone I was interested in or in love with that I was HIV-positive, there were tears.

Mine. Like a very special episode on the WB, I pleaded, “If this is a deal breaker for you, I totally get it!”

After my shame period came my brief phase as a Grindr HIV activist. I laugh as I think of it now, but back then I would scold people for rejecting me, and criticize their lack of education on a subject that still disproportionately affects the MSM community. I held myself up as a gay apostle, given the virus to help enlighten the masses.

Thank God that phase passed quickly. Truly, the thing that put it to rest was my public coming out of the closet as HIV-positive. Having made peace with my unwelcomed viral passenger, I was no longer a bubbling well of emotions, molten, and ready to explode. After being in a relationship for a spell, and now single again, I had forgotten how varied, confusing, misinformed, and inconsistent people are when it comes to being intimate with someone who has the good manners to let you know they are HIV-positive.

Let’s go through some archetypical conversations that might lead to a sexual encounter. Picture this conversation in a bar, on a hookup app, or at the gym.

photos.com

Scenario 1 Me: “FYI, I’m poz/undetectable.”

Guy 1: “Oh, er, sorry.”

LOL. This one is the worst. You are rejecting me, not excusing a fart.

If you’ve ever been the guy in this scenario, and you’re negative, I’ve got suggestions for an improved experience for both parties. First, be proactive about the conversation, saying, “I’m HIV-negative, what about you?” This makes the process a lot less awkward all around. Second, if you know that dating a positive guy isn’t something that works for you, figure out a go-to line like, “Thanks for letting me know, but that isn’t something I am comfortable with right now.”

Scenario 2: Me: “FYI, I’m poz/undetectable.”

Guy 2: “That’s cool, I always play safe no matter what.”

Here is an educated gent. If you take the time to define for yourself what is safe, then in theory you will be safe no matter who you are sleeping with.

Finding out more information about your partners—including status, viral load, and last time of testing—will help inform you, but safe will still be safe. For whatever reason, I have mostly dated negative guys and they are all still negative. Responsible dating requires conversation, testing, and protection to prevent HIV infection, and these are all things we are capable of doing.

Scenario 3 Me: “FYI I’m poz/undetectable.”

Guy 3: “It’s cool, I am on PrEP.” Condoms and low-risk behavior used to be the only line of defense against HIV infection, but that is no longer the case. In studies released last year, HIV-negative people that consistently took daily antiretroviral medication (also known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP) are as much as 94% less likely to contract the virus while engaging in sexual behavior with various levels of safety.

Some worry that PrEP use will lower rates of condom use, erode dialogues around status and disclosure, and encourage more risky behavior.

This is a tough one. The core issue here is that no one wants to be interpreted as endorsing bareback sex. For example, you have a friend who is constantly having “slip-ups” and engaging in unprotected sex with guys.

Would he be more protected if he started and regularly took PrEP? Yes, for sure. By treating him this way are you condoning his lack of consistent condom use? I’m not sure, but at least you are acknowledging it.

I truly believe that medical innovation is the key to ending AIDS, and have dedicated my life to funding a promising functional cure approach.

Until that day comes, I am going to do my best to marry respect for others, personal transparency, and my personal desires to keep having fun.

Short of a statistical average, I can tell you that this approach works great.

Best of all there are no tears, or anger.

Zachar y Bar nett is the founder and executive director of Abzyme Research Foundation.

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IN MEMORIAM

The Harder Coming Out A year before his 2012 death, lifelong activist Brandon Lacy Campos admits he struggled to come out as positive.

I

am fairly certain that I became an activist and community organizer sometime shortly after leaving the womb. In fifth grade I organized the students in my classroom at the Longfellow International School of Fine Arts in Minneapolis to boycott McDonald’s until they stopped using ozone-depleting Styrofoam containers. At 17, while a senior in high school, I co-founded the Minneapolis district-wide safe schools program Out4Good. By the time I was in college, I was working the national organizing circuit with oth-

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er radical queer youth on issues of importance to us as young folks. At 20, I was co-chair of the National Queer Student Coalition, and by 21 I had firmly established queer street cred as an activist.

I came out of the closet with a roar and a high kick and adopted my new queer identity with fearlessness and little hesitation.

I tested positive for HIV when I was barely out of college, and, based on my previous incarnation as an organizer, one would think that I would have pinned on a red ribbon, adopted this new identity, and added HIV rights to my roster of causes.

Not even close.

HIV took me by surprise, caught me off guard, and for the first time in my life, I turned inward to deal with a life situation instead of looking outward to my friends and community.

I was terrified that I would now face the rejection from friends, family, and community that I hadn’t experienced when I came out as gay. I’d heard the whispers in the club about this or that individual who wasn’t “clean.” I was already queer and a man of color, I’d grown up poor in the Midwest, I didn’t want or need another

COURTESY SUBJECT/FACEBOOK

By Brandon Lacy Campos

“difference” in my life. HIV, for the first time, shut me down, closed me off, and forced me to find a new way to deal with something life had thrown in my path.

I had always been a writer of scathing opinion, but it was spoken word poetry that took me from pain to celebration in relationship to my HIV status.

I have written exactly one poem about being HIV-positive.

It wasn’t writing about HIV that helped me come to peace with my HIV status. It was performing pieces that dissected and reexamined love, life, politics, sex, race, and beauty as an openly HIV-positive performance artist that lifted me out of shame and fear and into acceptance and living. There is a permission on the stage to be brave, to put on and pull off masks, and to reveal the hidden. The stage has given artists the strength to be more of themselves, it is a two way mirror, a glass dressing room, and a place of open secrets and revelation. It gave me the strength to find the power in being positive.

Don’t get me wrong, reading that first poem at Latino Pride in Fall 2010 in front of a standing room only crowd was absolutely stupefying. I broke down crying at least three times during the reading, but when I was done, the roar from the crowd blew away any fear that remained.

By claiming my identity, through poetry and performance, of being positive in front of oftentimes unsuspecting audience members, I have watched faces consume my body, my face, my presence—and watched people force aside their notions of what an HIV-positive

person looks like, acts like, lives like. By telling my story and living it through performance, I have seen others connect with pieces that touch on their own life stories and find resonance with me across the positive divide. And I have been touched and lifted up by the many individuals that afterwards have come to me and sometimes whispered and sometimes cried and sometimes plainly stated that they too live with HIV and never thought to have that part of their lives brought, unexpectedly and unashamedly, into a performance space that wasn’t specifically about people living with this disease. By living openly and performing my truth, it has given my family permission to love me through the tough times living with HIV. By not being afraid of this disease, I have given those who love me permission to be fearless as well, and when I have been uncertain or afraid or in pain as happens now and again as part of the reality of being positive, my family and friends are now fearless for me. Courage breeds courage.

HIV is now a piece of life and, for me, it is a source of strength. No other illness comes with such stigma or is surrounded by quite the same level of fear and ignorance. Through the claiming of my life and presence as an HIVpositive man and finding and creating love and acceptance of the wholeness of my person, I have found the strength to confront other parts of my life and this world that I want to be better, stronger, and healthier. By claiming my place in the world as an HIV-positive person, I create space for others to do the same, and I change the face and the assumptions of who is living and thriving with HIV.

An Activist And Artist Passes Brandon Lacy Campos, the prolific writer and celebrated activist, died in New York City in Nov. 2012, according to Rod 2.0.

Campos previously served as the co-executive director for the group Queers for Economic Justice. He also wrote candidly in magazines and blogs about his mixed-race heritage, his status as an HIV-positive man, and his battle with crystal methamphetamine. Campos was also a poet and saw an anthology of his work, It Ain’t Truth If It Doesn’t Hurt, published. Campos was also a contributor to last year’s anthology, From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction and wrote a blog called “Queer, Poz, and Colored: The Essentials” at TheBody.com.

Campos was born in Minnesota and became an activist in his teens, becoming the cochair of the National Queer Student Coalition at age 20. Campos tested HIV-positive while just out of college, and turned his infection into a call-to-arms, writing about the disease and its effect on young gay men. The activist was also involved with the Hetrick-Martin Institute, the New York organization that provides counseling and legal assistance to LGBT youth, and was an ardent feminist.

The multi-talented Campos has left “an incredible lasting legacy,” Virginia-based novelist Rodney Loften told Rod 2.0. The news stunned LGBT and HIV groups, inspiring an outpouring of sentiment about Campos’ impact on those communities.

His family did not release the toxicology reports on Campos, who is survived by his boyfriend, Nicolas Gerard, and declined to tell the media what caused his death.—Neal Broverman september /october 2013 •

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The Ultimate Fashion Statement

Decades in the making, celebrity designer Randy McLaughlin’s creation is going on the auction block.

A fitting tribute to a man who made Hollywood shine

By David Artavia

Opposite page: getty images; this page: Courtesy of Randy McLaughlin

H

o l ly wo o d glamour in the 1980s

was extraordinary—the glitz, the v ibr a nc y, and the stars who made the looks famous formed a powerful elixir that American culture was eager to consume. In the middle of it all were Randy McLaughlin and Jerry Skeels, life partners for nearly 30 years and founders of Jeran Designs.

McLaughlin and Skeels created some of the most iconic fashions of the 1980s, including the sparkling red gown worn

by Joan Collins on her December 1983 Playboy cover and the wedding dress with a 10-foot train worn by Nikki Reed Newman (Melody Thomas Scott) on The Young and the Restless. But without a doubt, the most revered of the duo’s works is the Hollywood Graffiti Gown—a German velvet couture dress adorned with more than 350 handbeaded signatures of some of the most famous women in entertainment and other fields, including Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Davis, Barbra Streisand, Liza Minnelli, Bettie Page, and even Mother Teresa. (A recent addition: the cast of Desperate Housewives.)

Now McLaughlin (Skeels died in 2007) is putting the Hollywood Graffiti Gown, three decades in the making, up for auction, and donating the proceeds to HIV and AIDS organizations including Project Concern, AIDS Project Los Angeles, the Academy of Friends, and The gowns McLaughlin and his late partner created: (Top) Nikki’s famed wedding gown on Young and the Restless; (Bottom) Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune; (Opposite) The Hollywood Graffiti Gown september /october 2013 •

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wood Museum in Los Angeles.

Now the Graffiti Gown will fulfill its ultimate purpose when it goes up for auction later this year. The bidding is expected to begin above $1 million.

“I’m hoping that the Graffiti Gown will be sent to the Smithsonian so it can live on long after I’m gone,” says McLaughlin. “It needs to be in a place where people can see it in person.”

Once the gown is sold, McLaughlin plans to finish his latest project, the Hollywood Graffiti Tails — a formal tuxedo version of the Graffiti Gown. Graffiti Tails already boasts more than 200 signatures from celebrities, including Ryan Seacrest, Bob Barker, Tom Bosley, Tab Hunter, and Johnny Mathis.

Skeels and McLaughlin’s efforts — and the gown’s eventual sale — prove that in difficult times, art can be a salve. ✜

More of McLaughlin’s costumes: (Right) Joan Collins on the cover of Playboy; (Top): Leopard Girl Costume Collection, Jeran Designs; (Below) Marie Antoinette and her men

Marie Antionette

TV Cares.

The idea of the dress first came to McLaughlin in 1980. “I closed my eyes and had this vision of a gown,” he says. “I told [Jerry] it had a high neck, dolman sleeves, and a long train, and it had signatures on it. All I knew is that it was going to be the most famous gown in the whole world, and it was going to represent something for a good cause that will help people.

Then in 1982, I remember reading the L.A. Times. In big bold letters on the cover, it said, ‘The Gay Plague.’ I thought, Oh, my God, what is that?

Later they gave it the name AIDS.” Since 1984 the Hollywood Graffiti Gown has been a symbol of love, support, and hope for the thousands affected by the disease. Every signature collected has brought more awareness to the cause, especially during the height of the epidemic. It has been displayed around the globe from La Paz, Bolivia, to the Holly-

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s r o v i v r u S w o H

of the Plag ue

are Healing.

Survivors of the AIDS epidemic bear invisible scars, for which community can be a balm.

By David Artavia

A

a new generation can see what it was like during the building of these communities, highlighting how activists forced government, corporations, and organizations to address the crisis. ACT UP was one of many groups that took the problem into their own hands, with activists Larry Kramer, Mark Harrington, Spencer Cox, Garance Franke-Ruta, Mathilde Krim, and Staley rising above the crowd. But even to this day, they won’t call themselves heroes.

“I consider the movement heroic,” Staley said at a screening of the film for Collective Effect at AIDS Project Los Angeles.

“I consider it a truly communal moment.

The power that any of us individually was able to break through only happened on the foundation of community. If we had acted independently, we would have gotten nothing done. We are part and parcel of America’s great social justice movements.

They might not have liked us at the time, but it disturbed them and it made them uncomfortable to know that their citizens were being left to die. We definitely shook them up in that regard.”

It could be argued that such community has been slipping away over the last decade.

With gay ghettos decreasing in importance, and gay and lesbian centers becoming less

Opposite page: pubic square films

s the first AIDS generation grows older and its experiences are relegated to the back pages of history books, survivors try to find meaning in why they’re still here and their friends are not. There has never been a real answer for them. They bear invisible scars hidden beneath rivers of tears that refuse to heal. But to pretend they don’t exist can only magnify the grief that survivors have desperately tried to suppress.

In a sense, survivors have been forced back into the closet, too embarrassed or afraid to speak about survivors’ guilt or post-traumatic stress disorder and with no community to call home. Back when AIDS was seen as a certain death sentence, people with the disease and their supporters took it upon themselves to build their own communities, without which advocates like Peter Staley would never have been able to demand proper attention to the epidemic.

Thanks to films like David France’s Oscar-nominated How to Survive a Plague,

“We are part and parcel of America’s great social justice movements. They might not have liked us at the time, but it disturbed them and it made them uncomfortable to know that their citizens were being left to die.”

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central to gay people’s lives than they used to be, have we become victims of our own success? Staley, considered by some to be a gay Martin Luther King, went on to say that by demanding we be integrated into the American fabric, over time, we lost our own sense of community.

“I think we have to create institutions that bring us together and start conversation and demand community,” Staley said.

“We have been working to do that in New York, and I think if you want community, you have to fight for it.”

The refuge we once had, to talk to our brothers and sisters who are like us, and share our experiences with HIV to link generations and expand awareness, now seem to be mere memories. So where does that leave the survivors?

A recent New York Times article reported that half of the people living with HIV or AIDS in New York City are over 50 years old—and according to the city health department, almost three quarters of them live alone. Not only do they have to worry about paying for the medication they need to survive, but they are often left feeling isolated with no one to talk to. Survivors’ guilt and PTSD are recurring themes in their lives, leaving little room for the healing process. If there is no one to talk to who understands their problems, how can they restore their place in the community?

“I think of ACT UP as the last of the greatest social movements of the 20th century.” Franke-Ruta said. “The individuals who were fighting and the individuals who would benefit from the transformed

society were the same people. Those kinds of movements tend to be more successful because they have the moral weight of the individual taking the risk—the demand of their story, that can’t be ignored.”

The next chapter of HIV and AIDS is here. The fight has now been pushed to the back pages, yet the question has always been, how do you heal? According to Franke-Ruta, you don’t.

To see friends dying on a near-daily basis over the course of years has created nightmarish flashbacks for survivors. But the community created during the epidemic is the very thing needed to heal these invisible scars. If there is ever a time for community, it is now.

The path to take moving forward is built on the path we walk today. ✜

The First AIDS Generation Reunited at “Is This My Beautiful Life?”

Those who lived through the height of the epidemic in the 1980s and 1990s share their experiences.

Activists, health care professionals, and others shared their experiences of the first two decades of the AIDS epidemic at a community forum in New York City on May 9, titled “Is This My Beautiful Life? Perspectives From Survivors of the AIDS Generation.”

Medius Working Group organized the forum with the intention of reuniting the first AIDS generation, to discuss how their experiences with the epidemic in the 1980s and ’90s affected their lives, and how to confront the issues that still remain. The forum took place at Baruch College.

The event, hosted by Stephen Spinella, the Tony Awardwinning star of Angels in America, opened with an excerpt from the Oscar-nominated documentary How to Survive a

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Plague. A panel discussion followed, moderated by Perry N. Halkitis and featuring Jesus Aguais, L. Jeannine BookhardtMurray, Mark Brennan-Ing, Jim Eigo, Joe Jervis, and Peter Staley. The nearly three-hour event concluded with an open discussion and questions from the audience.

The six panelists spoke on various facets of today’s challenges, including the global perspective, medicine, aging, data, the gay community, and activism. Staley, the activism panelist, later posted his remarks from the panel online, emphasizing the need to deal with and process grief but to also acknowledge and celebrate the resilience of that first AIDS generation.

You can watch highlights from the panel below. —Katie Wurtzel

An 82-Year-Old Grandmother Rides to Raise Money for AIDS After doing AIDS walks in a wheelchair, Jinny Morelock is honoring her son by riding more than 500 miles to raise money.

courtesy jinny morelock

I

By David Duran

n the spring of 1988, a son asked his sisters and mother to join him in the living room to talk. It was at that moment that Jinny Morelock’s son told his family that he was HIV-positive. He also took advantage of the moment to ask if they would participate in a walk that AIDS Project Los Angeles was having to benefit AIDS research. Jinny and her oldest daughter Tracy quickly agreed, jumped on the support train, and walked that first walk with Michael.

The following year, Jinny, Tracy, and Michael went at it again. Jinny, who was frail at the time, walked the walk with her cane in hand, but was determined to finish for her son. In 1990, Michael was too sick to take on the challenge of the walk, and Jinny was recovering from an injury and was using crutches, so she too had to bypass the walk.

In 1991 and ’92, Jinny did the walk in a wheelchair and in the Spring of 1992, after the walk, Michael passed away. The mother and daughter team continued to walk, and even after Tracy had her son, they walked.

“There was one year where Tracy was pushing me in a wheelchair, and I was pushing her son [Cory] in a stroller. It was a sight to be seen, but we did it for Michael,” says More-

lock, who is now an impressive 82 years old.

After recovering from knee surgery, Morelock thought it would be fun to do a marathon. At first, daughter Tracy didn’t believe her mom was serious, but after realizing her mother’s full commitment to the race, she quickly signed on.

“Just so you know, it’s possible to walk a full marathon in 8 hours, 25 minutes, and 54 seconds,” she says. Tracy ran the marathon that year, but turned around after crossing the finish line to come back and finish the race with her mom. The following year, the duo did a marathon in Honolulu, but Tracy was injured and was told she couldn’t run any longer. Throughout the years, the two continued to do the AIDS walks.

It was eight years ago that her daughter let her know about the AIDS/LifeCycle, the annual 545-mile bike ride that raises tens of millions to combat HIV/AIDS, and soon they were participaiting in the fundraiser together. The first year Tracy cycled, while Morelock volunteered as a roadie. She continued as a roadie for seven continuous years, until the 2013 ride.

“All the time I was a roadie, the bikers would come in and say to me, ‘We’ve got the

easy job, and you’ve got the hard job,’ so it was time for me to find out if they were lying or not,” says Morelock. And though she had not been on a bike for more than 65 years, the great-grandmother began to train for her first ALC as a cyclist. This past January she joined up with Team Long Beach to train for the journey from San Francisco to Los Angeles that was ahead of her.

Daughter Tracy was again suspicious of her mother’s ability to make the journey on a bicycle, but once she saw that Morelock was training vigorously day in and day out, she took her own bike—the one she had ridden in the AIDS/LifeCycle before—to her mom to use on her ride.

“I know you have done this before, so you have to show me the ropes,” Morelock says she told the bike each time she got on to ride.

Morelock says this is her final ALC. While she has been supported by her husband and family over the years, she feels it’s finally time to honor their request that she stop participating for her own health and safety.

“Since 1988, I have been raising money for AIDS and I think it’s now time to turn it over to the younger generation as they seem to be doing a great job already,” she says. “This is my grand finale, so I thought I would go out with a bang!”

Even when her feet weren’t pedaling for the cause on this current trek, Morelock’s dedicated hands and heart were focused on others. Even during this interview, Morelock, the quintessential grandmother, was knitting away. She explained that she was making a blanket for an organization called Linus, which gives blankets to kids who have lost a parent in one of the armed forces. ✜

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PE TER BRILL/FANTASY ARCHIVES

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SYL VES TER

It’s tim e for a new ge ation t nero meet Sylves the ico ter, nic dis co qu who di e en, ed of A IDS 25 y ago. T e a rs hankfu lly the a ne w a re’s lbum o f grea hits to test help th em do s o.

By DIANE

ANDERSO N-MINSHA

LL

S

y lvester ja mes, the queen of disco, was an unlikely star, says Joshua Gamson, the author of The Fabulous Sylvester: The Legend, The Music, The 70’s in San Francisco. “An androgynous, crossdressing, openly gay, African American, falsetto-singing, unapologetically flaming man-diva influenced primarily by church women, black blues singers, drag queens, hippies, and homos… Sylvester rode his marginality right into the mainstream: a star not despite the boundaries of race, gender, and sexuality he eagerly crossed but because of them.”

Now, 25 years after his untimely death from AIDS complications, the iconic legacy of Sylvester will be resurrected with Mighty Real: Greatest Dance Hits (Fantasy Records), an 11-track release, available on CD and on double pink vinyl, that features a number of original album tracks and 12” mixes that are rare or no longer available on CD, as well as the brand new remix of the iconic “You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)” by Grammy-nominated remixer and DJ Ralphi Rosario.

A good friend of Harvey Milk, Sylvester has long held a special place in music and socio-political history. Sylvester was not only one of the first disco stars to be openly gay (some say today Sylvester, who wore female clothing almost exclusively at times, would identify as trans),

PL AY LIST

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“Sylvester was one of a kind. There has never been a voice like his, then or now.

His music transcended black or white, gay or straight. If you wanted to party, you played his music. He was way ahead of his time.” -MARTHA WASH

COURTESY FANTASY ARCHIVES

Ed euisis aut wis deliscil irilla core vel dolore dolorpe

VIDEOS YOU MAKE ME FEEL (MIGHTY REAL) DO YOU WANNA FUNK? DANCE DISCO HEAT

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PL AY LIST

VIDEOS A RARE PERFORMANCE IN 1985 THE 11-MINUTE SYLVESTER MINIDOC

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COURTESY FANTASY ARCHIVES (2)

“For many of us, the lucky survivors, it’s impossible to listen to this music without remembering how it felt to be young and free and finally in command of our own bodies.

Sylvester was quite simply the soundtrack of our liberation.” - Armistead Maupin

but bravely crossed beyond the boundaries of race, gender, and sexuality to become a star in San Francisco and on the national stage. As AIDS began to devastate the city, Sylvester’s songs became anthems about continuing to live on, celebrating queer and trans lives despite the disease that was surrounding everyone. He too eventually died of AIDS in December 1988 and upon his death, bequeathed royalties from the sale of his music to benefit two charitable organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area: the AIDS Emergency Fund and Project Open Hand. Sylvester is one of the few major artists to donate their royalties to charity in perpetuity.

“Decades later, even as strides have been made in the fight against the disease that has taken so many lives, Sylvester’s music lives on, a call to be fabulous against the odds,” says Gamson.

Proceeds from this CD will also go to benefit those same two groups. The AIDS Emergency Fund, which was founded in 1982, was one of the nation’s first responders to the AIDS epidemic, helping people with AIDS live with dignity in their final days. Today it still provides annual housing and utility payment assistance to more than 2,000 people living with HIV or AIDS. Project Open Hand, another Bay Area institution, is a nonprofit organization that provides meals to seniors and the critically ill in San Francisco and Alameda counties. ✜

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Does HIV-Negative AIDS Exist?

P

erhaps you’ve seen them

while casually Googling for updates on HIV research.

There are message boards on sites such as Planet Infowars, Questioning AIDS, and The Body that have extensive conversations about the cause of AIDS—from people who don’t think it’s HIV. One of the most frequent forum posters, Karen Lambert, is a chronic fatigue syndrome patient. Her belief is that her immune-deficiency condition is actually AIDS and that the causes of what she calls CFS/AIDS should be researched more carefully. Like others on internet message boards, she believes HIV is not the cause of AIDS; it’s merely a “harmless” virus coincidentally found in AIDS patients.

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“I have Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFS/CFIDS/ME) and HIV-negative AIDS, idiopathic CD lymphocytopenia,” she wrote in a March 2013 article on ThePeoplesVoice.org. “With these two clinical diagnoses, I believe that makes me living proof that the AIDS-like CFS/ME is transmissible, something that the medical establishment seems unable to admit or to acknowledge. I also believe it makes me living proof that CFS and HIV-negative AIDS are basically the same mysterious immune disorder.”

Because she doesn’t belong to any highrisk group Lambert doesn’t believe it’s possible that she got AIDS from HIV. She says that after a heterosexual sexual encounter, she became seriously ill “with what looks

like the natural disease progression of AIDS. I can pinpoint exactly when I was infected with my ‘chronic viral syndrome of unknown etiology’ and because the ‘acute infection’ stage was so distinguishable, I can also pinpoint exactly when my undiagnosed pathogen left my body and infected yet another host.”

Lambert has spent nearly 10 years spreading her message of HIV-negative AIDS on the internet. She tracked progress for years on her blog. She even set up a petition on Change.org to shift funding from HIV research to CFS research. She’s had letters published on several sites and claims that leading researchers in government organizations—who, according to Lambert, would be unlikely to talk to reporters because they work at government agencies like the CDC—have been investigating her case. But are they?

In fact, we couldn’t find a single doctor willing to go on the record about the concept of HIV-negative AIDS. Many are fatigued by arguing with HIV denialists.

Others lack enough knowledge about idiopathic CD lymphocytopenia, what Lambert and fellow denialists call HIV-negative AIDS, to even comment.

While there are some laboratories studying idiopathic CD lymphocytopenia (ICL), such as Autoimmune Technologies in New Orleans, that research focuses more on the cause of ICL. Idiopathic CD lymphocytopenia is an autoimmune disease that presents many of the same symptoms as AIDS, but patients test negative for HIV. It does have a lower rate of infection than AIDS, is thought to have more than one cause, and presents differently than AIDS in a clinical setting.

Patients with this form of what you could call HIV-negative AIDS do account for about 1 % of all AIDS patients.

The cause of ICL may be unknown, but barring Lambert’s doctors coming forward to explain and test their theories in the scientific community, it’s unlikely the medical establishment is going to change its mind about the cause of AIDS anytime soon. Neither are the HIV-negative AIDS conspiracy theorists. —Katie Peoples Editor’s Note: As for Lambert’s specific case, we may never know. After weeks of communication, Lambert cut off contact with our reporter, and she would not furnish her medical files or names of physicians who had treated her. Katie Peoples is a freelance writer in San Diego, Calif.

Follow her on Twitter @kpeeps.

Over Half of New Yorkers Living with HIV Are Over 50 The New York Times talks to long-time survivors about the pitfalls.

Opposite page: photos.com; this page: photos.com

C

urrently in New York, nearly half of people living with HIV are 50 or older. During the time when most of them were first diagnosed in the 1990s, the majority of them never thought they would live to see their 50th birthday.

“Suddenly the future seemed like this long, empty road going toward the horizon, and I felt like, what am I gonna do with my life now?” Steve Schalchlin, 59, told The New York Times earlier this year. “I had already accomplished all my goals that I had set for myself. And now I had this endless amount of time ahead of me, and I felt depressed.”

For people from the first AIDS generation, survivor guilt and post-traumatic stress disorder are recurring themes in their lives.

They are haunted by the deaths of others and uncertainty within themselves. This life that they were told wouldn’t be, in fact, is.

The 50,000 New Yorkers over 50 living with HIV experience a broad range of emotions. Some feel abandoned by their community, who seem to have forgotten about how the epidemic changed the world.

Many also feel they are guinea pigs for science. Long-term exposure to HIV and the drugs used to treat it might have unfors-

een effects on the human body, and if it does, they will once again be in the first generation.

“I’m not going to die,” Osvaldo Perdomo, 52, told the Times.

Perdomo, a former Liz Claiborne executive, quit his job after being diagnosed with AIDS in 2004. Dealing with depression, fatigue, anxiety, and memory loss, he currently has $40,000 in credit card debt for his medication co-pays.

“Sometimes I feel, OK, I’m not going to worry about what’s going to happen 10 years from now,” Perdomo said. “I’m going to worry about today. But I’m running out of resources. When I went to the drugstore last night to pick up my medication, I was crossing my fingers — if this credit card doesn’t go through, I’m going to have to borrow money from a friend. What is going to happen when I’m 65? Are you going to grow up older and alone? Who’s going to take care of you?”

With the introduction of effective drugs in 1996, for many people HIV is no longer a death sentence. But surviving creates new challenges, including constant medical bills and anxiety, often faced without a support system: According to the city health department, almost three quarters of HIV-positive New Yorkers over 50 live alone. —David Artavia september /october 2013

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Move Over, Louis C.K. By day, Kenny Neal Shults teaches groups how to make films about their HIV experiences. By night, he’s one of New York’s funniest gay comics.

By Savas Abadsidis

K

enny neal shults is the comedian we have been waiting for. Part Lenny Bruce, part Chris Rock, he is the first bona fide gay comic who’s willing to really go there. Two of his funniest bits go like this: “I’m not one of these new generation gays. I don’t want to get married, serve in the military, have a buncha kids. I’m old-school gay. I wanna have sex with lots of strangers and gentrify bad neighborhoods. Maybe get a Maltese down the line…” Another favorite bit is when he says, “But then again, we used to not be represented in TV and film at all, invisible, like a tattoo on a black guy. Then we were portrayed as childless party monsters who devote all their disposable income to cocaine and strippers.” He makes a displeased face before he shouts, “What happened?”

As funny as Shults is, it’s his day job where he’s making the biggest difference. A few years ago he left a large public health firm to do his own form of HIV prevention by engaging directly with at-risk populations and teach-

Opposite page: facebook

ing people how to make short films that act as behavior change campaigns directed at their peers. They are essentially online public service announements that aim to change behaviors and attitudes from within. The program he developed lets him engage a particular group (gay men, HIVers, teens, and transgender folks, for example), and making the film alters the participants’ own perspectives and behaviors in the process. The program is called MyMediaLife and is a behavior-science fueled product that his company offers to nonprofits, service organizations, and any organization that wants to help foster social change respectfully and effectively without shaming, scaring, or lying.

“In public health, behavior change is everything,” Shults explains. “It’s the primary tool we use to get specific groups of people to use condoms and birth control, wear a seat belt, take their meds, stop smoking, wash their hands, etc.

But these same social marketing principles, that organically employ behavior science, can also be applied to any social cause that can be advanced through changes in norms, attitudes, and behaviors such as bullying, sexting, homophobia, voting, etc. It all depends on the mission of the agency and what they are funded to do.”

He argues that there are many ways to motivate public behavior and attitude shifts, some effective and others less so. “In the beginning of the AIDS epidemic,” he says, “telling gay men to use something that was only for straight people [a condom] was a groundbreaking strategy for preventing the spread of HIV. At that time condoms were a foreign concept to gay men. But prevention efforts never evolved, and by the mid ’90s they actually caused more harm, in my opinion.”

Shults feels that the slogan “Use a condom every time” is catchy, but also vague and unrealistic. “People falter, and what’s more, people place value in barrier-free sex,” the comicturned-activist says. “No one loves condoms; they love what condoms can do for them. But eventually gay men, just like straight people, look for ways to have more fulfilling sexual experiences, such as sex with a long-term partner who is also HIV-negative. But instead of addressing gay men’s ambivalence about using condoms, prevention efforts shamed them for having such thoughts. When I was in my 20s, I thought having unprotected oral sex posed the same threat as unprotected anal sex. Rather than giving gay men the facts and explaining risk as a hierarchy and letting men come up with a risk portfolio that worked for them—having more oral sex over anal intercourse—prevention efforts suggested all sexual activities were

equally risky. This type of black-and-white, all-or-nothing prevention strategy gives people two options: adhere or abandon hope for surviving.”

These kinds of judgmental, shaming scare tactics almost always backfire, he says. In this case, they led to even more substance abuse in the gay community as cocaine and other stimulants, like crystal meth (an epidemic in its own right), dramatically reduced inhibitions and allowed gay men a temporary respite from the terror that has indelibly colored their sex lives.

“I often say that I don’t think gay men are having unprotected sex because they get high and drunk,” Shults says. “They get high and drunk so they can have unprotected sex. I think the rigidity of these early efforts actually helped create barebackers, a subculture of men whose identity is defined in opposition to HIV prevention efforts.”

He points to HIV testing as a good example.

“Gay men have always been encouraged to get tested. But when we do, they tell us that the test is only semi-accurate unless we haven’t had sex in the last six months—yeah, right—and that we should continue to use condoms as if we or our partners were infected. So then why get tested? What’s the point if testing has no impact on how I live my sex life? This doesn’t empower gay men, doesn’t allow them to feel confident in their negative status, and offers no options for alternatives to using condoms forever just in case. Inherent in this approach is a fundamental sense of expandability surrounding gay sex. We don’t tell straight people to use condoms forever just in case; it’s laughable, in fact, to think we might.”

This issue isn’t a new one for Shults and other gay men. In 1994 he delivered a speech at a Texas Department of Health Conference called “The Influence of Homophobia on HIV Prevention Targeted to Gay Men” that outlined a lot of these thoughts.

He started doing comedy a couple of years ago as an outlet for his writing and views on things. Plus he loves to perform and act. He always loved the idea of being able to write for a straight audience to make fun of them, the way early black comics made fun of white people while generating discourse that contributed to social change. “I think stand-up is one of the most powerful tools for that sort of thing because it provides a place to talk and laugh about stuff that makes us all uncomfortable, and stuff about which most people are really ignorant. But it’s more palatable to people if a joke is structured well; it’s all about the writing.

So I get obsessed with jokes, trying to make them work until I lose all objectivity.”

An astute student of stand-up, Shults offers, “Gay people still endure so much oppression.

Even the most progressive and funny of comics get the gay stuff wrong. Jon Stewart called Nixon gay to insult him in an episode I saw only a few weeks ago. Bill Maher still makes fun of gays with the clichéd limp wrist and jokes about fashion. I don’t fault him for making fun of gays—I’d be madder if he didn’t—but they’re just not funny because things have changed, and most straight comics are out of touch. There are all kinds of sexual minorities, but people only see the most obvious of examples among us and assume we are all the same.”

He points to one of his old punch lines: “Gays are like toupees; you only notice the obvious ones and the cheap ones.”

“And I love these comics and watch them religiously,” Shults says of straight progressive comics like Stewart. “But gay people have to just overlook so much ignorance, or translate mainstream representations into their experience while other folks just get to identify with most characters in TV and film. The best people are still really stupid about gay stuff. The fact that even Louis C.K. and Chris Rock defend the use of the word ‘faggot’ in their routines makes me so mad. I mean, can you imagine a white guy trying to justify using the n word liberally whenever they think it’s appropriate? So I like to write jokes about this stuff so I have a place to put the anger.”

And he has a lot of anger. Take for example, TV shows like Modern Family and The New Normal, which seem so odd to Shults. “It feels like a form of blackface to have the actor who plays the character Cam—who is not gay in real life— parade and prance around for the amusement of other straight people. Also, how come they’re all obsessed with having babies and getting married? Is that the only way we are allowed any respect or legitimacy in the mainstream? To ape heterosexuals? I mean, these new shows make Will & Grace look like Game of Thrones!”

Shults, originally from New Orleans, moved to Texas (Corpus Christi first, and later Austin) after high school. He escaped the oppressive South, where he was both chronically terrified and turned on by Texas frat boys, and moved to San Francisco to be out, loud, and proud.

He moved to New York City 10 years ago and says he’s never leaving, which means the job opportunities are wide open. At the very least, Jon Stewart could desperately use Shults as his “senior gay correspondent.” september /october 2013

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In the 1980s corporations, conservatives, and fear turned HIV-positive people into outlaws.

By Todd A. Heywood | The American Independent

I PHOTOS.COM

n the late fall of 1988, state lawmakers and representatives from major insurance and pharmaceutical companies were hard at work addressing the looming AIDS crisis for the American Legislative Exchange Council, a conservative-leaning think tank that produces state-based business-friendly model legislation.

The efforts of ALEC’s AIDS policy working group were published that year in a 169-page book containing 13 HIV-specific legislative recommendations. Some of those model laws would, after becoming real state laws, go on to effectively criminalize the behavior of people living with HIV and perpetuate a lasting stigma against HIV-positive people. Today, a majority of states have laws on the books that criminalize HIV exposure regardless of whether the virus was transmitted or there was an intention to infect another person with HIV.

ALEC was not alone in trying to find legislative solutions to the HIV epidemic, though its combination of lawmakers and industry insiders was unique. In the late 1980s federal and state officials across the country were convening special commissions and task forces to address the crisis. These groups—many of which worked in tandem—collectively helped create laws to regulate the conduct of those living with HIV. Underlying many of these legislative actions was a growing fear and perception that HIV-positive people were maliciously, intentionally infecting others.

Nearly two and a half decades later, there is more knowledge about how to treat HIV as well as increasing evidence that HIV criminalization laws deter disclosure and may prevent those infected from receiving effective treatment. Now some of the people involved in creating these laws say they were an overreaction motivated by fear and ignorance and should be revisited.

One of the pieces of model legislation drafted by the working group was the HIV Assault Act. This model bill created a felony charge if a person knew he or she was infected with HIV while engaging in “intimate contact” with another person (exposing one’s bodily fluids to another in a way that could transmit HIV); donating blood, organs, or tissues; or sharing intravenous or intramuscular injection equipment.

Other proposed laws included mandatory reporting of identified persons living with HIV, provisions to quarantine persons with HIV, mandatory HIV testing for insurance coverage, and isolation of HIV-positive prisoners (the latter has been overturned by a federal court in Alabama and repealed in Mississippi and South Carolina).

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another with HIV. Today, laws addressing the conduct of people living with HIV can be broken down into broad categories. There are HIV-specific laws, such as those in Missouri or Michigan, which apply to HIV. And there are general criminal laws, such as in Texas or New York, in which people living with the virus are charged with reckless conduct for anything from sex without HIV disclosure to biting.

When ALEC produced its model HIV Assault Act in 1989, nine states had HIV-specific criminal laws on the books. Today, 32 states and two U.S. territories have laws criminalizing HIV exposure, according to the Center for HIV Law and Policy.

Only a handful of laws require intent to transmit the virus, and none requires an actual transmission for criminal prosecution to proceed.

Since 2010, HIV-related criminal charges have led to more than 80 prosecutions against people living with HIV in the U.S., according to the LGBT legal advocacy group Lambda Legal.

Long criticized for not doing enough about the AIDS epidemic, which exploded onto the American medical scene in June 1981, President Ronald Reagan established the first Presidential Commission on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Epidemic in 1987.

The commission included Richard DeVos, cofounder of Amway and frequent donor to social conservative causes; the late Cardinal John O’Connor, who had served as the archbishop of New York and who openly opposed condoms as an HIV prevention method; and Penny Pullen, a conservative lawmaker from Illinois.

Among the five recommendations laid out in one chapter of the commission’s final report, released in June 1988, the panel called on states to include strong confidentiality provisions in their HIV laws and to refrain from criminally prosecuting people living with HIV for conduct that “did not involve a

Four states with scientifically unsound laws criminalizing HIV 1. Missouri: It is unlawful for any individual knowingly infected with HIV to bite another person. The law also specifically prohibits the use of a condom as a defense in a nondisclosure case.

2. Michigan: It is a felony, with a four-year jail sentence, for those who know they are HIV-positive to engage in “sexual penetration, however slight” without first disclosing that status to a partner.

Sexual penetration is defined to include oral, anal, and vaginal intercourse but also includes inserting an “object” into a person’s “genital or oral openings.”

3. Indiana: It is a Class D felony, meaning six months to three years in prison for the crime of “malicious mischief,” placing blood, urine, semen, or feces in a place with the intent a person will “involuntarily touch” the prohibited body fluids, if the accused was infected with HIV. 4. Georgia: It is a felony for an HIV-infected person to commit an assault with the intent to transmit HIV using his or her body fluids (blood, semen, or vaginal secretions), saliva, urine, or feces upon a peace officer or a correctional officer in the course of their duties. Convictions can lead to a sentence of five to more than 20 years in prison.

For more information on these laws, visit HIVPlusMag.com

tionally” transmitting the virus or purposely “engaging in activity that would spread the virus.”

Even as the presidential commission was struggling to come together, some U.S. states were on a parallel track. In the early 1980s the death toll from AIDS was mounting, and fear ultimately seized the country as the disease spread from a small group of gay men to children undergoing blood transfusions to the beloved Hollywood icon Rock Hudson, who died of AIDS-related complications in 1985.

Lawmakers wandered into this environment of fear, creating laws to fight an epidemic of a virus that respected no laws and understood no boundaries.

In Michigan a legislative package updating the state’s public health laws was introduced in October 1987 by Michael J. Bennane, a Democratic representative

from Detroit.

Included in the package was the language that would become Michigan’s HIV disclosure law. It also included legislation, which would become the so-called health threat to others law, that allowed health officials to intervene with those living with HIV using civil court legal proceedings. Another part of the package was legislation that made it a misdemeanor for anyone to disclose someone’s HIV testing information—such as if a person had been tested for the virus or what the results of those tests were.

While the “health threat to others law” is less punitive than the felony disclosure law—which can land a person a four-year prison sentence for engaging in sexual penetration, “however slight,” without first disclosing his or her HIV-positive status—it has come under scrutiny in

photos.com

scientifically established mode of transmission.” However, none of those recommendations made it into the commission’s top 20 recommendations as presented in the final report’s executive summary.

Many members of the commission opposed criminalization as the first go-to action to curb the spread of HIV. Commissioners were unanimous in their determination that criminalization should only happen after public health departments had exhausted all legally available public health actions. And two of the three legal experts to testify to commissioners said a criminal law would have little impact on the HIV epidemic.

And yet the transcripts of the final executive sessions of the commission reveal that some commission members were overwhelmingly concerned about those “rare” persons who were “inten-

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recent years as allegations have surfaced that health departments in the state have used the law to stigmatize pregnant women and others identified as sexual partners of newly diagnosed HIV-positive people.

As Michigan’s Democratic proposal languished in committee, Republican lawmakers, then in the minority, created their own AIDS task force to explore the issues of the epidemic and to recommend specific legislative reforms to address the crisis.

The group issued its report in February 1988.

“An HIV-infected person who knowingly, or with reckless disregard for the safety of others, exposes another to HIV infection by having sexual contact with him or her without first warning that sexual partner about the infection should be subject

to criminal sanctions,” read one of the recommendations of the GOP report.

“Society, through the enactment of its laws, needs to send a clear and unequivocal message to those who would deliberately or recklessly expose others to infection. By establishing a criminal sanction for such behavior, society has placed them on notice that such behavior will not be tolerated,” the report continued.

In an audio recording of a Senate debate on December 29, 1988, Sen. Jack Faxon, a Democrat from the Detroit area, argued against the felony provision, saying the law would deter the testing of people at risk.

“Now we’re talking about the incarceration in prison of persons having AIDS so that the disease, instead of being treated, is going to be

jailed,” he said.

Later in his floor speech, Faxon said, “This one [law] takes on a certain concentration camp mentality. Where you put into prison a certain category of people who are sick. Now the objectives ought to be to education and safe sex and prevention and all the ways that we know about it, but when you put prison terms for people who have the disease and have to go into court and start proving when they found out and who they saw and who they didn’t see—I think you’re defeating the purposes for which this bill is intended to serve.”

In the end, Michigan’s HIV disclosure law went into effect, making nondisclosure a felony, in 1989.

In 1990, Congress adopted an amendment to the Ryan White Comprehensive AIDS Resources Emergency Act

that required states to certify with the secretary of Health and Human Services that legal provisions in each state existed to prosecute individuals with HIV who intentionally spread the virus.

The secretary was legally forbidden to distribute the money under the act to states unless they certified the ability to prosecute HIV-positive persons for intentional infection.

The act provided the first comprehensive f u nd i ng strategy to address the AIDS epidemic, including money for care, housing, and prevention efforts.

With the advent of powerful antiretroviral treatments in the mid 1990s and studies that indicate successful treatment with those drugs may make a person less infectious, some of the people involved in creating the laws

Four Stories : The effects of HIV criminalization on sex and intimacy “As a trans woman living with HIV, I’m always worried that if I don’t disclose to my partner before we even approach the bedroom that they’ll turn around and charge me with a crime. When you have to tell a potential partner that you’re trans and poz, there’s always a fear that they will use that information to make your life hell. I try to always disclose online so that there’s a record of them knowing. That way no one can ever come back and claim I didn’t tell them before we hooked up. The fear and danger of being sent to jail just for having sex is strong enough that many times, I won’t even bother trying if I think someone is litigious.”

Dee Borego, 29, Boston

“Living in a state under HIV criminalization laws impacts my life and others living with HIV simply by virtue of the fact that we constantly live under the fear of spurious accusations of nondisclosure and intentional transmission. Who is to say, in a court of law, how and when I have disclosed to my partners my HIV status? So I’m forced to live under the fear of litigation and imprisonment. I protect from prosecution by disclosing my status each and every time, though without witnesses to my disclosure I worry that it would be impossible to prove in court.”

Ian Finkenbinder, 30, Seattle

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say it is time to revisit them.

“I think it would be time to go back,” said Colleen Conway-Welch, a former member of the Presidential Commission. “In fact, it’s probably past time to go back and subject those laws to scientific scrutiny.”

Former ALEC member Michael Tanner agreed.

“I think it was not well understood at the time,” Tanner said. “I think there was a general belief that this was potentially an epidemic that was going to spread into the general population, that was sort of a guaranteed death sentence, that was extremely transmissible—I think the scientific knowledge has changed in the years since those bills were written.”

Tanner left ALEC years ago and is now employed by the Cato Institute, a libertarian public policy think tank

based in Washington, D.C. While he stopped short of calling for a repeal of all HIVspecific laws, he did say they needed to be reviewed.

“Some of the criminalization there really needs to be revisited and narrowed,” Tanner said, noting that he would like to revisit the issue and weigh the positives and negatives of transferring it out of the criminal arena and into the civil arena. He also said he would surely frame any legislation he was writing now to include an intent to infect.

The movement to reform or repeal the laws is already under way in some states.

The leadership of the Iowa Department of Public Health has recently announced it is backing activists trying to change that state’s law.

And recently the Associated Press reported that

a Des Moines lawmaker is planning to introduce a bill that would reduce penalties for people with HIV who have sex without disclosing their disease.

In Michigan the health department is currently concluding a review of the state’s law, while activists in the Grand Rapids area have begun to meet informally to develop a coalition to drive repeal of the law. In Missouri activists and representatives of the state health department have begun meeting to chart a path toward repeal of that state’s law.

On the federal level, the Obama administration’s 2010 National HIV/AIDS Strategy encouraged states to revisit their laws and directed the Department of Justice to prepare technical assistance for states. A DOJ spokesperson told The

American Independent via email that no state has asked for assistance yet.

And yet early in 2013 the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS adopted a resolution condemning HIV criminalization and calling for repeal of the laws.

U.S. representative Barbara Lee, a California Democrat, introduced the REPEAL HIV Discrimination Act in 2011. The bill never got a hearing and died when the 112th congressional session ended in January. The legislation had 40 cosponsors, all Democrats.

Former Michigan Republican law ma ker Gr imes Munsell said she too is on the repeal bandwagon.

“I think it is time to repeal the [felony] law,” she said.

“In fact, I don’t do this very often, but I am willing to lobby for that change.” ◆

“HIV criminalization adds to my paranoia of state surveillance and the fear of arrest that I already live in as a young queer Muslim man of color. I cannot afford to trust the police or the state like most do. Although I try my best to always disclose my status to my sexual partners, I am not perfect, and sometimes my shame has gotten the best of me. I’m blessed to be in a committed and loving monogamous relationship today, but I never know when some trick from my past might decide to use my status against me. But that fear and paranoia does not cripple me, and I choose to navigate the world around me accordingly: out and proud as a person living with HIV and fighting for decriminalization and racial justice. Until HIV is decriminalized, state-sanctioned stigma will continue to perpetuate this deadly epidemic and the mass imprisonment of people of color in the United States.”

Hussain Turk, 24, Kalamazoo, Mich.

“For me, it makes me real, real cautious—somewhat scared. I come from the old school where you don’t have to disclose to everyone you lay down with, but you got to have a barrier of protection.… It’s like living like a cat on a hot tin roof. It’s a haunting thought. It’s always a threat, always a hint of damn, you’re never comfortable.”

Jaci Adams, 55-year-old transgender woman, Philadelphia

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Happy Times, High Seas An annual cruise for HIV-positive travelers offers the ability to be who you are among friends and family.

By Ray Villegas

Opposite page: photos.com; this page: cruisedesignstravel.com

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he blue skies , the crystal clear water, the musical timbre of the steel drums, and the fresh tropical air of the Caribbean was the setting for more than 200 men and women living with HIV last fall. The 2012 Annual POZ Cruise Retreat sailed across the Caribbean, touching upon St. Martin and St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands, and Turks and Caicos.

Travel agent Paul Stalbaum first put together these cruises after friends and clients started asking for vacations for HIV-positive people. “Being poz and a travel agent, I decided to give it a try and created the LGBT POZ Cruise,” he says. “Lo and behold, 2014 will be our tenth annual poz trip.”

Since its inception, the cruise has also welcomed, with open arms, straight HIV-positive men and women to sail and enjoy the benefits this cruise has to offer.

Stalbaum chose a group of hosts to help lead and keep the cruisers entertained. One host who particularly stood out was award-winning columnist, author, video blogger, and AIDS advocate Mark S. King, founder of the blog My Fabulous Disease. King’s uplifting take on life and his sense of humor ignited the excitement among the cruisers needed for a memorable time. With the help of volunteers, King kept cruisers entertained with humorous events and social activities such as his own versions of The Dating Game and The Newlywed Game.

While on shore, King and Stalbaum led exciting and adventurous shore excursions, island shopping experiences, and also provided an educational workshop relating to HIV and AIDS. The educational component of the cruise is a unique feature attracting returning cruisers and new cruisers alike.

“The educational component was always meant to be a part of the group. Of course the focus is on fun and meeting new friends but we wanted to help keep guys informed,” Stalbaum said. “Some people come from tiny towns in rural areas where there is little or no HIV information or support groups. The focus is fun, fun, fun, but we like to provide the educational and interactive component. All of our events, cocktail parties, dance parties, and educational programs for our cruisers are private.”

This year’s educational workshop was conducted by Elie Schochet, M.D., a colorectal surgeon from Ft. Lauderdale. Schochet presented the “Happy Hiney” workshop focusing on the importance of colon and digestive health, especially for men and women living with HIV. This information aids doctors in detecting early signs of pre-cancerous cells and if detected early enough HIV-positive indi-

viduals can live a longer life. Attendees shared their fears of colonoscopies and pap smears that often keep them from visiting a doctor.

Schochet used his expertise to ease the fears the cruisers were feeling about colon health by answering questions thoroughly. This excellent workshop provided valuable information to all and gave the cruisers the hope needed to quell uncertainties on a topic that is normally pushed away from normal conversation.

In addition to a wonderful two-hour workshop on how to live healthier while living with HIV, the mingling of both gay and straight positive cruisers adds a magical touch to the trip. Both groups are able to create new friendships, dispel stereotypes of each other, and bond as one unit instead of two.

“A while back a group of heterosexual men and women contacted me to see if they could join in, and after I explained it was a gay group their response was, ‘We don’t care.

We just want to be part of the Poz Cruise!’”

Stalbaum explains. “Long story short, they come back year after year, and the blend of straights and gays is so refreshing to see. The mixing and mingling and friendships developed are amazing!”

HIV-negative partners, family members, and caregivers are also invited to set sail.

“We are up to 225 participants yearly,” Stalbaum says. “This [2012] sailing has about 90 first-timers, plus close to 50 who have sailed with us five years or more.” As he gazes over a packed house cocktail party, Stalbaum reflects on the dozens of men who have met their significant others while part of the annual cruise, this writer included. The camaraderie and love within this group is quite visible.

Mark Wasson, who has sailed with the POZ Cruise Retreat (PositiveCruise.com) three times, said he wasn’t sure of what to expect from the whole trip.

“I was nervous at first, but quickly made friends the first day, friends which I continue to keep in contact with three years later,” Wasson says. “My roommate and I have been accused of being an old married couple—we have only seen each other on these cruises. Paul did a wonderful job placing us with each other.”

For many first-time cruisers, like Dan Taylor and his partner Robin Brown, the impact of the positive cruise experience is a life-changing one.

“What we found most appealing about this cruise was everyone else was basically in the same boat as we were, so to speak,” Brown says.

“They could relate to us or how we felt that day. We could smile, laugh or even cry because our life stories were similar in some respects.

Sharing our thoughts weren’t looked upon as strange but looked at as they can relate. All our smiles were the same—positive!”

“As I sit here at home and reflect on the trip, the overriding feeling is that I need to really live life, not just survive,” says Tony Hamilton, another first-time cruiser. “I need to be more involved. Isolation has been the major coping skill I’ve adopted. Although my family and a few friends are aware of my HIV status, we really never talk about it unless I’m sick. This cruise was amazing! I felt free to discuss my HIV issues as part of normal conversation.”

After eight years of success, more cruises, like one last year to Alaska, are branching off from Stalbaum’s pet project. He’s also working on an excursion for heterosexual HIV-positive people, as well as an all-poz trip to Europe following a successful small group trip through Budapest, Vienna, and Prague. But first, there’s the ninth annual cruise Nov. 2-9, which leaves Miami for Cozumel, Mexico; Belize; Isla Roatan, Honduras; and Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands. It’s sure to offer more Caribbean camaraderie than a traditional cruise.

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A NIGHTMARE

IN HOLLYWOOD

PE TER BRILL/FANTASY ARCHIVES

COULDN’T KILL MARK PATTON The iconic star of A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge opens up for the first time about his personal battle with HIV and how Hollywood’s homophobia caused him to walk away from his dream.

By JASE PEEPLES

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M

ark patton smiles as he pulls up the right sleeve of his grey sweater, revealing the name “Jesse” on his forearm.

“I have every character I’ve ever played tattooed on my body,” he says.

“But I’ve decided to put the name Lazarus next, because that’s who I am. I’ve walked out of the grave time and time again.”

It’s been more than 25 years since he played the part of Jesse Walsh in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge, but the 49-year-old actor has had more in common with the boy whose body Freddy Kruger once wanted to possess than most people know.

Today, sitting in a coffee shop in San Francisco, Patton shares with me how the theme of survival permeates his life.

Raised in Riverside, Mo., Patton says he often felt like an outsider in his hometown.

“I had a rough time in school,” he says. “I was a very pretty boy and where I come from everyone looks exactly the same. If you’re even the slightest bit different you’re a target.

I was a hypersensitive kid and I was bullied quite a bit.”

The confident man across from me is nothing like the young boy he describes. He seems perfectly at ease in a pair of khakis and deck shoes, nibbling on a pulled-pork sandwich and sipping a Diet Coke as a steady stream of pedestrians trickles by on the sidewalk outside. It’s a transformation he says began to take shape when his father gave him some words of advice after he came home one day in tears because several of his classmates were bullying him. “My dad took me in the bathroom and said, ‘Look in the mirror.

Look in that man’s eyes. That’s who you’re going on this trip with. Know him, be on his side.’”

With his sense of self-worth beginning to grow, it wasn’t long before Patton discovered both his passion for acting and his attraction for other men—neither of which helped him assimilate into his southern home state. “I don’t think I was ever closeted, to be honest with you,” he says. “Once I figured out I was gay, I always acted on it. But I was always afraid some redneck would kill me on a back road. That’s where I thought I would end up because that’s where I come from. Theater provided me a safe space.”

After graduating high school, Patton bought a plane ticket and moved to New York with $132 to his name.

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“When I got off the plane to New York, I breathed my first relaxed breath, probably in my life. Because I realized I was safe,” he says. “There, all of my negatives turned into positives. Things like the way I walked became an attraction as opposed to something people would laugh at.”

Feeling a newfound sense of freedom and self-esteem, Patton found success quickly both professionally and socially in New York City. Within a few months, he began booking work acting in commercials and offBroadway plays and made a new circle of gay

friends. A few years later, he got the break of a lifetime when he landed the role of Joe Qualley, a gay character, in the Broadway play Come Back to the Five & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean opposite Hollywood heavy-hitters Cher and Kathy Bates. It was a role Patton felt he was born to play.

“I knew I was going to be hired for Jimmy Dean,” says Patton. “It was one of those moments where you knew it was your destiny.” The show was a success, and soon Patton found himself in Los Angeles with the rest of his cast mates working on a film adap-

COURTESY FANTASY ARCHIVES

tation of the Broadway hit. But just as the fresh-faced blonde boy from Missouri’s star began to rise, he discovered a darker side to the industry he had come to love.

“I remember my first manager came to my house, went to my closet, and told me what I could and couldn’t wear,” recalls Patton. “All the things I could wear, she threw them on the floor in the closet and said, ‘This is the way normal boys dress. They wear wrinkled and dirty clothes. And the other things you really love? Don’t wear them.’”

He quickly realized the open and free life he

enjoyed as an out actor in New York was not accepted in the homophobic culture of 1980s Hollywood.

“When I started working in New York, I didn’t have the common sense to keep my sexuality a secret,” Patton says. “I wasn’t famous. I was just a kid going to auditions for commercials and stuff. In New York I would go out to gay bars and it was no big deal, but in Los Angeles, I was told I wasn’t allowed to step foot in West Hollywood because agents would post people in the L.A. gay bars so they could sabotage the career of any actor who

competed with one of their clients. It was very cutthroat.”

Quickly, Patton found himself in a closet built by those around him who were guiding his career. “They wouldn’t even let me do certain interviews,” he adds. “I remember getting an interview request from The Advocate after we made Jimmy Dean and they told me I absolutely couldn’t speak with a gay magazine, even though I was playing a gay character. I think they were scared I would say something about my sexuality, and they were probably right.”

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“I remember looking around that table and I knew every one of those men were gay. All I could think about was how everyone I knew was dying from AIDS and we were having this bullshit conversation.

My heart just broke and that was the line for me. So I walked away from Hollywood.”

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Grudgingly, Patton went along with the real-life charade he was forced to play in his new Hollywood life, and in 1985 he landed his now-iconic role in A Nightmare on Elm Street 2. But he was playing one nightmare on film while living another behind the scenes.

“By that point, AIDS was all around me.

Everyone I knew was getting sick,” he says.

To make matters worse, the gay subtext of the Elm Street sequel, which was purposefully woven into the script by screenwriter David Chaskin, began to be noticed by fans and critics shortly after the film’s release. But rather than admit what he’d done, Chaskin blamed Patton for making the film—which included a scene where Patton’s character runs into his gym coach at a gay leather bar and lines like “He’s inside me, and he wants to take me again!”—too gay.

“David would just blame me any time it came up alluding to something along the lines of, ‘Well, he’s a big old fag and he chose to play the part in a big old fag way.’”

However, the darkest moment of Patton’s career came in 1987. He was cast to play what would have been a groundbreaking gay character on a major network television series, but what happened next shattered the promising actor’s Hollywood dreams. “It was what I would consider my last true hardcore audition,” Patton remembers of nearly getting a part as a gay character on CBS. He was sitting a table with nearly a dozen other men. “They began to ask me if I would be comfortable

Mark Patton in 1985: In that iconic scene in which he’s posessed by a serial killer in Nightmare on Elm Street 2 (above) and as a fresh-faced actor navigating Hollywood (right)

playing a gay character and telling people I was straight if they began to question my sexuality? I remember looking around that table and I knew every one of those men were gay. All I could think about was how everyone I knew was dying from AIDS and we were having this bullshit conversation.

My heart just broke and that was the line for me. I knew I would never be able to do what they were asking, so I walked away from Hollywood and decided to move on to a place where it was totally acceptable to be gay.”

Before long, Patton had re-branded himself as a successful interior decorator, but just as he’d risen from the self-inflicted death of his movie career, he was about to endure another trial. After battling what he thought was a severe case of bronchitis, Patton underwent a battery of tests and discovered he was not only HIV-positive, but was also battling a slew of other infections as well, including pneumonia, thrush, and tuberculosis.

“I found out on my 40th birthday and three days later I was in the hospital,” Patton says.

“But because of the infections I had, they made me take tuberculosis medicine and that didn’t mix with those older HIV meds.

There were so many side effects. It was like I was poisoned. ” He pauses for a long moment

before he continues. “I almost died there, but thankfully my friends took me to an AIDS health clinic, which saved my life.”

Slowly Patton’s health improved and he began what he describes as the happiest chapter in his life to date. He moved to Mexico where he met and fell in love with Hector Morales Mondragon, the man who would later become his husband. The two of them currently own and run an art store in Puerto Vallarta where Patton also sells works of his

own, including a line of painted handbags he designed.

In 2010, Patton’s life had come full-circle when the makers of Never Sleep Again, an exhaustive documentary about the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, tracked him down and asked him to speak candidly about his experience as a part of the Elm Street legacy. It was then he learned that Nightmare on Elm Street 2 had gained a cult following and was being celebrated by both the horror film

and LGBT communities as one of the gayest horror movies of all time. The subtext that once caused him grief had now made him a hero for fans. Patton agreed to appear in the documentary and was finally able to freely address his sexuality to the fans of Freddy’s franchise. Vindicating Patton was that the documentary also featured screenwriter Chaskin, who finally admitted on record he had intentionally woven gay subtext into the script of Freddy’s Revenge.

Since the release of Never Sleep Again, Patton has toured horror conventions around the world where he is now embraced as the first “male scream queen” of mainstream horror. He also sells T-shirts featuring some of the more titillating classic lines from the film as well as a few of the antigay slurs, such as “Jesse is a Homo,” that were once used to describe his now-iconic character—another negative that has become a positive in his life. Most of the money he earns from his appearances is donated to HIV treatment organizations and LGBT youth charities such as The Trevor Project.

He tells me he’s currently planning to release a documentary of his own, titled There is No Jesse, which will focus both on his part in the Elm Street phenomenon and the real-life nightmares he has endured since filming the movie. He’s been gearing up for the emotional journey that will inevitably follow as he shares the truth about his most personal battles and his HIV status.

“The only thing we’re waiting for is me,” he says. “It’s not that I’m embarrassed in any way, but I’m a private person, and I have a different life now. These are parts of my story that have never been published before, and I’ve had to think about whether or not I was prepared to have those conversations over and over again. But I’ve decided to share them with you today because I think I’m ready to tell the next part of the story.” He straightens up in his chair and smiles again before adding, “It’s my obligation to tell it the way it happened, and it’s a story that needs to be told. I’ve looked at my mortality, and I lived through it.”

As he finishes his Diet Coke he says, “That advice that my father gave me all those years ago has proved to be true. I’m authentically me, and now every day I feel more free. I’m so thankful I have so many stories to tell and have lots of different ways I can tell them.

Whether it’s cooking you dinner, painting you a purse, or making a movie—it doesn’t matter. I’m a storyteller and I have a fabulous memory. So watch out because I don’t forget a thing.” ✜

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OPINION

4 8 9 1 n i t o We’re N , Toto Anymore

et y and moving soci ds in m g in en le in op ing with of ten played a ro curate portrayals of people liv Hollywood has ac d an lack of moder n site. forward, but its ing just the oppo do is IV H CPHERSON

By SCOTT M

op p o si t e page: C OUR TESY MGM; MCP HERSON: BR A DFOR D R OGNE

S

ince HIV was discovered in 1984, a magical twister hasn’t blown us all away.

No farmhouses have fallen onto ruby-soled witches. And no one has mastered the art of traveling by bubble. But in the realm of the HIV epidemic, we are certainly not in Kansas anymore. We’ve reached the colorful land of Oz. Long gone are the stormy days of gray and gloom. We’ve seen extraordinary advances in modern medicine that have allowed for those living with HIV to live full, healthy, and happy lives.

But in 2013, you wouldn’t know this by looking through the Hollywood lens, where topics and stories have played a pivotal role in the progression of gay culture. As Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese once said, “Now more than ever we need to talk to each other, to listen to each other and understand how we see the world, and cinema is the best medium for doing this.”

Hollywood has, since the invention of celluloid, played an important role in the advancement of our society and people’s ways of thinking. Often films allow us to open our minds and learn new things we may not have once understood or felt comfortable with. They allow us to take that first step down the road of yellow brick. Successful films like Brokeback Mountain or Milk offered the everyday American, who may not have known someone who was gay, a chance to witness the life of an LGBT person and possibly gain a new level of comfort around the subject that would eventually lead to their support for marriage equality.

But when I look back at the short and recent history of films that include HIV and/or AIDS in their plot, I find it impossible to think of a single one that has challenged our way of thinking or pushed our culture forward by bringing light to scenarios or situations that were true to today’s way of living for those with HIV. One that reflects the idea that having HIV is now manageable, and daily treatment with today’s medications can, and most likely will, reduce your viral load, significantly increasing the quality and length of your life.

The portrayals we’ve seen, while they may have been award-worthy, still pulled us further away from our goal of

reducing stigma. They may have even perpetuated it. In the 1990s we were riveted by Tom Hanks’ portrayal of a man living with AIDS and his struggle for justice in Philadelphia, and gut-wrenched by the reckless behavior of a group of young friends in Kids.

More recently we felt distraught when Precious received her diagnosis after being raped by her father, and we even breathed a sigh of relief to learn that Jim Carrey’s character was only pretending to have AIDS in I Love You Phillip Morris. So with these constant reminders of death and sorrow, why are we surprised so many people fear a simple HIV test?

Perhaps it’s that no one wants to end up like Ed Harris’s character in The Hours, or go through what the character Judith did in Tyler Perry’s Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor.

Even now, 32 years after the discovery of AIDS, the incredible documentary How to Survive a Plague received an Oscar nomination for its powerful story about AIDS activists and their struggle to get the government’s attention. Later this year we’ll see Dallas Buyers Club, set in 1986, which depicts a man’s struggle for medications after he receives an AIDS diagnosis with only 30 days to live.

Next year The Normal Heart debuts on HBO and will surely require a tissue as we watch an activist attempt to raise HIV and AIDS awareness during the early 1980s.

So now I raise the important question: Where are the films that show what it’s like to have HIV in 2013? That millions of lives have been restored thanks to the scientific advancements made in treatment?

The huge absence of HIV-positive representation is not just limited to film. This is also true in scripted TV. In fact the last nonreality U.S. television series that included a main character living with HIV (and not dying of it) was Showtime’s Queer as Folk—the finale aired in 2005.

Between the lack of education that plagues our youth and the lack of awareness among so-called low-risk populations, it’s no wonder that stigma is the leading perpetrator of a consistent infection rate year after year. If Scorsese’s assertion that entertainment reflects how we see the world, then why are we surprised that the

world is still so uneducated and ill-informed about the current state of the disease? A large portion of the population still doesn’t know the difference between HIV and AIDS, and Hollywood has yet to come to the rescue.

Scott McPherson is the In 1989, the peak of the creative director of HIV epidemic, 150,000 peoPlus magazine, and founder ple were diagnosed with and vice president of the AIDS in the U.S., a numStigma Project, a grassroots ber that has since dropped organization using social media and advertising 80%. Who knew? to reduce the stigma One would argue around HIV and AIDS. there’s not enough drama TheStigmaProject.org or suspense in a modernday plot to include HIV, but therein lies the beauty of how easy it should be to include. For example, create a character that is, say, a smart-mouthed asskicking chick, that also happens to be HIV-positive and hasn’t progressed to AIDS, and isn’t seen on her deathbed in the final scene.

It boils down to the fact that one million people in the U.S. have HIV and the number of films released theatrically in the past three years (documentaries excluded) that have included a character with HIV is, well, one: Judith in Temptation, which tells the world that people with HIV deserved what they got. That certainly doesn’t send a positive message to easily influenced moviegoers.

Luckily for the fight against stigma, there is a small saving grace in the world of reality television. Reality series (as in real life…mostly) are the only mainstream medium truly depicting HIVpositive people as they are today: living normal healthy lives, thriving even. Role models like Project Runway All-Stars winner Mondo Guerra and The Voice runner-up Jamar Rogers bring awareness to what it’s like to live with and conquer HIV today to viewers across the country.

It’s a start, but it’s not enough. We may be over the rainbow when it comes to actuality, but in Hollywood we’re still farm girls stuck in a stormy AIDS-ridden world of gray. Until there is a true spectrum of positive HIV-positive representation across all forms of media, you can be sure that HIV stigma is one thing we won’t see fade to black. ◆

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OPINION

The host of the political show For & Against examines how HIV criminalization laws endanger everyone by singling out HIV-positive citizens

By JIM MORRISON

op p o si t e page: s c ot t mcp hers on

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n may,

U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee reintroduced a bill to repeal HIV criminalization laws across the nation, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

Earlier this year, the LGBT community went on red alert when a public health bill in Kansas proposed that people living with HIV should be quarantined.

It felt shockingly similar to those days in the 1980s when people like Sen. Jesse Helms actually called for “quarantine of those infected.” One poll at the time revealed that 50% of Americans supported this type of policy.

Luckily, activists secured revised language in the Kansas statute, ensuring an HIV quarantine didn’t become reality.

So for a hot second, the marriage equality fight (rightly) shared the stage with this potential shocker. But alas, crisis averted.

Not so fast, Mr. Sulu. The thing is, we already have quarantines, just as shocking and dangerous, in 33 states across the country. Virtual quarantines are literally written into our criminal law. And these aren’t old laws, slowly and finally being pulled from the books; they’re relatively new, and still being proposed and debated in states across the country.

I’m referring to the biggest civil rights issue that should be on everyone’s radar, but largely gets ignored: HIV criminalization.

In varying degrees across the country, people are going to jail or receiving heightened penalties for otherwise minor crimes for not disclosing their HIV status to their sexual partners. The stark reality of this is no less shocking than those calls for quarantine were in the ’80s.

People living with HIV are going to jail, and they’re going because of their HIV status. These people are going to jail despite doing all the right things: getting tested, getting treated, using condoms.

Yes, you can use a condom and still be tried. Folks are going to jail for failing to disclose, or being falsely accused of not disclosing, their status.

Laws differ from state to state. Some are unclear and confusing. Some require the intent to actually transmit HIV, but others don’t. Some only apply to unprotected sex, while others are more farreaching. Some are so vague and confusing they’d apply to any intimate behavior, like kissing, or even spitting on someone.

In fact, a Texas man is serving 35 years in prison for spitting on a police officer.

HIV is not transmittable by saliva—at least according to those hacks at the Centers for Disease Control.

Moreover, because there are no clear guidelines on how these laws are enforced, their application often ends up in the hands of some religiously overzealous county prosecutor.

What is clear is that people who did nothing wrong but contract a virus are being singled out. In the words of Sean Strub—the brilliant, tireless activist on the front lines of this issue — we are creating a “viral underclass.”

Call it what you want, but “quarantine” sounds like the right word to me.

Make no mistake—this isn’t just about HIV. When these laws are passed, we’re told they’re seeking the laudable goal of effectively addressing a medical issue and combating a virus. But if that were true, why aren’t there similar laws for diseases like HPV and gonorrhea?

Every year in the U.S., roughly 4,000 women die of cervical cancer that is traceable to HPV. Why is there is no disclosure requirement there?

This is about agendas of hate and homophobia—stoked by repeated appeals to fear and ignorance—using the ugly stigma of HIV to further that disdain.

The civil rights abuses of this travesty should be enough to shock you into action. When I first heard about this, I’m embarrassed to say, I knew shockingly little about it. And I’m a lawyer. But it gets worse.

These laws are a serious threat to the progress we have made fighting the spread of HIV and finding a cure and vaccine. How? Because the laws turn on your knowledge of your status.

In the poz community a scary slogan has developed: “Take the test, risk arrest.” People would rather remain ignorant than get placed in criminal jeopardy.

And sadly, this line of thinking isn’t all that irrational. The laws are doing the opposite of what they’re supposedly intended to do: get people tested and treated so that they can reduce transmission. Scary.

Legally speaking, when courts examine a law or action by the state that singles out one group of people, they often conduct a review of how well that law is tailored to address a problem or societal need.

As we’ve seen, courts are starting to grant higher levels of scrutiny to laws singling out LGBT people. It has become empirically clear that each of these laws singling out people living with HIV is preventing success of this critical public health goal.

Any of us can be one step away from HIV—a broken condom, a botched blood transfusion or a child born with HIV—just like we are always one step away Jim Morrison from numerous viruses is host of Here TV’s or illnesses. It is sadly political talk show For & part of the human bioAgainst. You can catch full logical experience. episodes on Here TV’s allRight here in New new paid YouTube channel, HereTVPremium.

York City, not two miles from where I sit, is an abandoned island that was used as a forced quarantine facility for infectious diseases like typhoid, scarlet fever, and leprosy. This is where these kinds of laws lead. Long ago, we realized that putting people in camps wasn’t the answer. Neither is using our criminal laws to create virtual camps for those living with HIV. These laws have facilitated an ominous but thriving symbiotic relationship between the forces of homophobia and HIV-ignorance. This is why it’s critical to add this to our list of activism musts.

It falls on us to fight because the forces of homophobia continue to spew that HIV or AIDS is a gay-only disease. Of course it isn’t. HIV and AIDS are not just among gay people but among everyone. Most heterosexual voters living in the 33 states with HIV criminalization laws haven’t even considered this danger. They simply buy the facile, reasonable-sounding propaganda that, “Yeah, people should disclose their status.”

It’s up to us to expose the simple truth: The second we start fighting people with HIV instead of HIV itself is the moment we start losing this critical public health battle. In 33 states, that moment has come and gone. We’d all better wake up and get on board with this fight, before the entire nation becomes a quarantine for the more than 1.1 million people currently living with the virus… and for us all.

Learn more at SeroProject.com, find the law in your state, and be heard. ◆

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49

OPINION

Why Alabama Needs to Update Its Sex Education Alabama’s only openly LGBT state legislator explains why she is trying to change the laws to make sex ed in schools less homophobic and more comprehensive.

By PATRICIA TODD

op p o si t e page: p hoto s .c om

T

his

year

marks

the 50th anniversary of the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., that killed four little girls and awakened a nation. Unfortunately, in so many ways, Alabama remains stuck in the 1960s with its unspoken segregation, whispered disparagement of those in poverty, and a ferocious societal adherence to a literalist, unforgiving Bible.

My state has the longest constitution in the country, with over 800 amendments that include requiring a horse in Macon County to wear a diaper in a parade.

No, I am not kidding.

Our poverty rate is one of the highest in the country and we spend less money on public education than the majority of states, and it shows. The evidence is, in part, our nearly 60% dropout rate. White flight and “brain drain” from Birmingham, Alabama’s largest city, has left in its wake a segregated school system recently taken over by the state Board of Education because of mismanagement. In Alabama the entire tax base rests on a high sales tax, the most regressive form of taxation.

Alabama is the buckle of the Bible Belt, where public policy is based on religious beliefs instead of the U.S. Constitution. It is not easy to come out in Alabama or serve as its only openly gay elected official. As a legislator I am constantly bombarded with Bible babble that seeks to defend discrimination and hatred toward our LGBT brothers and sisters.

I have spent most of my six years in the legislature working on bills to reduce poverty and increase transparency in our state; in so doing I have passed legislation creating the first Alabama Housing Trust Fund and establishing the first statefunded commission to reduce poverty.

I am proud to be seen as the advocate for the disenfranchised and have worked tirelessly on legislation to assure accountablity in state government and transparency in our financial transactions.

I knew when I was elected in 2006 that all eyes would be watching me, and I carried the hopes and dreams of the LGBT community on my shoulders. I also knew that I needed time to develop relationships with fellow legislators to gain their trust. In 2010, when the Republicans took control, I realized that my goal to obtain equality for all had just become even more difficult. But sometimes when barriers seem most impossible to overcome, we me must not retreat but instead seize the moment as an opportunity to challenge the status quo.

And so that moment has come.

In the upcoming legislative session I will introduce a bill to strike the homophobic language from our statemandated health education curriculum.

In the early 1990s the Alabama legislature passed a law mandating that when HIV education is taught in the public schools, teachers are required to teach “an emphasis, in a factual manner and from a public health perspective, that homosexuality is not a lifestyle acceptable to the general public and that homosexual conduct is a criminal offense under the laws of the state.”

No, I am not kidding.

It would seem to be a simple fix for those outside the South: First, there is no scientific evidence that this statement is true, and second, the U.S. Supreme Court stuck down sodomy laws in 2003. Understandable, so strike the language!

But, as we know, Alabama does not always follow the federal laws—and we are best known for refusing to follow the law. Remember Gov. George Wallace refusing to allow two black students to attend the University of Alabama?

Or maybe you remember when, more recently, our Supreme Court justice Roy Moore refused to remove a stone plaque of the 10 Commandments from the Alabama Supreme Court building? That is Alabama. Interestingly, Moore was just reelected to the Alabama Supreme Court as chief justice, no less, and has spent most of his public appearances spewing hate and preaching that same-sex marriage will destroy our country.

This is what I face as a lawmaker

in this state, but I keep reminding myself that my work is much like a missionary’s—you go where the work needs to be done.

The legislation I proposed would strike that language from the pubPatricia Todd lic school curriculum and is an Alabama state would actually take currepresentative. riculum development out of the hands of the Alabama legislature, where it currently rests, and place it in the hands of the state Board of Education. In fact, my bill’s first hurdle will come when I ask for it to be placed on the agenda of the Education Policy Committee, chaired by the most conservative woman in the Alabama House. In fact, she informed me that she doesn’t believe sex education should be taught in the schools at all.

Ignorance is bliss.

I remain convinced that this bill is a step toward good public policy in Alabama. It may not pass, but what it will do is challenge the Alabama legislature to begin the conversation around these once-taboo issues while providing an appropriate public forum where meaningful debate around the harmfulness and factual inaccuracy of such existing laws can take place. Now is the time in Alabama, and now is the opportunity to shift from a course of inequality to full equality.

As you read this and shake your head in disbelief, take a minute to help me and other LGBT Alabamians move our state out of the 1960s. You can help. Equality Alabama will be leading the educational efforts, and it will take money to organize and educate the legislators to do the right thing. You can make a donation to Equality Alabama by going to EqualityAlabama.org.

While today many states are fighting for marriage equality, Alabama once again finds itself far behind the curve, living in another time. But while the issue here may not be marriage equality, for every LGBT Alabamian, this is our line in the sand. ◆

S E P T E M B E R / O c tober 2 0 1 3 •

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51

OPINION

HIV-Positive & Squeaky Clean When being HIV-positive is all about coming clean to yourself and to others.

By TYLER CURRY

O

n e y e a r ago , I stopped into the local men’s health clinic in between lunch with co-workers and an afternoon workout. It had been a little less than a year since my last STI test and I figured there was no better way to start a long holiday weekend than with a new stamp on the gay man’s passport of responsibility.

After 20 minutes of fumbling with my thumbs and trying to pass for a person that had nothing to worry about, a squatty male nurse with a grumpy disposition finally called me back into the small room where my fate loomed.

Instead of a little peace of mind and a good excuse for a cocktail, I found myself on the other side of the looking glass, so to speak. He pointed to a piece of paper with a line.

Grumpy nurse: “Mr. Curry, do you know what this means?”

Me: Blank stare. Blink, blink.

Grumpy nurse: “This line means that you tested positive for HIV.”

op p o si t e page: C ody Sc ot t K in s fat her

My brain: KABOOM! And then everything faded to black.

For the next six months, I attempted a well-traveled path. I opted to keep my status close to my chest save for a few friends and my sister. But like any secret worth telling, it started to seep out behind the glossy veneer that I thought I had perfected. After a couple of attempts at dating and several awkward first attempts at disclosing my status (not to mention a loud-mouthed roommate) my secret was out (or, at least, I was convinced it was).

And the paranoia set in.

“Does he know?”

“Would he tell?”

So on and so forth. It didn’t even matter what was actually being said. Within six months I had reached an undetect-

able viral load, and had become completely devoured by the assumptions and stigma happening between my own two ears—all because of a little secret that I was so desperate to keep.

Scarlet letters can be a beast to bear. They can drive you into depths of depression that seem impossible to escape. Some never do.

In what seemed like only a moment since I found out, the reality of HIV stigma had become all too real. I sat quietly as horrid language about HIV was recklessly volleyed between friends and acquaintances. I couldn’t help but ponder how many others secretly winced in agony every time someone asked, “Are you clean?” or heard, “He’s got the booty bug,” and just took another sip of their drink—each time losing a little bit of self-worth along the way.

I knew that keeping silent would only continue to wreak havoc on my psyche and I didn’t know how much more of myself I was willing to lose.

My new scarlet letter wasn’t going anywhere. I knew I wasn’t dirty, but trying to hide something sure was making me feel that way.

With my new identity tucked behind my smile, I lived in one world that rang with earsplitting silence. It doesn’t matter what you are hiding inside of a closet, the experience is always the same. You are desperate to break free of the secret you keep, but terrified to take the first step for fear of what lies on the other side. But I knew that the only way I would ever feel “clean” again was to shed light on a topic that is a hell of a lot closer to our lives than we would like to believe. So I turned on some Kelly Clarkson, grabbed a glue gun and some rhinestones, and made my scarlet letter so sparkly that it couldn’t hide it if I tried.

Outfitted with my new, bejeweled status, the new world was filled with chaotic, messy and frenzied noise— noise so loud it stifles any fears you may have had to the point where you can’t remember why you waited so long to turn up the volume in the first place.

Turns out, the topic of HIV is one

that many people are desperate to discuss, but few are willing to be the first to speak. There are so many negative stereotypes and blanket assumptions attached to being HIVpositive that most people aren’t willing to take the Tyler Curry risk of even being assocreated the Needle Prick ciated with the disease.

Project as an editorial and visual campaign to elicit a Those who are positive candid and open conversaremain silent and continue tion on what it means to be to wrestle with HIV stigma, HIV-positive today. To learn while those who are negamore, visit Facebook.com/ tive remain blissfully naïve getpricked. yet susceptible to transmission based on the false pretense that only “other people” contract HIV. Coming out as an HIVpositive man was just the bath that I needed. Immediately, I felt cleansed of the shaming and prejudice that may or may not reside behind the smiles of the friends and strangers around me.

Maybe I did lose some distant friends. It was possible that a few men who found me attractive would no longer want to take me to dinner. I wouldn’t know, because I washed them down the drain with the rest of the dirt and grime that was making me feel unclean. All that remained were the people who understood the reality of the disease (or were at least willing to learn).

The past year has taught me that silence equals darkness. The more we talk and the louder we are on matters concerning HIV and HIV stigma, the brighter all of our lives will become, regardless of status. The only way to rid the gay community of risky behavior, misplaced assumptions, and stigmatizing language is to start making some noise.

It’s time we purge ourselves of these dirty connotations that have lingered for far too long. And let’s be honest, we have all been a little dirty from time to time; but there is nothing a little soap, water, and honesty can’t sanitize.

I may be HIV-positive, but my conscience is squeaky clean. ◆

S E P T E M B E R / O c tober 2 0 1 3 •

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53

t E S T ING

Forced HIV Testing?

Access to testing keeps getting easier

By Michelle Garcia

N

ew federal guidelines call for all people aged 15-65 to be routinely tested for HIV, along with younger adolescents and older adults who may be at risk for the virus, as well as pregnant women. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force’s new recommendations, announced in April, are similar to those made seven years ago by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which suggested all people aged 13-64 receive regular testing.

Because this recommendation has been classified as Grade A, health insurers are expected to pay for the tests when ordered. Beth Meyerson, a health policy expert at Indiana University, says the screening recommendations will help the U.S. reach the goals established by the National HIV/AIDS Strategy, which includes reducing annual HIV infections by 25% and increasing the number of people who know their status to 90% by 2015.

The Affordable Care Act already mandates that HIV testing be available without cost or

VISIT HIVTest.cdc.gov to find a NEARBY testing facility.

co-pay, Meyerson said, but the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommendation seals the deal. “We just need to be sure clinicians offer the test,” she says.

How often “routine” means, though, will likely vary by doctor or health care center. In its recommendations, the Preventive Services Task Force says only that “evidence is insufficient to determine optimum time intervals for HIV screening.” If your work or life puts you more at risk of HIV, an annual test would be “reasonable,” according to the task force.

“There are more than 1.1 million Americans currently living with HIV/AIDS. About half of that number do not consistently receive medical care, and more than one fifth of the total do not even know they are infected with HIV,” says Whitney Engeran-Cordova, senior director of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s public health division. “We welcome these recommendations from the task force and believe it’s high time to implement the guidelines.” —Michelle Garcia

Oral exam

Sorry, video not supported by this PDF viewer.

If you’d rather go through the testing process at your own convenience, OraQuick, the first at-home oral HIV test, is now on shelves in pharmacies and health care facilities across the nation. OraQuick.com will tell you where to buy the test, for just $39.99, near you.

WATCH Editor-in-Chief Diane Anderson-Minshall demonstrate how to use an Oraquick At-Home Oral HIV Test.

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hiv plus

• september /october 2013

Health minister Adonis Georgiadis has reinstated Public Health Decree 39A, a measure that allows police to detain and force testing on people suspected of being HIV-positive, according to the Greek news outlet ENET. The measure also urges landlords to evict HIV-positive tenants, on the grounds they are a public health threat.

In April 2012, the measure enabled the forced testing of hundreds of women. The media published personal information and photographs of the 17 unveiled as HIV-positive, who were labeled “prostitutes” by police, despite a lack of evidence. After months of detainment, most of the women were acquitted of “intended bodily injury.”

Now that same measure is back. In Greece, HIV rates have risen by more than 200% since 2011, likely due to increased drug abuse among young adults, who are currently experiencing a 20% unemployment rate. Intravenous drug users accounted for half of all new infections, surpassing sex between men for the first time as the leading cause of new infection. The Hellenic Center for Disease Control and Prevention reports that HIV infections among injection drug users rose to 487 cases, more than doubling from the 206 cases in 2011. Despite this rise, Greece cut funding for HIV prevention from 35 million Euros in 2010 to 20 million last year.

Today, HIV hysteria is growing, say activists, in part because austerity cuts have forced many Greeks to the brink of poverty and homelessness. Under Health Decree 39A, nearly anyone can be tested without consent. If positive, a person could face media exposure, be fired, and according to the law, “should be evicted from their homes, without any alternative being offered.”

“The Greek Health Minister is clearly violating basic human rights and human dignity under the guise of ‘protecting the community from contagious diseases,’” said Humanitarian group Doctors of the World. The group calls on health professionals to refuse to conduct mandatory testing, and asks the Greek government to focus on more pressing public health problems. — David Artavia

ORAQUICK : COURTESY ORASURE; greece: getty images

positive about your status

Greece allows mandatory HIV testing, detention, and even eviction.

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