POZ January/February 2014

A SMART+STRONG PUBLICATION JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 POZ.COM $3.99

H E A L T H ,

L I F E

Up for the Count

POZ founder Sean Strub tells all

&

H I V

CONTENTS EXCLUSIVELY ON

Rev. Squire leads his church— and lives with HIV.

POZ.COM POZ EXCLUSIVES BABY MAKES THREE

Health care journalist Heather Boerner shares an excerpt from her upcoming ebook. Search “HIV and Baby Makes Three” on poz.com to read about the struggles two serodiscordant couples go through trying to have a baby.

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POZ BLOGS

As a person with HIV, Aundaray Guess shares how he leaves bad situations.

Go to blogs. poz.com/ aundarayguess to read his “Learning to Say No” post.

Go to blogs.poz.com for more bloggers.

POZ DIGITAL

READ THE PRINT MAGAZINE ON YOUR COMPUTER OR TABLET

32 BODY COUNTS In an excerpt from his new memoir, Sean Strub bears witness to the AIDS epidemic and shares how he started POZ magazine. INTRO BY WALTER ARMSTRONG 38 FAITH, HOPE & CHARITY The Reverend Savalas Squire Sr. is one of many faith leaders helping the black church take a seat at the HIV/AIDS table. BY KATE FERGUSON 5 FROM THE EDITOR Houses of the Holy

6 FEEDBACK

Go to poz.com/digital to view the current issue and the entire Smart + Strong digital library.

Your letters and comments

8 POZ Q+A

iSTAYHEALTHY

Naina Khanna, executive director of the Positive Women’s Network USA, advocates for education and self-empowerment.

Go to blogs.poz.com/istayhealthy or scan the QR code below with your mobile device to learn how you can better track your lab test results and meds, as well as set alerts to take your meds and more!

A new anthology filled with soulful poems, psalms and affirmations for those living with HIV • a CDC program allows gay male couples to test for HIV together • POZ Stories: Erin Gingrich • a new campaign to end stigma and promote testing • the inspiring story of Joseph Kibler is captured in a recent documentary • a Los Angeles advocacy group gives visibility to black gay men and HIV • Salt-N-Pepa snowboards help Lifebeat fight AIDS

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FREE APP FROM POZ

14 POZ PLANET

21 VOICES

POZ pays tribute to Dennis Daniel, our dear friend and co-worker.

26 CARE AND TREATMENT

Glowing reports recently released on global AIDS • Republican-dominated states say no to Medicaid expansion • new HIV replication pathway discovered • low viral load still a threat • cocaine may raise the likelihood of acquiring HIV and also fuel its spread from cell to cell

31 RESEARCH NOTES

Possible microbicide tricks HIV • antifungal agent fights HIV • CCR5 gene therapy milestone • worse outcomes when treatment comes from multiple clinics

44 POZ HEROES

Stephanie Brown transformed her HIV diagnosis into a grassroots cause and then became an advocate on the national level.

POZ (ISSN 1075-5705) is published monthly except for the January/February, April/May, July/August and October/November issues ($19.97 for a 8-issue subscription) by Smart + Strong, 462 Seventh Ave., 19th Floor, New York, NY 10018-7424. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. Issue No. 193. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to POZ, PO Box 8788, Virginia Beach, VA 23450-4884. Copyright © 2014 CDM Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted, in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher. Smart + Strong® is a registered trademark of CDM Publishing, LLC.

(COVER) JOAN L. BROWN; (BABY’S FEET) THINKSTOCK; (GUESS) COURTESY OF AUNDARAY GUESS; (SQUIRE) BRYAN REGAN

LEARNING TO SAY NO

FROM THE EDITOR ORIOL R. GUTIERREZ JR. EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

JENNIFER MORTON MANAGING EDITOR

KATE FERGUSON TRENTON STRAUBE SENIOR EDITORS

BENJAMIN RYAN EDITOR-AT-LARGE

DORIOT KIM

ART DIRECTOR

MICHAEL HALLIDAY

ART PRODUCTION MANAGER

CASEY HALTER

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

CASSIDY GARDNER INTERN

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

TOMIKA ANDERSON, SHAWN DECKER, AUNDARAY GUESS, MARK S. KING, MARK LEYDORF, TIM MURPHY, RITA RUBIN CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS

JOAN LOBIS BROWN, BLAKE LITTLE, JEFF SINGER, JONATHAN TIMMES, TOKY, BILL WADMAN SEAN O’BRIEN STRUB FOUNDER

MEGAN STRUB

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Houses of the Holy

I

WAS RAISED AS A ROMAN Catholic. I admittedly have moved into the “lapsed” category, but my connection to the faith remains.

My hope is that the religion of my birth reconciles itself to the modern world, which would benefit us all.

Pope Francis has made me dare to believe such a reconciliation is not as far off as it once seemed. His “Who am I to judge?” comments about gay priests seeking God, combined with his many other comments about the need to refocus on the poor and other charitable concerns, inspire hope.

For better or worse, religion holds a key role in the fight against HIV/AIDS. We know all too well that many doctrines hamper us.

Countless examples reveal how that is so.

What we do not acknowledge often enough, however, is that many people of faith help us in the fight. They need our support.

The Reverend Savalas Squire Sr. is one of them. Living with HIV since 2010, he leads his Baptist church in North Carolina in song, in prayer—and in education on the virus. Go to page 38 to read how Savalas and others across the country are helping the black church take a seat at the HIV/AIDS table.

Sean Strub has had a seat at many tables.

From AIDS activist to POZ founder, from politics to business, his titles and domains abound. He also was raised as a Roman Catholic, and this played an important role in shaping his views and actions. We learn that and so much more in his new book.

In Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS and Survival, Sean takes us from his childhood in Iowa to his years as a Senate elevator operator in Washington, DC; from his LGBT advocacy to the launch of POZ; and from producing The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me to running as the first openly HIV-positive candidate for U.S. Congress.

Along the way, Sean introduces a cast of characters difficult to believe if it weren’t true: Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Vito Russo, Yoko Ono, Bill Clinton and the list goes on and on. The book ends with his current role as founder and executive director of the Sero Project. The group fights stigma and injustice against people living with the virus, which includes combating HIV criminalization.

A memoir excerpt on page 32 details the launch of POZ and its aftermath. Former POZ editor-in-chief Walter Armstrong provides a thought-provoking introduction that places Sean’s many contributions to both the LGBT and HIV/AIDS movements in perspective.

Last November, POZ comptroller Dennis Daniel died. He was our friend, as well as the life of the party. He was with the company from the beginning. Go to page 21 to read our remembrances. Dennis, rest in peace.

ORIOL R. GUTIERREZ JR. EDITOR-IN-CHIEF editor-in-chief@poz.com

Want to read more from Oriol? Follow him on Twitter @oriolgutierrez and check out blogs.poz.com/oriol.

poz.com JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 POZ 5

FEEDBACK

Have an opinion about this month’s POZ? Comment on a specific story on poz.com, post a general comment via poz.com/talktous, or send a letter to POZ, 462 Seventh Ave., Floor 19, New York, NY 10018.

ethnic groups within African countries, one will see a correlation between the level of the practice and HIV prevalence.

DAVID PHILLIPS, COLLEGE PARK, MD

MAKING THE CUT

In the article “Cut to Fit” (October 2013), writer Benjamin Ryan reviewed the scientific evidence supporting circumcision as HIV prevention in Africa and challenged the skeptics who argue the science is flawed.

The anti-circumcision crowd sound like the climate change deniers—no solid proof! Sure. It works. It looks better. It also has been shown to lessen the chance of cervical cancer. But the anti’s don’t want it, so there is no way to convince them.

KYLE MICHEL SULLIVAN, NEW YORK

Anytime you want to mutilate the body of someone else, you should be required to have their informed consent as to the benefits and risks in doing so.

Starting from the premise that such mutilation “looks better” is nothing more than personal aesthetics, with a hefty dose of body shame thrown in. There’s a consensus in certain quarters that a young woman’s vagina looks better stitched shut until matrimony, but that cultural consensus is insufficient to advocate mutilating females.

JETON ADEMAJ, HARLEM, NEW YORK

I got circumcised three months ago at the age of 33, and all I can say is that I am very happy with the results and have not noticed any loss of sensation (I get off

just as easily as before). Not saying there isn’t any; I just haven’t felt a difference at all, and after three months it looks fully healed. From someone who’s been on both sides, I think people should do what they feel is right for them, but the big arguments against adult circumcision all seem very sensationalistic.

Cutting off the foreskin has never prevented any disease, but it has certainly been touted as a preventative or cure-all for a very long list of unrelated and unlikely ailments. Cutting the genitals of children is a violation of a basic human right, bodily integrity, and has caused untold suffering, total loss of penis and death.

The latest attempt to associate genital cutting with HIV prevention is junk science and medical fraud.

JAMES LOEWEN, VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA

ANONYMOUS, NEW YORK CITY

It is important to realize that the program that was branded in 2010 as voluntary medical male circumcision (VMMC) is not principally about foreskin removal. It is a comprehensive approach that encompasses safer-sex counseling, condom usage, discussion of fidelity and monogamy and regular testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, in addition to surgery. As such, it is almost impossible to tell which component(s) of the program are effective—but the name favors circumcision.

MARTIN

Shame on those peddling ecological fallacy regarding national circumcision rates and HIV prevalence. The African HIV epidemic has largely been driven for nearly a century by heterosexual intercourse where the foreskin offers a pathway for female-to-male transmission, not unprotected receptive anal intercourse as seen throughout the developed world. If one looks at circumcision rates for

6 POZ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 poz.com

HIV closet is simply unrealistic and bad advice.

RC

Great article, and I’m all for it! I tested HIV positive in 1987 and went public with my status after 28 days in a rehab where I heard, “You’re as sick as your secrets.”

JIMMY MACK, SOUTHAMPTON, NY

Beautifully written! This article is an inspiration for everyone: gay/straight, male/female, positive/ negative. I have been a therapist specializing in gay men, HIV and mental health for 21 years and have been living with HIV for 23 years.

The mental health aspects of HIV are as important as the medical aspects.

Like most civil rights and progressive movements, it all starts with declaring our own dignity and speaking out.

KEN HOWARD, LCSW, WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA

STOPPING STIGMA

In his op-ed “Coming Out Against HIV Stigma” (October 11, 2013), Alex Garner wrote that speaking openly about one’s HIV status can reduce stigma and create a healthier, more empowered community.

I’ve lived in some major cities where disclosing one’s HIV status wasn’t that big of a deal. Now that I’m living in a small town in the Deep South, it could be a tragic mistake. Recently, two newly diagnosed people here found out the hard way they should have kept personal information to themselves. One was fired from her job; another was kicked out of housing.

Discrimination is real, and to suggest that everyone come merrily screaming out of the

The article is well taken, but living openly as a gay man (which I do) and declaring my private medical information to the world (which I choose not to do) are two different things. Let’s get to a cure.

Gay does not equal diseased.

Silence no longer equals death. I am not the virus.

MIKE, HILO, HAWAII

Excellent article. Speaking openly about being HIV positive is a powerful empowerment tool. As we create opportunities to tell our stories as persons living with HIV, many more people will follow.

ANGEL HERNANDEZ, PUERTO RICO

Fighting HIV-related stigma can be done without coming out. Coming out comes at a price, and sometimes it can backfire. I have learned that stigma is deep-rooted in some communities and courage is needed.

FREDERICK WRIGHT-STAFFORD, JACKSONVILLE

THE POZ Q+A

BY ORIOL R. GUTIERREZ JR.

Left: PWN-USA members protest at the 2011 National HIV Prevention Conference. Below: A gathering of women from the group, and Naina Khanna prepares protest signs.

Positive Women’s Network USA executive director Naina Khanna advocates for self-empowerment.

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AINA KHANNA IS THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE POSITIVE Women’s Network United States of America (PWN-USA), a national membership group of HIV-positive women. PWN-USA builds leadership among women living with the virus. The group also advocates for social justice and human rights that support HIV-positive women.

Khanna has been a member of the President’s Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) since 2010. She also has served on the coordinating committee for the Coalition for a National AIDS Strategy and the board of directors for AIDS Alliance for Children, Youth and Families. Previously, Khanna was the national field director for the League of Pissed Off Voters, a progressive group.

She shares her thoughts on PWN-USA becoming an independent group, on its new survey on sexual and reproductive health issues for women living with HIV, the future of PWN-USA and what keeps her motivated in the fight against the virus.

Tell us about PWN-USA and your work.

Over the last 30 years, the epidemic has become a lot more feminized, racialized and impoverished. As a result, 28 very diverse women living with HIV from all over the country founded PWN-USA in 2008. The women were young and old, cisgender and transgender, as well as non-native English speakers.

Our four-part strategy consists of eliminating stigma, building leadership, mobilizing advocates and creating policy change. We work to eliminate stigma through media accountability work, and producing communications that centralize women living with HIV as the experts on their own lives.

8 POZ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 poz.com

We build leadership with trainings all over the country in person, online and over the phone. We also provide technical assistance for leaders, as well as support and nurture them. We mobilize through strategy sharing, organizing campaigns and increasing our focus on regional organizing. We also do advocacy in coalition with other groups.

Why did PWN-USA become an independent organization?

When PWN-USA was founded, Women Organized to Respond to Life-threatening Diseases (WORLD) agreed to be a structural umbrella to support our launch. WORLD has a long history of being a pioneer for women with HIV. We were very proud to be a part of that.

It was always the vision that PWNUSA would be its own independent autonomous entity. We worked hard for the first four and a half years to get to the point where we felt ready to take that step. In early 2013, we were excited to become our own organization.

COURTESY OF PWN-USA

SISTER SOLIDARITY

We have our own board of directors that is entirely made up of women with HIV. The people we employ are accountable to our mission and our constituents.

We have more flexibility to focus on our mission creating sustainable solutions for women living with HIV on the policy level, but also on the practical level.

What did you learn from your sexual and reproductive health survey?

As part of a project to look at the whole landscape of sexual and reproductive rights of women living with HIV in the United States, we released a policy scan and literature review and conducted original research. We surveyed nearly 200 women around the country with questions nobody else was really asking.

When we reviewed the literature, we found that when anybody studies the sex lives of women living with HIV, it’s mostly in the context of preventing vertical or horizontal transmission [i.e., mother to child or woman to partner].

Nobody’s asking things like how does HIV impact the way you feel about your body, choosing partners and negotiating prevention.

For example, we asked respondents if providers had mentioned viral suppression as a prevention strategy. Although 96 percent of respondents were in care and 80 percent of them were on antiretrovirals, many of those virally suppressed, over half of them had not been told. You have to wonder how engagement and the care continuum might look if that was information people were consistently getting.

HECTOR EMANUEL

What are your group’s future goals?

We went through an extensive strategic planning process in 2013. We listened to our constituents, stakeholders and allies—while still centralizing it around women with HIV—to determine our plans for the next two years.

You can expect to see an increased focus on supporting organizing on the state and local level. We’ve done a lot of federal advocacy over the last few years, but we realized that our politics are local in many ways. There are so many important issues, including HIV crimi-

nalization, playing out state by state. We are going to be increasing technical assistance, tools and resources for state and local advocates.

Looking forward, we realized the work we do is very intersectional. The lives of people living with HIV are multidimensional, and it’s critical to move beyond HIV. In the next few years, we will increase participation on issues related to reproductive justice and economic justice, making sure the HIV community is more represented.

We’ll continue to focus on how we can address the intersectional issue of trauma and HIV for women. The rate of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among women living with HIV is about 30 percent, which is about six times the

Naina Khanna

2003 and 2004, I was active with the League of Pissed Off Voters. We lost, but I was part of founding the group, which still works to build power among young people of color in the electoral process.

I was an activist, but I was pretty silent around my HIV in the first few years after my diagnosis.

I had asked to get tested for HIV twice before I was actually tested. I was told I didn’t need a test, and that was a common thing I heard about women and testing. When I first was told I needed to get on medication, I asked about my options if I wanted to get pregnant. The treatment advocate didn’t have the information I needed.

After I got involved in WORLD and their community of women living with

“We want a world where women with HIV are valued and where our rights are upheld.”

PTSD rate for all women. I suspect those rates could potentially be higher for LGBT folks living with the virus or for older HIV-positive people.

We’ll also continue to do media accountability work that we’re calling the “Stamp Out Stigma” campaign to address instances of HIV stigma in the media. We’ll be partnering to build a rapid response network of people prepared to address those instances.

We will be holding our first national advocacy leadership summit for women living with HIV. It will be held in the South but will be for women nationwide to come up with concrete tools and provide trainings on specific skills to help build advocacy capacity.

How did you get involved in HIV/AIDS advocacy?

I was diagnosed with HIV in 2002. In

HIV, I started to understand that these experiences were all too common.

What keeps you motivated in your work?

I work with the most badass and fierce group of women I have ever known. I have so much respect for every single one of them. They inspire me every day to not just keep in the work but to do it better, to do more or to do it differently.

We want a world where women with HIV are valued, where there is justice for everyone with or vulnerable to HIV, and where our rights are upheld. As long as there are things like criminalization laws and discrimination of any kind against people with HIV, as long as there is gender inequality or there is violence, there will be a need to continue the work.

The struggle for justice has to place the experiences of people at the center of solutions. ■

poz.com JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 POZ 9

POZ PLANET

BY TRENTON STRAUBE

Khafre Abif edited and contributed to the anthology.

LIKE A PRAYER

Soulful poems, psalms and affirmations for those living with HIV Encouraging words and inspiration abound in this anthology edited by Khafre Abif. You’ll also encounter anger and activism, poetry, psalms and prayers, spoken-word rants, witty rhymes, rejection and acceptance, romance and sex, Spanish verse and even a letter to Santa. At a whopping 500-plus pages—don’t worry, most entries are a single page of verse— Cornbread, Fish and Collard Greens: Prayers, Poems & Affirmations for People Living with HIV/AIDS provides what Abif calls “a quilt of words to cover the hearts, minds and souls of people living with HIV/AIDS.” Many contributors are well-known wordsmiths; Abif gathered others from calls for submissions on social media.

(A quick shout-out: He’s currently looking for works from transgender

voices as well as HIV-positive women and heterosexual men for future publications.) Not all Cornbread contributors are black or living with the virus. But collectively they give voice to the epidemic, Abif says. A former librarian who now works with ONE Life of Pittsburgh and the Georgia HIV Prevention Community Planning Group, Abif has been “thriving” with HIV for 24 years and is the father of two college-age sons. He’s also a writer.

“The anthology speaks freedom from shame, stigma and alienation,” Abif explains. “It says that we will not allow anyone else to tell our story for us. We are more than capable of speaking our own truth.” Indeed, the proof is in the pudding, or in this case, the Cornbread, Fish and Collard Greens.

Also add to your reading list New ‘Journal of the Plague Year’…Living and Working with Veterans with AIDS by T. Namaya, RN, D.Sci. It’s the memoir of a male nurse working on the AIDS ward of an early ’90s New York City veterans hospital, where most patients are black and Latino. The tales unfold as bite-size daily journal entries that add up to a spare, Zen-like and poetic report from the front lines.

14 POZ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 poz.com

Here’s a lovely Valentine: A successful pilot program that allows gay male couples to receive HIV counseling and testing together has been adopted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which will train counselors and expand the testing program nationwide—including to straight couples too.

Developed by Emory University’s Patrick Sullivan, PhD, and Rob Stephenson, PhD, with help from the MAC AIDS Fund, the aptly titled Testing Together is important because as much as two-thirds of new infections among men who have sex with men (MSM) come from their primary partners.

“This makes sense,” Sullivan explains, “because you have sex more often with your main partner, and gay men are more likely to have anal sex and less likely to use condoms with their main partner than a causal partner.”

What’s more, counseling can help couples navigate other thorny issues, such as HIV disclosure and sex outside the relationship.

Surely Cupid would approve.

(ABIF) COURTESY OF KHAFRE ABIF/DUANE CRAMER; (GROOMS/RIBBON) THINKSTOCK

MORE GAY COUPLES CAN TEST TOGETHER!

POZ STORIES: Erin Gingrichh Growing up in Yuma, Arizona, Erin Gingrich led a seemingly charmed life.

A gifted classical pianist, both smart and beautiful, she was crowned Miss Arizona in 1996 and then competed in the Miss America Pageant. Afterward, when she started school in Phoenix, her deep-seated issues of self-worth and depression took hold. The result was addiction and then, in 2010, a stay at an in-patient drug treatment center where she learned she has HIV (Gingrich is also coinfected with the hepatitis C virus). “I thought I was receiving my

death sentence,” she recalls. “I now know that was actually the moment I was blessed with a new life.”

Today, Gingrich is proactive about her health; she’s a top fundraiser for AIDS Walk Phoenix; and she speaks openly and honestly about her status. “I believe the more HIV is talked about,” she says, “the more we can chip away at the social stigma attached to it.” During the final night of the Miss Arizona 2012 Pageant, she shared her story as a symbol of hope. What could possibly be more beautiful?

To read more about Gingrich and other POZ Stories, or to tell your own tale of empowerment, visit poz.com/stories.

(GINGRICH) COURTESY OF ERIN GINGRICH; (HIV EQUAL) COURTESY OF HIV EQUAL/THOMAS EVANS; (TREAT AND GEORGIE) COURTESY OF THE SPERANZA FOUNDATION

THE AIDS WALK, WITH A CANE AND CAMERAS

STATUS SYMBOLS

The “HIV Equal” testing campaign includes all.

Everyone, regardless of their HIV status, can work to end stigma and promote testing. That’s the message behind “HIV Equal,” a new multimedia campaign launched by Connecticut-based World Health Clinicians (WHC), with design work by Project Runway star Jack Mackenroth and photography by Thomas Evans. The concept is that HIV Equal will travel across the country, offering HIV tests to participants and then photographing them with the “HIV=” logo on their body; all models then complete the caption “STATUS: _ _ _ _ _” with a personal word or phrase. They don’t have to disclose their status. The campaign was launched with a host of familiar faces, including activist Peter Staley (pictured above), Broadway stars Nick Adams and Billy Porter, drag queen Bianca Del Rio and U.S. Congressman Jim Himes (D-Conn.). “But we plan to include everyone,” Mackenroth says, “since HIV affects us all.”

Hot Dates / February 7: National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day

Joseph Kibler was born with HIV, which hindered his physical development.

“Doctors didn’t think I’d ever live beyond 4 years old, let alone walk,” he recalls. Kibler proved them wrong. “Over the course of 24 years, I went from a wheelchair, to walker, to crutches to cane.”

His triumphant spirit is captured in Walk On, a documentary that covers his efforts to complete the 6.2 miles of AIDS Walk Los Angeles. (His muscles atrophy quickly, so he undergoes much training.) “I wanted to show people my age that HIV is a disease that still exists, that it can change the course of your life and that we are not invincible,” he says of the film’s purpose, adding that perseverance is the key message. “Many things in life will come at you, but how you deal with them is really what makes the difference.”

While you’re cuing up your winter film list, add After the Fall: HIV Grows Up. It’s a documentary about the pediatric AIDS epidemic in early ’90s Romania, where more than 12,000 children and infants contracted HIV from unscreened blood under a totalitarian Executive producer Communist regime. Thanks to Kathleen Treat and Georgie modern meds and a political revolution, many of these youth (such as Georgie) remain alive and are now young adults—and the subject of this inspiring story.

poz.com JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 POZ 15

POZ PLANET

BY TRENTON STRAUBE

OUT IN THE OPEN Picture this: two muscular black men, shirtless, in a romantic embrace on the beach. Now picture that image on a billboard above Crenshaw Boulevard in a predominantly black neighborhood of South Los Angeles, printed with the accompanying text: Our love is worth protecting. We get tested.

The image literally stopped traffic.

“We had guys calling our office and crying, ‘I had to pull over and get out of my car. It’s amazing. It’s about time,’” recalls Jeffrey King, founder and CEO of In The Meantime Men, the LA advocacy group behind the campaign, which received financial support from AIDS Healthcare Foundation. When the billboard first went up, nearly two years ago, King also fielded a lot of concerned calls, “primarily from black women of all ages and a few ministers.” Some quoted scripture. Others were concerned the images might turn children gay.

“What the billboards did was help create a conversation,” King says, noting that most dialogue was respectful. “Our goals were to address the issue of HIV in the black community and the issues of homophobia and HIV stigma.” To that end, a new billboard has gone up, simply picturing the word “homophobia” with an X marked through it.

Nearby West Hollywood may be a national gay mecca, but most black same-gender-loving guys go back in the closet when they return home to South Los Angeles, King explains. “It’s common that black gay men want to be a part of their community and their churches. Black gay men will say, ‘I am black first.’” As a result, he says, black issues such as supporting Obama or Trayvon Martin override gay issues like homophobia and marriage equality.

From the top: In The Meantime Men founder and CEO Jeffrey King plus two of the group’s billboards

In The Meantime Men focuses primarily on holistic health issues facing local black gay men,, but its billboard campaign has gone national, appearing during the popular Sizzle Miami black circuit party and during ing Atlanta’s Pride events. “The more visible isible we become,

OH BABY, BABY! Salt-N-Pepa snowboards help p Lifebeat.

Burton Snowboards teamed up with Lifebeat, Music Fights HIV/AIDS /AIDS to create a women’s snowboard and prevention campaign that willl p-p-push it real good to the youth on the slopes. (Lifebeat educates aboutt the virus, and the snowboards bring awareness to the cause.) Why choose e an ’80s hip-hop duo for a graphic design? “Simply put, Salt-N-Pepa are badass,” says Burton president Donna Carpenter. “So working with them on one of the most badass boards on our line, the Lip-Stick Restricted, was as the perfect fit.” Now that’s keepin’ it real.

20 POZ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 poz.com

the more integrated we become,” King notes, adding that “at the end of the day, we want to be visible and accepted in our own community.”

(KING, BILLBOARDS) COURTESY OF IN THE MEANTIME MEN/RONALD JACKSON; (SNOWBOARDS) COURTESY OF BURTON SNOWBOARDS

An LA advocacy group gives visibility to black gay men and HIV.

VOICES

THE BEST BLOGS AND OPINIONS FROM POZ.COM

REMEMBERING DENNIS DANIEL The POZ staff pay tribute to our late friend Dennis Daniel, who helped launch the magazine and stayed with the company until his death. The following originally appeared as the blog post “Remembering Dennis Daniel.”

JENNIFER MORTON

T

he POZ family lost a beloved member when Dennis Daniel, 54, died Saturday, November 23, after a battle with cancer.

He passed away peacefully at his home in New York City, surrounded by his family and his partner Ken Lundie.

It is no exaggeration to say that anyone who ever worked at POZ magazine knew and adored Dennis—and not just because he was the guy who handed out the paychecks.

On our masthead, Dennis is listed as the company’s comptroller. But he was so much more than a numbers and human resources person, though he excelled at both areas by remaining a rock-solid confidant and listener and by keeping the office running smoothly.

Importantly, he was our resident historian, having worked with founder Sean Strub before the magazine launched until now; as such he supplied a wealth of insight and information. He always remained up-to-date on emerging trends and topics (especially those related to theater).

He often pitched story ideas and contributed his own bylines and blog posts. And he was instrumental in managing the POZ Personals, patiently assisting anyone who had questions or concerns about their profiles.

Yet all that sounds so formal and proper. In truth, Dennis was the life of the party. Generous and kind, Dennis was very much a fun-loving spirit that brightened each workday. He was the one who, with his partner in crime managing editor Jennifer Morton, planned all the company parties, decorated the offices for the holidays, and brought that extra sparkle to every luncheon meeting and birthday celebration (and let it be noted that nobody ever rocked a sparkly vest like Dennis). He was the colleague who made work fun. And when we were off the clock, he knew how to have even more fun.

Born and raised in Louisiana, Dennis loved all things Mardi Gras. He always insisted we celebrate the holiday in the office, complete with colorful beads and a King cake—a traditional treat that Dennis was happy to explain to any novices (he was always regaling us with historical facts and tidbits).

Dennis also loved theater, having received an MFA in theater from Brooklyn College in 1988. He wrote the book for the stage production of An Evening With the Gershwins, Hosted by Rex Reed and directed a revival of The Normal Heart by Larry Kramer. He also was instrumental in putting on several POZ-related theatrical fundraisers.

Cherry Grove on Fire Island was like a second home for Dennis. In typical Dennis fashion, he was the housemother of his house each summer, organizing the parties, settling any squabbles between roommates, and in general being sure that everyone had a wonderful time.

Dennis Daniel at the Fire Island ferry dock in 2007

He was the housemother for POZ, too. If we needed help navigating paperwork or personal problems, or if we just wanted to gossip about last night’s eye candy on True Blood, we all knew his office door—and his heart—was always open for us.

The loss of someone so pivotal and generous is staggering. We’re still processing it. But we know he would want us to continue with the work of POZ and HIV/AIDS advocacy and that he’d want us to find joy and fun in that process. And so we will. Thanks to him, we have a good example to follow. Rest in peace, Dennis.

—The POZ Staff blogs.poz.com/staff

poz.com JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 POZ 21

CARE AND TREATMENT

BY BENJAMIN RYAN

GLOWING REPORTS ON GLOBAL AIDS

A flurry of good news has global AIDS advocates celebrating advances that seemed unimaginable a decade ago. Specifically, the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) reports that new HIV infections have dropped by a third since 2001, to an estimated 2.3 million in 2012. The infection incidence among children has plummeted 52 percent during the same period, to 260,000 new infections.

After hitting a peak in 2005, AIDS-related deaths have fallen 30 percent after the massive international push to expand access to HIV therapy.

AVAC, the HIV treatment and prevention advocacy group, has conducted an analysis showing that many hard-hit countries have reached a vital tipping point in fighting the disease, in which the number of people acquiring HIV each year is smaller than the number put on treatment. In the winning column are 13 nations such as Rwanda, Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa and Ethiopia.

“This is wonderful news,” says Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “It shows that the system is working.”

However, he warns that “it’s not time for a victory lap,” stressing that such gains will not endure “if you don’t continue to push.”

Case-in-point, the AVAC analysis found that the average infection/ treatment ratio across all nations is still just below the tipping point, dragged down by Nigeria, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, India, Burundi, Kenya, Cameroon and Uganda.

Also, the most recent Global Burden of Disease Study identified large national HIV epidemics in which AIDS death rates have no indication of abating, including those in Russia, Ukraine and the Congo.

26 POZ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 poz.com

Regardless of the outcome of the troubled Obamacare rollout, a key uninsured population will remain out in the cold: the very poor living in Republican-dominated states.

At press time, 25 states, largely controlled by GOP governors, had exercised their U.S. Supreme Court–validated right to opt out of the health care law’s expansion of Medicaid coverage.

Obamacare provides subsidies to help make private health plans more affordable for those living between 100 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level.

Anyone making less than 138 percent FPL qualifies for expanded Medicaid. But without expanded Medicaid in a particular state, there will remain a gaping hole in coverage for anyone making less than 100 percent FPL ($11,490 for an individual and $19,530 for a family of three) but more than the income ceilings for traditional Medicaid coverage, which are often rock bottom in those 25 states.

“The Medicaid expansion is the game changer that the HIV community fought for to expand access to care for low-income people living with HIV,” says Amy Killelea, associate director of health care access at the National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors. “And in states that do not expand, not only are we leaving low-income people living with HIV out of reform, we are widening already significant geographic health care disparities.”

The Deep South has proved uniformly stubborn in its refusal to expand Medicaid, a fact that is particularly troubling to HIV advocates such as Killelea, considering the disproportionate impact of the epidemic in that region.

(BOTH IMAGES) THINKSTOCK

Red States Say No to Medicaid Expansion

New HIV Replication Pathway Discovered

(COCAINE) THINKSTOCK; (FISH) ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/JUANMONINO; (FLAG) THINKSTOCK

HIV is a particularly sloppy virus: It fails to integrate its genetic code into the DNA of human immune cells up to 99 percent of the time. So most often the virus is left in limbo outside the cellular DNA. Researchers have long assumed that this unintegrated virus cannot reproduce. But a controversial new study challenges such wisdom, finding that in the right conditions unintegrated virus still may have the capacity to copy itself.

David N. Levy, PhD, an associate professor at the New York University College of Dentistry who led the study, says his team’s findings suggest one means by which the virus might endure even in the face of antiretroviral therapy. Future research, he says, could hone in on this replication method in order to develop tactics for viral eradication.

Levy cautions that he has thus far only conducted preliminary laboratory studies.

“And while we think that it may be likely that the virus can do this in people,” he says “it certainly needs to be followed up.”

COCAINE FUELS HIV Cocaine may raise the likelihood of acquiring HIV and also fuel the virus’ spread from cell to cell. After exposing what are known as quiescent, or inactive, CD4 cells to cocaine, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles put them in contact with HIV. While these immune cells are typically resistant to HIV, the investigators found that just three days of drug exposure was enough to make them more susceptible to infection. The drug accomplished this by stimulating a

LOW VIRAL LOAD STILL A THREAT HIV-positive people taking antiretrovirals who have an ongoing detectable viral load may be at a raised risk for treatment failure even when the levels are as low as 50 to 199. U.S. treatment guidelines state that there is no evidence that this viral load range poses such a risk. But a recent Canadian study found that the 50 to 199 window slightly more than doubles the risk of treatment failure when compared with undetectable viral loads. (Standard viral load tests cannot detect levels below 50.)

Claudie Laprise, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the division of cancer epidemiology at McGill University in Montreal, who led the study while at the Université de Montréal, says that much more research is needed to confirm her findings. And while acknowledging that “there are a lot of clinical factors to consider before changing” HIV medications, she says that physicians should still consider low-level viral replication as part of the overall risk of potential treatment failure and include the factor in their clinical decision making.

pair of receptors on the cells’ surface, similar to the way cocaine latches onto brain cells and spurs its psychoactive effects. In turn, these oncedormant, newly infected CD4s could set to work churning out more virus to go infect a pool of infectible cells that had now swelled thanks to the drug.

The study’s senior author, Dimitrios Vatakis, PhD, an assistant professor of medicine at UCLA, cautioned that his team’s research is limited by the fact that it was conducted in a lab

setting and that three days of cocaine exposure doesn’t necessarily reflect that of the typical user.

But he says its findings raise important questions about the role cocaine may play in driving the epidemic.

“Drugs on their own,” Vatakis explains, “can create the conditions that will allow for an infection to be more productive.”

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RESEARCH NOTES

(MAGIC AND TEST TUBES) THINKSTOCK; (HAND/CODE) ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/MARKGABRENYA; (REVOLVING DOOR) ISTOCKPHOTO.COM/DNY59

PREVENTION

Possible Microbicide Tricks HIV

A new potential microbicide element is quite the sneaky little arsenal. Researchers have theorized that it may fool HIV into thinking it’s latching onto a human immune cell, prompting the virus to eject its DNA and then die. Called a dual action virolytic entry inhibitor, or DAVEI, this molecule is engineered from parts of other molecules that, when put together, recreates the environment that HIV experiences right before it infects a cell. One segment of the DAVEI is a fusion mechanism that interacts with the viral membrane. A second segment connects to the sugar coating over the spikes on HIV’s surface that attach to human cells.

Consequently, the virus, which ordinarily would first fuse with a human cell before infecting it, thinks it is about to infect a healthy cell, although there is nothing there to infect. So it releases its DNA harmlessly and meets its demise.

TREATMENT

Antifungal Agent Fights HIV

The topical antifungal agent ciclopirox wipes out HIV in laboratory studies by causing the infected cells to effectively commit suicide, and it does not lead to viral rebound after the therapy is stopped. One of the reasons that HIV manages to survive in the body even with antiretroviral therapy is because the virus blocks cells’ natural process of ending their own lives in the event that they are damaged or infected. Examining how ciclopirox reacted with HIV-infected cells in the lab, scientists found that the antifungal fought the virus by suppressing certain HIV genes and also interfering with the cells’ mitochondria— thus undoing HIV’s ability to stop the suicide process.

Good news is that uninfected cells and tissues were not affected by the treatment.

Since ciclopirox is already FDA-approved, future human trials should run at a faster clip than with an investigatory drug. There’s a possibility that the drug may prove useful as a topical application to reduce sexual transmission of the virus.

BY BENJAMIN RYAN

CURE

CCR5 Gene Therapy Milestone

For the first time, scientists have proved that it is possible to engineer immune cells to control HIV for an extended period of time without the need for ongoing antiretroviral (ARV) therapy. The genetic therapy in question focuses on the CCR5 coreceptors on the surface of CD4 cells, onto which HIV latches so it can infect the cell. Researchers at Sangamo BioSciences removed blood cells from people with HIV who were born with one non-functional version of the two genes that express the CCR5 coreceptors. After knocking out the other CCR5-expressing gene, the researchers reinfused the genetically engineered cells into the body. Three out of seven study participants who qualified for the evaluation of the study achieved an undetectable viral load during an interruption of their ARVs—two of them for a transient period of time, and one for 20 weeks at last report. The treatment also elevated CD4 levels and led to a drop in a key indication of the viral reservoir.

CONCERNS

Worse Outcomes From Multiple Clinics

Those who receive treatment for HIV at numerous clinics, instead of at just one, are less likely to be on antiretrovirals (ARVs) and to have a fully suppressed viral load. Researchers pulled together data from the City of Philadelphia Department of Public Health regarding nearly 13,000 people receiving HIV care at 26 Ryan White—funded HIV clinics in the city between 2008 and 2010. Sixty-nine percent of those getting care from multiple clinics were on ARVs, compared with 83 percent of those doing one-stop shopping for their care. The respective figures for those reaching an undetectable viral load were 68 percent versus 78 percent. People who got their care from multiple clinics were more likely to be black, younger, female, either uninsured or receiving public insurance and in care for less than a year.

poz.com JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 POZ 31

POZ FOUNDER SEAN STRUB TELLS ALL

B

EARING WITNESS TO THE AIDS CATAStrophe of the 1980s is not for sissies. Still, we survivors now recognize, in our last decades of life, that our firsthand testimony may have historical meaning or, at least, save our dead from oblivion. Thus, we record.

Some recent popular films have recorded AIDS history as the triumph of ACT UP and TAG, casting the gay community’s awesome immersion in death in an inspirational light. The community’s response has been favorable, almost giddy. Portrayed as heroes, we applaud ourselves.

Sean Strub’s new memoir, Body Counts, is a rebuke to this self-regarding version of history. Sean has been known as a major figure in the movement for gay and PWA (people with AIDS) rights for three decades. That is a very long run and a testament to his phenomenal drive and commitment. After founding POZ in 1994, he felt duty bound to fellow PWAs to reflect deeply on the meaning of AIDS, activism and survival.

Body Counts is rich with these reflections.

He grew up in Iowa City, the precociously confident and industrious son of a locally prominent family. We learn in Body Counts that at a young age he was given to understand great things were expected of him. Being gay and getting AIDS, of course, were not on the list.

The memoir opens in Washington, DC, where Sean, 17, has arrived to pursue his passion for politics. It is characteristic that he has already talked his way into the

32 POZ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 poz.com

center of the action, even if he is merely operating an elevator for members of Congress in the U.S. Capitol.

As for gay life, the capital may be one enormous preStonewall closet, but Sean, a bright young thing with black Irish beauty, is much in demand. But realizing that no queer could have a future in national politics, he moves in 1979 to the Big Apple to live as an openly gay man. He meets as many famous people as possible— another Sean characteristic—and is soon taking acid at Studio 54, doing his college homework at the St. Marks Baths and getting infected with HIV. He is 21.

Great expectations have long motivated him to make a dollar while making a difference. In the early 1980s he created one of the first mass-market gay fundraising operations and earned large sums for the decade’s burgeoning gay and AIDS groups, including ACT UP. There he also found a home for his fury at AIDS. This once-devout Catholic’s description in Body Counts of taking mass inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral at the Stop the Church action is an exquisite rendering of the act of protest as a spiritual experience.

Every AIDS memoir is a shrine. Sean pays tender tribute to many diverse friends he has lost, but we learn that Stephen Gendin—an indescribable independent spirit—holds a special claim on Sean’s heart. Stephen was a widely celebrated treatment and prevention activist from 1987, when ACT UP started, to his death at 34 in 2000. He and Sean met selling ACT UP T-shirts for the fundraising committee.

BILL WADMAN

INTRODUCTION BY WALTER ARMSTRONG EXCERPT FROM MEMOIR BY SEAN STRUB

In his memoir, Strub shares memories of Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Vito Russo, Keith Haring and Bill Clinton among many other celebrities, friends and adversaries.

Over the next 12 years they became business partners, comrades in arms and closer than brothers. Stephen’s electrifying columns in POZ, most notably in praise of (safe) barebacking, attracted controversy and even censure. But Stephen was recording his own testimony from inside the AIDS maelstrom, mining the deep vein of radical sexual ethics in the bedrock of gay liberation.

Sean’s account of his despondence after Stephen’s death is harrowing. Fierce emotions accompanied the outrageous fortune of witnessing the destruction of almost half of our generation’s young gay men. But what may be most striking about Body Counts is Sean’s unflagging optimism and its embodiment in action.

Every venture is an adventure, including his near death in 1995. Body Counts ends after Sean has launched the Sero Project, classic self-empowerment for the “viral underclass” criminalized by unjust HIV-specific laws.

How he keeps his idealism alive is this memoir’s message. But Body Counts has another message, one intended to disrupt the ACT UPism dominating the current AIDS accounting. Sean has long championed the first PWAs who came out in 1982, who sounded the alarm about promiscuity while handing out condoms at bathhouses, and who stared down stigma, defied death sentences, shared support for survival and, above all, drew up The Denver Principles, the original bill of PWA rights and responsibilities. But Sean’s case against ACT UPism is not simply that the earlier pioneers deserve more credit. He also asks whether the emergence of ACT UP may have aborted the potential birth of a more radical lifesaving activism.

His speculations are too specific to summarize here. They turn on the dramatic differences in strategy practiced by the two groups to speed drugs into bodies. ACT UP was focused externally, confronting federal agencies and pharma. By contrast, early activism was focused internally, expanding from PWA rights to prevention, treatment and research.

This vision, partly spearheaded by Joseph Sonnabend, MD, depended on a self-confident gay community, with its massive number of motivated PWAs as leverage, negotiating control of the AIDS agenda. By contrast, ACT UP exploited the dominant institutions’ levers of power to win a place, for a few, at the table.

Unsettling insights are the reward for exploring this alternate reading of history. As a PWA, Sean has always rejected the label of victim. Now, as a survivor bearing witness, he rejects what he views as the equally offensive label of hero. For those survivors who wish to add their firsthand testimony to the growing record, Body Counts leaves no doubt that this is the necessary point of departure.

Walter Armstrong was arrested 14 times with ACT UP and did almost 10 years at POZ, including eight as editor-in-chief.

34 POZ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 poz.com

M

OST OF MY LIFE, I have been n interested in both business and d activism, even when it has been n morally and financially trickyy navigating between them. The m idd le space I st radd led sometimes left others unsure if I was fish or fowl, activist or capitalist.

Business partners occasionally questioned whether my decisions were in the interest of 1 business or to advance my political agenda.

Some activists resented a for-profit business within the movement, and when I was raising money for GMHC and ACT UP I was criticized—generally ll behind b hi d my back—for “exploiting,” even “getting rich on,” activists and people with AIDS. Even though that criticism rarely came from PWAs, I was sensitive to it. I tried to take pride in what our work made possible, rather than feel the pain of personal criticism.

It was my mortality that gave me the freedom to take financial risks and invest in the LGBT and HIV/AIDS communities.

Vito Russo used to tell me that to be a successful lifelong activist, I needed to have some financial security; he said he regretted not having focused more on that goal when he was young.

I’ve also had friends, including some who are affluent, who have supported the causes and projects I’ve been involved with over the years, as both donors and investors. In retrospect, I think “campaigning”—whether for myself, others or a greater good—is my natural mode of being.

I’M PROUD THAT many people with HIV and gay men learned practical, detailed information they needed to stay alive from the 12 million fundraising letters that my firm produced for AIDS-related clients in the late 1980s and early ’90s. Those fundraising letters reached more gay men than any gay community publication at the time; for some who didn’t read LGBT media, or live in big cities, our fundraising letters were an important connection to a community.

With the fundraising business, the card packs, producing the play The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, as well as POZ and other enterprises, I used for-profit endeavors to pursue a political agenda. My life had become consumed with a mission rather than a quest for a career, always shadowed by the likelihood that I would die of AIDS. Once the epidemic had been around me, but not of me.

Then it became of—and in—me, though I fought to keep it from defining me. By the early ’90s, it was impossible to separate any part of my life from HIV. There were few distinctions between my personal and professional lives. It is no surprise some found that concerning.

The epidemic, and specter of my own death, was a constant presence, precluding any long-term plans beyond the next demonstration, fundraiser or funeral, but at the same time it also energized me with purpose and projects. Ironically, as my health was starting to fail, I was still starting new businesses.

AIDS spawned a “viatical settlement” industry that speculated with the life insurance policies of those who were defined as terminally ill and expected to die soon. Instead of the policy’s

2

[1] Sean Strub as a young man with his family in Iowa.

[2] Strub with members of ACT UP after they put a giantt condom over the home of Jesse Helms. [3] His first arrest at a protest was his last in a suit and tie.

[4] Speaking with Yoko Ono after being one of the first people on the scene of John Lennon’s murder.

[5] Posing in front of a billboard during his campaign to become the first openly HIV-positive person in U.S. Congress.

3

4

COURTESY OF SEAN STRUB

death benefit going to a designated beneficiary off the deceased’s estate, the policyholder could sell itt d while he or she was alive, at a discount calculated o based on expected longevity, and receive the cash to use as they pleased.

I had two policies, one from Chubb and anotherr issued by New York Life, with a combined death benefit of $450,000. The viatical company required my medical records for a doctor to analyze, an extensive questionnaire, and a visit to its doctor before 5 it made me an offer. I sold the policies for $345,000 and used the proceeds, along with my savings and one credit card advances, to launch POZ. Not everyone close to me thought it was such a great idea; there was concern from friends and family I was suffering AIDS-related dementia.

THE IDEA OF a glossy lifestyle magazine for people with AIDS was not universally well received. But I was sure that as soon as we produced it, the doubters and naysayers would understand. Before he read the first issue, Leonard Goldstein, a gay neocon political columnist for the New York Native, said that people with AIDS starting a magazine called POZ was like Holocaust victims starting a magazine called GAZ. A joke making the ACT UP rounds was that POZ would feature fashion spreads of what to wear at your own funeral.

I initially titled the magazine Life Plus, but when I got a letter from an attorney for Time-Life claiming it violated their trademark, we went back to the drawing board. One day I was talking with my friend Matt Levine about someone we’d both recently met; he inquired about the person’s HIV status, asking, “Is he a pozzie?” “That’s it: POZ!” I said. “We’ll call the magazine POZ!”

Initially, the name required explanation, as people didn’t understand that it was a less clinical way of saying “HIV positive,” as well as a double entendre for thinking or acting positively, which was a big part of the magazine’s message. The word “poz” has since entered the vernacular.

Our initial business model relied on a mix of subscriptions and advertising; this, too, raised doubts. One trade publication made a crack about readers not living long enough to renew subscriptions. Sam Watters, owner of The Advocate, told Ad Age that he doubted the prospects for POZ: “What advertiser would want to advertise in a magazine on such a grim topic?”

I envisioned POZ as a general-interest magazine reflecting the way we lived our lives with AIDS—pursuing careers, falling in love, raising our children, everything life entails— not just the death and dying that defi ned us in mainstream media. POZ would look at the entire world—politics, economics, culture, fashion and arts—through the prism of the epidemic. We weren’t afraid of humor, either.

poz.com JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 POZ 35

We would skip the insider jargon of treatment wonks and the stereotypical victimization of people with HIV. Activist rhetoric had created a vocabulary that mapped out the political dimensions of the epidemic as a function of homophobia and created a language for people with HIV to identify with community, empowerment, resistance and pride. The urgency of the epidemic had forced an unprecedented level of honesty when talking about sex, within the LGBT community and society at large, which was reflected in POZ. POZ also translated complicated science and factors that affected treatment decision-making into messages our readers could understand, even while that science was changing rapidly.

In 1994, the year POZ started, the Food and Drug Administration was still approving HIV medications for monotherapy (a single drug treatment), but within two years, triple-combination therapy (three different antiretroviral drugs) was the gold standard and monotherapy was considered dangerous.

We tried to tell the story of the epidemic in all its complexities, through the experience of those with HIV. And we would do so in an attractive, engaging and hopeful format—on glossy paper.

TO LAUNCH POZ, I knew I needed help. I scoured my Rolodex and reached out to a wide-ranging roster of contributors, especially those who had articulated or depicted the rich and sophisticated discourse the AIDS community had created in the culture to deal with the epidemic.

We encouraged them to write about what interested them the most. Some were well established, even famous; others were unknown, and we provided their first byline in a national outlet.

Writers such as David Feinberg, Kiki Mason, Scott O’Hara and others took uncommon risks and expressed powerful emotions, as they knew they were approaching the end of their lives.

[My then-partner] Xavier Morales had moved in with me early in 1993, and he was integral to the magazine’s launch in 1994, creating and maintaining the initial database of subscribers and contributing to editorial and marketing discussions. Calls to the magazine rang on our bedside phone after hours, so we took subscription calls late at night, but often there were calls from people newly diagnosed, concerned parents or frightened partners wanting information or someone to talk to.

We sometimes went to bed while staff members were working late into the night. As the company grew, we took over the entire building—three floors plus the sleeping loft— as well as part of an adjacent building and a small space around the corner on 14th Street [in Manhattan].

There was little division in those days between the private lives Xavier and I led and our work with the magazine; the same was true for many of our staff members. There was never any concern about people showing up late or leaving early. For the next several years, nothing else in our lives matched the urgency and importance of what we believed we were doing with POZ. WHEN THE FIRST issue of POZ hit newsstands and mailboxes around the country in April 1994, I was sick with a mild case of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP). The stress leading up to the launch caught up with me, and I was confined to my bed.

But that didn’t lessen my excitement and pride in our first issue.

36 POZ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 poz.com

Kevin Sessums, Vanity Fair’s top celebrity interviewer at the time, wrote the cover story, profiling Ty Ross, a fetching young gay man with HIV. What made Ty a cover candidate was his famous grandfather Barry Goldwater, the conservative 1964 Republican nominee for U.S. president.

We flew Kevin to Los Angeles to spend several days with Ty, and they hit it off so well that they became intimate with each other. Sessums, who was HIV negative, wrote beautifully about the encounter, using it to explore the common but mostly irrational fear of having sex with people with HIV. Kevin was already well known, and Ty’s famously conservative Republican grandfather was as far removed from the popular impression of AIDS as he could be. That, combined with Kevin’s writing and the peculiarity of a magazine for people with a “terminal illness,” made for a perfect media storm. Sexy photos of Ty, taken by Hollywood photographer Greg Gorman, only added to the news appeal.

Kevin was criticized from some quarters for sleeping with his interview subject, but the profile was a masterful firstperson account that I was proud to present. I wanted POZ to directly confront the popular notion that people with HIV should never have sex again after their diagnosis; a profile of someone attractive and detailing his encounter with someone who did not have HIV was perfect.

We also profiled [activist] Tom Keane in that first issue, reflecting on his role at the St. Patrick’s Cathedral demonstration when he “snapped the cracker.” Donna Minkowitz interviewed [Clinton aide] Bob Hattoy about the White House. David Feinberg wrote the first sex column, and David Drake contributed a tribute to [activist] Michael Callen, who had died a few months earlier. Mark Schoofs contributed a media column about coverage of AIDS in The New York Times; he went on to win a Pulitzer Prize for his AIDS coverage in the Village Voice and subsequently covered the epidemic for The Wall Street Journal.

Our first editor, Richard Perez-Feria, was up-and-coming in the industry and recommended to me by Sessums. PerezFeria enlisted veteran magazine designer J.C. Suares, who created a striking visual identity for the magazine, with lush photography and illustration.

When I got sick as the first issue was coming off-press it marked a new phase in my relationship with [my friend] Stephen Gendin. He was taking an ever-growing amount of responsibility in my company, but we had never specifically addressed what would happen in the event that I was incapacitated or died and whether Stephen was a candidate to take over.

When I got PCP, he wrote me an uncharacteristically emotional letter. “I feel as though I’ve been in shock for the last two hours, and my hands haven’t stopped shaking,” he began. “I’m very concerned about you and, although I don’t often express it, I care for you very much…. I want to let you know how happy I’ve been working with you over the last four years. I just can’t imagine working anywhere else.” His letter meant a lot to me, especially hearing that he was there for the long haul. As his commitment became clear, the dynamic between us became more like a partnership.

I got over the PCP in a few weeks and, by early summer, was again working long hours. I thought it unlikely that I

“THE MEDIA RESPONSE [TO POZ] WAS OVERWHELMINGLY POSITIVE.” IVE.”

(THEN) COURTESY OF SEAN STRUB; (NOW) BILL WADMAN

would live to see the magazine to profitability, but I was determined to be around long enough to see it earn respect. I was looking for respect as well: I wanted my work and role as an activist to be as widely recognized as my work as an entrepreneur.

THE MEDIA RESPONSE to the launch wass overwhelmingly positive. Frank Rich, in hiss New York Times column, said POZ was “easily ly as plush as Vanity Fair”and “against all odds, the he only new magazine of the year that leaves me looking forward to the next issue.” POZ became me a player in the national discourse on AIDS, often ten as a watchdog but sometimes as a provocateur. r.

With our skeptical treatment philosophy, we broke news about drug side effects, the emergence of resistant viruses, and the suppression of those developments by drug companies. With our ear to the ground in thee gay community, we were the first national media dia to use the word and report on the “barebacking” phenomenon, cover prevention strategies beyond condoms, and write about the crystal-meth addiction that was fueling a rise in HIV infections. We exposed the public health message that women could easily pass the virus to men as a myth.

Also, by giving visibility to individuals with“star”potential— people with HIV doing groundbreaking work—we helped advance careers in activism, health policy and the arts, and create a new generation of AIDS leadership.

Some critics argued that POZ presented people with HIV in such a positive light—and in such a visually appealing format—that we were“glamorizing”having the disease. Some even accused us of making HIV seem desirable. Others accused us of making the use of condoms less urgent, or leading readers to become less compassionate about people with HIV or less generous in their charitable support.

There was admittedly an inherent dichotomy between empowering people with HIV—letting them know they had full lives to lead—and fear-based HIV-prevention messaging, which heightened stigma and depicted HIV as the worst thing that could possibly happen to a person. Every time we profiled someone with HIV who was good-looking, successful, happy or optimistic, some saw it as undercutting that dire message.

But that criticism seldom came from people with HIV. EDITORIAL MEETINGS WERE the most rewarding part of running the magazine. I wanted to hear different opinions— to learn about the other side of any issue—and I enjoyed the vigorous back-and-forth as we debated editorial priorities.

Sean Strub—then and now.

S

Walter Armstrong, our editor-in-chief e from 1998 to 2005, 2 had been a member of o ACT UP and a veteran of Outweek and QW, two New York gay newsweekly magazines, and had cofounded AIDS Prevention P Action League (APAL) with Stephen. He brought an irreverent yet critical style to the magazine that reflected the rich language that had developed in the culture to cope with AIDS. Walter and I didn’t know each other in ACT UP. We met initially through Stephen, who had hired him as a writer.

We shared similar backgrounds, which strengthened our connection, especially when we discovered that his Haverford college roommate was a childhood friend of mine from Iowa.

But it was our differences that created a complementary balance.

My monthly “S.O.S.” columns [a play on my full name: Sean O’Brien Strub] were made more eloquent and meaningful with Walter’s editing and, in the process, he inspired me to think more critically about the epidemic, the magazine’s responsibility, and our readers’ wants and needs. He has sometimes characterized me as a mentor to him, which I find flattering, but the truth is we had—and continue to have—a mutual mentorship.

He rarely has gotten the credit he deserved for the magazine’s successes, partly because of his innate modesty and distaste for the spotlight, but also because of his HIV-negative status.

Understanding the relationship between people who had HIV and those who did not was at the core of what many found so meaningful, inspiring and even disturbing about POZ. Suares and a number of the editors—Richard PerezFeria, Esther Kaplan, Laura Whitehorn, Lauren Hauptman, Sally Chew, Bob Lederer and others—and business staff central to the magazine’s success, including my sister Megan, were all HIV negative but profoundly affected by AIDS. POZ was a way for people with HIV to get together, in its pages, every month. We did our best to facilitate that magic. ■

poz.com JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 POZ 37

The Reverend Savalas Squire Sr.

Faith, Hope THE BLACK CHURCH TAKES A SEAT AT THE HIV/AIDS TABLE. By: KATE FERGUSON | Photography by: BRYAN REGAN

The Reverend Savalas Squire Sr., an ordained Baptist minister and heterosexual

black man, learned he was HIV positive in 2010. He got the news in a letter from the Red Cross a few weeks after he donated blood at a church-sponsored health fair. With the love and support of his wife, he eventually came to see his diagnosis as an opportunity.

Squire has opened himself and his congregation to a dialogue about God, the church and HIV/AIDS. He preaches against the lack of engagement on the issue among the clergy and their congregations. Like many other African-American faith leaders, he has committed his life and ministry to overcoming HIV stigma and discrimination.

At Gethsemane Hope Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Squire is the music director. He sits at an organ in the one-story church and leads the congregation in song. He also conducts the HIV Hope Project, a collaboration with local churches. “We’re doing workshops and trainings with pastors and congregants to equip them to understand HIV/AIDS so that we can have an intelligent conversation about it,” he says.

When he began his HIV/AIDS ministry, Squire was amazed by how little people knew about the virus. “So many people are just ignorant about the facts associated with HIV, and without those facts, they spread untruths. So many live in fear, and that unnecessarily increases the stigma that we see.”

Another goal of the HIV Hope Project is to connect people living with the virus with a faith community or a specific person or church. “This is to help with the treatment process,” Squire explains, “because so many of us understand the importance of a person being able to live with faith, placed in the context of knowing, just in a simple way, that God still cares and loves them even if they have HIV.”

The intersection of HIV/AIDS with black churches

began more than 30 years ago with some of them mobilizing their congregants. Pernessa Seele was among them.

In the late 1980s, Seele was an immunologist who worked at Brooklyn’s Interfaith Medical Center as well as Harlem Hospital. In the PBS documentary The Age of AIDS, Seele says she was “shocked and disappointed” to see not one pastor from any of the more than 350 churches in Harlem come to the bedsides of those who lay dying at the beginning of the epidemic, even though they were “hungry for prayers.”

“They did not know how to respond to this epidemic that was so wrapped up in sexuality, so wrapped up in drug addiction and all those things that we just don’t talk about in church,” she says. So Seele organized an event called the Week of Prayer for the Healing of AIDS. Her organization The Balm In Gilead flowered out of that opportunity.

The issue progressed slowly until 2007, when the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS (NBLCA) convened leaders from across the country, including African-American faith leaders. The meeting yielded what became The National Black Clergy for the Elimination of HIV/AIDS Act of 2009, a comprehensive piece of legislation created by clergy leaders, along with health officials and politicians, to battle HIV/AIDS in black communities. The U.S. Congress has yet to enact the bill.

During that 2007 gathering, the Reverend Calvin O. Butts, senior pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church in New York

40 POZ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 poz.com

Rev. Squire leads his congregants in song—and inspires them to learn about HIV/AIDS.

City, declared that “the clergy has always been involved” in caring for those affected by the virus, but “people have not been paying enough attention.”

Although an increasing number

of black churches have heeded the call to action, the issue still defies easy solutions for many of them.

“Where [faith leaders] struggled was with what their role should be,” says Shavon L. Arline-Bradley, MPH, the senior director of health programs for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and one of the architects of the civil rights organization’s program titled The Black Church & HIV: The Social Justice Imperative. “[Some wondered] should they be passing out condoms,” she says. “Some were concerned they’d be considered gay because they were addressing HIV. Instead of it just being a human issue, it became a sexual orientation issue.”

Another huge issue, Arline-Bradley says, was concern about having a lack of congregational support. Many pastors felt HIV needed to be addressed, but said they didn’t know if their churches were ready. “Some were worried they might be removed from their post,” she says.

Historically, the predominant message black churches have given to African Americans is basically the same one the

“THE SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY THAT COMES WITH THE GOSPEL, THAT ELEMENT IS LEFT OUT.”

NAACP has championed since its inception: They have a mandate to take action and end injustice in the black community. This goal of social justice is one the NAACP feels it has in common with black churches. From that standpoint, this initiative made sense.

According to a survey by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life, 87 percent of African Americans describe themselves as belonging to a religious group. As a result, faith institutions are a powerful tool for public health. In addition to teaching people about HIV transmission and prevention, churches also can provide a path to medical and social services.

When the NAACP reached out to faith institutions about its HIV initiative, it commissioned focus groups in Atlanta, Baltimore, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, New Orleans, New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, DC—all major cities with high HIV rates. The meetings drew a national group of pastors, elders, bishops and other clergy, along with people living with HIV/AIDS and lay leaders.

As a result of the yearlong discussion, the NAACP released an educational manual about the virus. The program is slated to expand in 2014 and will involve 30 cities that make up about two-thirds of the locations where the HIV epidemic is rooted.

In addition, the program initially targets five seminaries of historically black schools with the eventual goal of making HIV/AIDS a required core topic for graduation.

Squire believes that giving seminarians HIV training is a smart move. “When I was in seminary, we discussed the Bible, the church and church history and theology,” he says. “But making that connection of the social responsibility that comes with the gospel, many times that element is left out in our schools.”

The Reverend Tony Lee isn’t resisting these kinds of conversations. Lee is the kind of cool, young brother it’s easy to associate with the hip-hop generation. He is senior pastor of the Community of Hope African Methodist Episcopal Church in Hillcrest Heights, Maryland.

He says there are a lot of churches doing good HIV work.

“Maybe they don’t get an ‘A,’ but they don’t get an ‘F’ because churches are doing a lot more than they’ve done in the past [to address the epidemic]. We would love to do even more.”

They often get no credit because they don’t have the capacity for promotion, Lee says. He adds that churches also often are expected to do the work that the health department isn’t doing well. Not to mention the difficulty churches have finding good partners and meeting funding shortfalls.

Prince George’s County, where Lee’s church is located, ranks second in Maryland for HIV cases. In 2006, Lee launched his church in a local strip club. Before services, church members would cover the bottles of booze with a white sheet and line up folding chairs on the club floor. The space was temporary, just a place to preach the gospel until the church’s permanent location—just about a mile away—was completed.

Four times each year, Lee takes an HIV test in front of his

congregation. His church began doing HIV testing the first Sunday the congregation attended services in its new home.

The quarterly ritual is conducted during church services.

Nearly 4,000 people have been tested.

“We’re shaping an atmosphere in the church to say that this is something we deal with as a community together,” he says.

“This is part of what we do as Christians to take care of our bodies, and our bodies are part of our worship experience as well to God.” At Lee’s church, the flock also helps the shepherd when and where necessary. Church street teams visit barbershops and beauty shops where they leave harm reduction information.

Community of Hope also does trainings on basics about the virus and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs), and the street teams venture into clubs to hand out prevention materials and condoms, and to occasionally conduct HIV tests.

In addition, his church helps other churches with HIV/ AIDS work. Lee also has appeared in a documentary called The Gospel of Healing about the HIV/AIDS work being done by some faith-based churches in the United States. Lee uses the movie during workshops.

One of his big goals is reaching out to young people, a group Lee worked closely with as the head of his previous church’s youth ministry. He says the church is working to destigmatize HIV/AIDS and help youth build leadership and decision-making skills.

In Fayetteville, North Carolina, Art Jackson, a bridge counselor and care coordinator at Southern RegionalArea Health Education Center, works with members of Williams Chapel Church, in Spring Lake, North Carolina, to offer the Prevention for Positives program.

The program is composed of Positive Connections II and The Aya Project. Each uses rich cultural imagery to help HIV-positive, African-American patients build self-esteem and better understand how to safeguard their physical and mental health.

The program goals for clients include achieving positive health outcomes for managed CD4 counts, viral load suppression, medication adherence and acquiring skills to interrupt or relieve addiction to negative behaviors and substances.

“If you educate people about taking their medication, being virally suppressed and building up their CD4s, the chances of them infecting other people goes down,” Jackson says. “Then they can also educate people in their families and circles.”

Shirley Wilson, a youth director at Williams Chapel Church, oversees the spiritual aspects of the programs. Clients examine their behaviors to see what they need to change in their lives. poz.com JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 POZ 41

“Deliverance comes out of it, sometimes,” she says. “When they share whatever it is that’s bothering them, this can also connect to the next person.”

At the church, there’s also a youth program called RAP: Resistance Against Pressure.

This faith-based program deals with abstinence, HIV/ A IDS and other sexually transmitted infections. “Of course, abstinence is not what everybody does, so we share the other fights we’re up against,” Wilson says.

“The program is a preventive measure for teenagers that introduces them to the struggles they’ll be faced with in their lives,” she says. “And it teaches them how to have open conversations with their parents so they can feel comfortable and get the information they need.”

But delivering these programs to churchgoers wasn’t easy, says Yvonne Early, one of the developers of the Prevention for Positives program.

Finding funding to keep the program active is an ongoing challenge. Clients are allowed to repeat the series “as many times as they need because we want them to get it,” Jackson says.

Once they do, the payoff usually follows quickly.

“Their viral loads go down, and their CD4s go up,” Jackson says. “Plus, they become more active in advocacy and they become more active in their care. That’s what we want.”

Further west in Charlotte,

Jaysen Foreman, the youth care manager at the Regional AIDS Interfaith Network (RAIN), ran a program called the Trinity Project, which was aimed at women and federally funded by the Office of Women’s Health. It trained first ladies and female pastors and leaders of 36 churches in Charlotte to become HIV educators. “In the South, black churches have a huge amount of stigma that goes along with HIV/AIDS,” Foreman says.

To get into these churches, Foreman and his colleagues made cold calls asking to speak with pastors. “Getting on their calendars was very difficult,” Foreman says. “It took a good year for us to really have our first training session.”

But the wait was worth it. “The biggest program that we offered is HIV 101,” he says, explaining that it spelled out the basics of how the virus worked and also allowed the educators to dispel a lot of ignorance. “And when churchgoers met HIVpositive people it was a real eye-opener—for them and us.

That’s why the program was so successful.”

After completing the Trinity Project, the first ladies of faith who attended went back to their churches to teach others what they learned. They tackled misconceptions about HIV that

42 POZ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 poz.com

Rev. Squire gives a Sunday sermon to congregants at his Gethsemane Hope Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

still persist, such as the ideas that you could avoid the virus by not eating on plates and utensils an HIV-positive person used, or by not using the bathroom after them.

Geneva Galloway, the project’s director, found that when she shared with people in faith communities that she‘s been HIV positive for more than 28 years, they wanted to learn about the virus even more. “I definitely wanted to let them know that a lot of my work is because of who I am,” she says.

But Galloway faced other challenges. One pastor asked if she was going to bring his people to Christ, she says, and another wanted to know if she planned to teach abstinence.

Galloway said no to both pastors and explained that, although she had the utmost respect for the church, her job was to introduce faith leaders to HIV prevention, especially since “the Charlotte area had the highest rate of infection.”

Foreman says it was important for the project not to sugarcoat the issue. “We used real words and didn’t try to baby people or cover up the realities,” he says. During the project’s first session, Foreman recalls dumping out a trunk filled with

Despite the increased receptivity of many black clergy to the idea that the church urgently needs to address HIV/AIDS in a more inclusive and less judgmental way, some hesitate to smash the old taboos that promote stigma and impede prevention efforts. These taboos grew out of church ideologies that surround sexuality and health, according to Columbia University study findings published in a 2011 issue of the journal Global Public Health.

The findings identified three prominent themes: “(1) ‘Love the sinner, hate the sin’—distinguishing behavior and identity; (2) ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’—keeping same-sex behavior private; and (3) ‘Your body is a temple’—connecting physical and spiritual help.” In addition, study authors found that these ideologies “may both impede and facilitate church dialogue around sexuality and heightened responses to the HIV crisis affecting black MSM [men who have sex with men].”

In another report titled Searching for a Balm in Gilead: The HIV/AIDS Epidemic and the African American Church, the authors assert church preaching that condemns homosexual behavior contributes to homophobia in the black community.

What’s more, the church’s view of HIV/AIDS as a gay male disease perpetuates and justifies prejudice against MSM. The Reverend Irene Monroe, an ordained minister, motivational speaker and media pundit on LGBTQ issues, believes that many black churches continue to see HIV as a gay disease.

“Homophobia itself continues to be one of the major barriers to ending the AIDS epidemic,” she says.

Monroe believes that many churches have changed their attitude because many of their members came out. “Those churches where black mothers have been in the center of the dialogue about how to keep black children safe, that’s where we’ve seen less vitriol coming from the pulpit directed at LGBT people,” she says.

Sexual scandals connected with prominent black clerg ymen aside, Monroe has a broader point. “Sexuality has just never been a comfortable topic of discussion in the African-American community,” she says. “What we need that would be very helpful in educating our people is a faith-based sex-ed curriculum that embraces the concept that sexuality is God given.”

The church, Monroe continues, is in a unique position to “significantly affect morals, attitudes and beliefs.” This is another reason why she thinks the collaboration between the NAACP and black faith leaders will help churches view the problem through less moralistic lenses. “Whatever the NAACP can do on a national level to change these attitudes is wonderful,” she says.

Squire believes that, in a general sense, the willingness of more black churches to speak candidly and nonjudgmentally about all aspects of the disease, and to partner with each other and secular organizations such as the NAACP, can only help the African-American community defeat HIV/AIDS. “We have made some progress,” he says. “But that’s relative to where we’ve been versus where we need to go.” ■

“MANY LIVE IN FEAR, AND THAT UNNECESSARILY INCREASES THE STIGMA THAT WE SEE.” dildos on the table and hearing gasps so loud “it would have been enough to give everyone a heart attack.”

But the first ladies remained stoic. “These very spiritual, powerful black women church leaders took the next step and learned why it was important to be able to demonstrate in front of a room full of people how to use a condom, why lubricant is important, how to recognize secondary STIs and why it’s important to get an HIV test every six months,” he says. “And they took the lead, and now they’re continuing this program even though we’re not funded.”

Galloway says her upbringing in the church helped her tremendously when she called pastors to interest them in the project. “Being a Christian myself, I knew the approach to the clergy leaders needed to be very respectful and very mindful of how the church works,” she says. “That was a plus going in.”

poz.com JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2014 POZ 43

BY CASEY

BY CASEY HALTER HALTER

Tough Love “Why me?” That was the first question that came to Stephanie Brown’s mind when she was diagnosed with HIV at the age of 19.

That was in 2006. But after seven years living both healthy and HIV positive, Brown has gained the strength and the education to speak out. And thanks to early activism in her hometown of Fayetteville, North Carolina, she transformed her diagnosis into a grassroots cause, then to a national agenda. Now, at 27, she is fast becoming one of the best-known faces of HIV/AIDS in the country.

You might recognize Brown as the fierce family girl from MTV’s I’m Positive, a documentary series that followed three young people living with the virus in the United States. Or you might recall her from last year’s World AIDS Day panel discussion at the White House, where she stood and shared her story for top U.S. government officials debating the direction of HIV policy.

Or you might know her face from billboards and TV spots, where she is Alicia Keys’s right-hand woman for the “Empowered” campaign by Greater Than AIDS. Through the end of 2015, she and four other activists will urge women across the country to know their HIV status, get educated and fight back against the next wave of the HIV epidemic.

“People get touched from a story that they can relate to,” Brown says. “They can see me as a sister or their best friend or an aunt or a mother.”

But like family, she also approaches her audiences with a dose of tough love. “There’s no excuse for anyone to be living with an AIDS diagnosis, and there’s no excuse to be infected.” What we need to fight the stigma and ignorance, she says, is clear: “The education needs to be out there.”

To that end, when she’s not on the road, Brown continues to work in her hometown as an HIV health educator and is also in the planning process for launching her own national HIV awareness campaign.

The project, called Minds Against Destruction Using Unity, or M.A.D.U. for short, will be a T-shirt and hoodie line that seeks to both create HIV awareness and build unity among community-service projects.

“I want to build and create activists and advocates through fashion,” says Brown, who has already begun talking to representatives from the Kaiser Family Foundation to get the project launched next year.

“We need to start hearing more,” Brown says. “My story is not the only one in Fayetteville, or anywhere else. There are other stories out there, but if we don’t hear them, nothing is going to get done.”

BRYAN REGAN

HEROES

SURVEY 6

Has having HIV changed your sexual confidence?

❑ Yes, I’m more confident ❑ Yes, I’m less confident ❑ No change 7

Have you ever been rejected by a potential sexual partner because you have HIV?

❑ Yes ❑ No 8

UNDER THE COVERS POZ believes everybody—regardless of their HIV status— should enjoy sex to the fullest. So, how’s your sex life lately? Has it changed since you became HIV positive?

Please take our confidential survey and let POZ know if and how having HIV has affected your sex life.

1

2

❑1 ❑ 4–6 ❑ 10 or more

4

10

THINKSTOCK

Do you prefer to have sex with someone who is:

❑ HIV positive ❑ HIV negative ❑ It doesn’t matter 11

What is your current relationship status?

❑ Single ❑ In a committed, monogamous relationship ❑ In an open relationship 12 13

What year were you born?__ __ __ __ What is your gender?

❑ Male ❑ Female ❑ Transgender ❑ Other

Have you had more or less sex since your diagnosis?

❑ More ❑ Less ❑ Same amount

14

When you are having sex, do you think about your HIV status?

15

What is your ethnicity? (Check all that apply.)

❑ American Indian or Alaska Native ❑ Arab or Middle Eastern ❑ Asian ❑ Black or African American ❑ Hispanic or Latino ❑ Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander ❑ White ❑ Other (please specify):___________________

Do you disclose you have HIV before a new sexual encounter?

❑ Always ❑ Sometimes ❑ Never

What is your sexual orientation?

❑ Straight ❑ Bisexual ❑ Gay/lesbian ❑ Other

❑ Always ❑ Sometimes ❑ Never 5

Do you disclose your HIV status online?

❑ Always ❑ Sometimes ❑ Never

How frequently do you usually have sex?

❑ More than once a week ❑ Once a week ❑ A few times a month ❑ A few times a year ❑ Never 3

9

How many sexual partners have you had in the past year?

❑ Zero ❑ 2–3 ❑ 7–9

Do you use online dating or hookup sites?

❑ Often ❑ Sometimes ❑ Rarely ❑ Never

16

What is your ZIP code? __ __ __ __ __

Please fill out this confidential survey at poz.com/survey or mail it to: Smart + Strong, ATTN: POZ Survey #193, 462 Seventh Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, NY 10018-7424