Countdown Clocks and Wedding Bells – Celebrating Justice

There’s no doubt that the hours, days, weeks and years of struggle can become enraging, depressing and frustrating. The enormous amounts of time and treasure that we pour out attempting to achieve even basic fair treatment under the law can, on some days, be overwhelming.

But not on this day. Not today.

This day we celebrate two tremendous, historic and game-changing victories. This day we begin to mark the ending of some decades-old struggles.

Friday, President Obama, the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs signed and sent to Congress the Certification that our armed forces are ready and able to end decades of discrimination in the armed forces. And the 60-day clock started. On September 20, 2011 the discriminatory law that has forced lesbian and gay servicemembers to hide, struggle and suffer in silence will be repealed.

Done. Over. Now just a shameful chapter of history. As the clock ticks down the days, we’ll all be nervous; anxious that no last-minute, desperate acts of hate interfere. But we will also wait and count down with the growing sense that decades of activism, hope and courage are about to be rewarded with a historic victory. A new gay home decoration will be born: the framed copy of the front page of the New York Times headline that says: Repeal! Discrimination Dead!

And there’s more. Yesterday in the great state of New York, loving, dedicated gay and lesbian couples began to marry. Couples who have waited a lifetime to receive the basic dignity and recognition of their love and families that every human being deserves finally got to feel love win. Years of work, acts of bravery on both sides of the aisle, and thousands who have worked and held the hope can hear the bells ring. We celebrate with New York!

Does it mean all the battles are over? Of course not. Every Californian feels the bittersweet pain as they celebrate New York. It means that for a few short days we all get to remember that these days do come. That the values we represent -- freedom, dignity, compassion, fairness, service to country and to family, and equality -- do win.

Today is a celebration for all of us, not just a few. Today is a day when we remember that every email to an elected official, every Facebook post and re-post, every dollar we gave, every vote we cast for supportive candidates…it all mattered.

The struggles are painful and hard; the celebrations need to be equally intense, passionate, and hope-filled.

Join us at The Center tonight (Monday, July 25) at 6 pm to celebrate the certification of DADT repeal and the Countdown to Justice! In 57 days, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell will finally be history. We’ll get the legal update from Servicemembers Legal Defense Network and hear from some of our LGBT elected officials. And we’ll savor the moment surrounded by our servicemembers who have served so bravely in silence, our community, friends and allies. It’s a monumental step forward – let’s celebrate it!

In the meantime, SLDN is continuing to caution servicemembers not to come out until the 60 day countdown has passed. For more information on the legal issues, visitwww.sldn.org/legal.

The First Time

LGBT Pride parades and festivals are a part of an American ritual.

In four days San Diego begins its version of what is now a nationally recognized tradition: LGBT Pride Weekend. While many communities have days that are cause for public celebrations, visible actions and collective remembering -- Martin Luther King Day, Cesar Chavez Day, St. Patrick's Day -- this one's ours. And it is widely recognized as one that is the most fun for the most people.

Days that include proclamations, festivals, parades, parties, picnics and political actions are an American tradition. It's the way Americans call out to each other and to their neighbors, friends, families and larger city surround: "We're here. We are a unique and valuable part of the nation's fabric. We are your neighbors, your doctors, your businessmen and women, your volunteers, members of your congregations, your contractors, your armed services, your educators, your police, your nurses, your politicians, your sons and daughters and grandchildren."

On such days of celebration and remembering, we celebrate together how far a community has come and how much they have contributed, we remember all those who have fought the good fight and have inspired us to do more, and we are outraged together at how far we still have to go to achieve full equality and justice.

Across the last decade there has been much discussion of the continued relevance and meaning of Pride celebrations. My intent is not to rehash all that here. Instead, it's to say that most of that discussion is really about "how" to celebrate and protest, not whether we should. It's also about who "needs" to celebrate.

We are one of the most diverse communities in the nation. We are business owners and working-class folks. We are brown, black, red, white and a mixture of all. We are seniors, middle-aged, young adults, high-schoolers, parents, grandparents and babies. We are democrats, republicans and decline-to-states. We are progressive, centrist and conservative. We are men, women, transgender and those who refuse binary gender labels. We are gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer, and have lots of heterosexual friends and family members. We are leather-men and women, bears, drag queens, businessmen and more vanilla-types.

That's a whole lot of awesome and incredible diversity, and it makes for a zillion different ways to celebrate Pride.

Not all of us enjoy parades. Not all of us love politics and actions. Some of us aren't fond of any kind of sexy public displays or loud music. Some of us don't care for huge parties. Others of us love the chance to celebrate a sex-positive and embracing message, love the celebration of the amazing electoral power we have come to possess in some places. Others love private pool parties with friends, neighbors and family. Some people own a thousand rainbow flags. Others have just one they courageously put out twice a year (Pride and Harvey Milk Day) in their more conservative suburban neighborhoods.

And some of us love all of it, love the view and vision of all those different kinds of people marching together, or watching together as a crowd of 200,000.

And somewhere in that crowd are way more than a handful of folks, often on the edges, who have never before seen the pride, the power and the joyful celebration and affirmation of LGBT persons. Too often those of us privileged to have seen it a thousand times, privileged to be connected to community, fail to see or remember the quiet tears of the closeted or fearful seniors and youth, and the joyful wonder of feeling the love and hope for the first time.

So however you like to celebrate, to remember, to protest or to live, join us Pride weekend in your own way, with your own style and tradition…and feel the love and the celebration of all of who we are.

Test and Treat…if we are serious about defeating the spread of HIV/AIDS

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published the first mention of the disease we will later call HIV in June 1981. Thirty years later, the worldwide pandemic is not over, not globally, not in the United States, and not locally. That means many of us have lived our entire adult lives under the specter of HIV. And yet, with all the progress and all the innovations:

• More than one million people are living with HIV in the United States.

• 56,300 Americans become newly infected with HIV each year.

• Every nine and a half minutes, someone in the United States is infected with the HIV virus.

• More than 640,000 people living with HIV -- many of whom know their status -- are not in medical care or taking life-saving medications. This also means their viral loads are not yet “undetectable,” making it easier to transmit the virus.

• One in five (20%) of those people who are living with HIV are unaware they have the disease, and unaware of their potential to infect others.

• Today, HIV/AIDS continues to devastate some of our nation’s communities: men who have sex with men (MSM), communities of color (especially African-Americans, who, despite being only 12% of the population represent almost 50% of new infections), women (27% of new infections) and low-income individuals and families.

• http://aids.gov/hiv-aids-basics/hiv-aids-101/overview/statistics
Looking backward helps us remember and understand the dark devastation and loss of the years before protease inhibitors and the difference made by life-saving, life-prolonging drugs. Looking at today’s statistics remind us of where we are… and what we have not yet achieved. Looking forward from here is the work of understanding and implementing an action plan for HIV/AIDS for the next generation.

One strategy critical to the success of defeating the virus is the Test & Treat strategy. HIV is a communicable disease. Defeating it means reducing the possibility of transmission to another person.

Reducing transmission means ensuring that the people who become infected are able to access the medications and care that will reduce their viral loads to undetectable – making it very difficult to transmit the virus. That means everybody has to test – regularly and routinely – and then re-test 6-12 months later. That’s not happening nearly enough.

HIV testing has to become routine, just like checking blood pressure, annual physicals, mammograms, pap smears, screens for prostate cancer and the other health tests we do routinely. That means testing has to be widely available, easily accessed, and affordable; not difficult to locate, nor shrouded in mystery, stigma and fear. One in five people who are infected don’t know it. We have to do better than that.
And the second half of the Test & Treat strategy is equally important – Treat. Once someone knows they have been infected they have to be connected to easily accessed, affordable care, including medications. As many as one in four of the people who know they are infected are not connected to care…which likely means their viral loads are NOT undetectable and the risk of transmission is high.

Test & Treat is vital and we can’t afford any more delays. We can’t afford to reduce HIV testing and outreach to the untested – in fact we need to increase it. We can’t afford cuts to HIV care and treatment or HIV medications – in fact we need to make it easier to get care. Some say we can’t afford it. Really? Let’s not keep kicking this can down the road. We can pay the costs of reducing infections and good public health policy now, or we can pay the enormous costs of treating full blown AIDS in hundreds of thousands more Americans later. Either way we’ll pay; let’s be smarter about it.

June 27, 2011 is an opportunity to help move the Test and Treat strategy forward – National HIV Testing Day. Go get tested, take your friends and family – make it routine, make it easy, de-mystify it. Take the rapid test and know the results in just 30 minutes…no more waiting around for 2 weeks. Some of the local HIV testing options can be found here, or just make a doctor’s appointment with your own health care provider.

Just do it …and bring the people you care about with you.

Unbelievably Cruel, Horribly Unjust and Absolutely Unacceptable

By now most of you have seen or read the story of Clay and Harold, and Sonoma County officials. And I know those of you who have read this story share my deep sadness, outrage and disbelief.

As the CEO of one of the nation’s largest LGBT Community Centers, I hear stories every day of the ways LGBT inequality and discrimination impact the lives of ordinary people.

I hear the stories of the youth, some of them just children really, tossed from their homes and rejected by their families because they are L,G,B or T. Too many of these youth will go on to become chronically homeless -- in fact, 20-40% of our nation’s chronically homeless youth are LGBT.

I see the tears of military partners who cannot even safely communicate with the ones they love so far away in Iraq and Afghanistan.


I see the lingering pain of the victims of hate crimes as they re-tell the stories of beatings and taunts. And I hear the too-common, everyday stories of employers, landlords, medical providers, schools and systems that consistently deny LGBT citizens even basic safety and dignity.

The unceasing daily drumbeat of human pain that results from our government's inaction is deafening. I hear the pain and fear, I see the impact. I see the suffering of the many who have come to believe they are helpless, alone, unwanted and without worth.

But this story…  This story is absolutely terrifying in its cruelty. This story captured for me an incomprehensible level of inhumanity.

To forcibly separate a couple of 20 years, to sell their belongings, to create a situation where one of them dies alone, without comfort, without familiarity, without the one he loved for 20 years? All despite the fact they had powers of attorney and other required legal documentation? Unbelievably cruel, horribly unjust and absolutely unacceptable.

They forced him to die alone, without his partner of twenty years, frightened, disoriented, uncertain.

There simply are not words for this. Or perhaps the words of Kate Kendell, executive director of NCLR, capture it best. “In the 33 years of our organization's history, this case is perhaps among the most tragic NCLR has ever been involved in,” she said. “Clay and Harold had taken all of the necessary precautions, including living wills and powers of attorneys, to protect them in a time of crisis. Not only were their relationship and legal documents ignored, Clay and Harold literally lost everything. These appalling events demonstrate how urgently same-sex couples need full equality rather than a patchwork of rights that can be dismissed and ignored in a culture that still treats LGBT people as second-class citizens.”

While our deep thanks go out to Kate Kendell and NCLR, GetEqual and all of the associated counsel now representing Clay, that is not enough.

Sonoma County, all of our elected officials and the President himself must hear our voices. They all must know the story and hear the voices of reason, of compassion, and of outrage. They must hear us say “We have had enough. Pass the legislation that grants equality NOW. Repeal DOMA, Repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and pass ENDA. Every day you delay allows another story more horrible than the last.”

Join NCLR and GetEqual. Send at least one letter. Do it today for Harold and Clay.

1) Send a letter to President Obama
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/6535/t/9634/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=2441

2) Contact the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors and let them know what you think of these decisions.
Phone: (707) 565-2241
Email form: http://bit.ly/9w8eRd
Full contact info: http://supervisors.sonoma-county.org/content.aspx?sid=1001&id=1000

3) Contact Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
Email: http://gov.ca.gov/interact
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: 916-445-2841
Fax: 916-558-3160

4) Contact Marin and Sonoma County Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey
Email form: http://woolsey.house.gov/contactemailform.asp
Washington DC Office: 202-225-5161
Marin Office: (415) 507-9554
Sonoma Office: (415) 507-9601
http://woolsey.house.gov/

5) Contact your legislators
http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/yourleg.html

6) Ask your friends and family to send a letter.
http://www.nclrights.org/site/TellAFriend?msgId=8801.0&devId=12781

The Real Price We Pay

In the midst of a discussion about national healthcare reform, I remain stunned by the completely short-sighted, mind-numbing ignorance displayed in our recent public health cuts in California. As the details of what these funding cuts are going to mean in California become more evident, the phrase I hear most from public health experts is, “Stunningly stupid … heartless … and fiscally irresponsible.”

These cuts will increase disease and death rates. They will increase the risks to the general public. They will increase the costs of healthcare to the taxpayer. An unbelievable and devastating trifecta.

Again I sat in a meeting of the San Diego HIV Planning Council where 40 desperate consumers and healthcare providers -- who all volunteer to serve on the council -- struggled with their rage and tears as they began to try to balance a budget -- a budget that will contain the worst HIV cuts in a decade. These cuts were part of a larger slashing of public healthcare funds, including cuts to children’s healthcare, shelters that support victims of domestic violence, MediCal’s mental health programs and so much more. We are still sorting through the impact of the cuts, and the impact is already horrific. And it’s only going to get worse.

I’m usually not an alarmist, but the choices facing the HIV Planning Council were nothing more than the devil’s bargain. Because of Governor Schwarzenegger’s cuts, we must find dollars to cover the viral load test that informs physicians about whether or not the mix of medications is working. Because of the elimination of DentiCal, funds must also be added to dental care so rotting teeth can be removed before they cause profound health complications and cardiac problems. To meet these needs, funds must be eliminated from programs that help people living with HIV/AIDS with food, housing, legal assistance, bus passes and assisted transportation programs that help them get to their health-related appointments.

The bottom line is that the governor chose public park preservation over the lives of the people of our state.

And I’m left to wonder how it is that we are even tolerating this travesty that passes for public policy? One answer was clear today: no one sees the people who will pay the ultimate price.

Scores of them came to this meeting to beg for their lives.

They are people whose lives -- and whose children’s lives -- have been devastated by HIV and they now have limited access to any resource, including healthcare. They are people who do not have a healthcare insurance option, who are often too ill to work full time or at all, who are struggling to climb out of the grasp of poverty and disease. They are people whose lives depend upon the thin lifeline public health throws them. They face eviction or homelessness, have little food and less nutrition (even though they must take chemotherapy strength medications). They often cannot pay the electricity bill, or afford a taxi ride after medical treatments that leave them exhausted. These are the people who will pay the price.

I’m well aware of the lament “we have to be fiscally responsible.” I agree. I’m all for it!

I agree, let’s be fiscally smart and responsible. Let’s stop pretending taxpayers don’t end up footing the bill and start using every intervention we can to prevent the worsening of the disease and devastation that will ultimately cost us billions more. Let’s stop bankrupting people who have a serious illness. Let’s stop hiding the real cost of these cuts in both dollars and human suffering.

And let’s stop pretending “some people” deserve this. No one deserves the fear and humiliation of having to beg for a chance at life or their children’s lives.

We don’t have to settle for this and it doesn’t have to end up a shameful, hidden, horrible truth. Let’s make the tragedy and voices of the people heard.

Every elected official -- your U.S. Senators, the Governor of California, the California State Assembly members, the California State Senators, every member of the San Diego Board of Supervisors -- should find their call sheets and their e-mail boxes full. Full of the stories of lives dismantled because of disease, the costs of healthcare and the even larger costs of having no access to healthcare. There should be phone lines full of fierce healthcare advocates asking for appointments with elected officials to brief them about the “on the ground” impact of the governor’s actions, and painting the real life picture of the people who are really paying for this travesty that passes for public health policy.

Make those calls, write those e-mails and letters. Use your voice to help today.

Don’t let the Governor choose parks over people so easily.


Contact Your Elected Officials
Governor: www.gov.ca.gov
U.S Senators: www.senate.gov
U.S. House of Representatives: www.house.gov
California State Assembly: www.assembly.ca.gov
California State Senate: www.sen.ca.gov
San Diego County Board of Supervisors: www.sdcounty.ca.gov/general/bos.html

Dear Friends,


I know that we all share a deep commitment to fighting HIV/AIDS and to ensuring quality care and services for those impacted by this pandemic, so I wanted to let you know personally about the devastating State funding cuts to HIV/AIDS programs and services.

Yesterday, Governor Schwarzenegger line-item vetoed close to $52 million in funding to the State Office of AIDS. These funds support HIV/AIDS education and prevention, therapeutic monitoring/viral load testing, HIV testing, early intervention services, home and community-based care and housing.

Although Californians living with HIV/AIDS will still have access to lifesaving medications under the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), these cuts will make it extraordinarily difficult to determine whether the medications are working (viral load testing), or even if someone is positive and might need to begin medications (HIV testing). The cuts also devastate one of the most promising intervention systems -- early intervention services for those newly diagnosed -- and eliminate all of the few remaining prevention opportunities.

While we all know the state budget is more than a mess, and we knew some HIV/AIDS funding cuts were likely, the depth and scope of the Governor’s cuts are unfathomable.

Throughout our state, we are still sorting out exactly what these numbers will mean following the Governor’s unexpected decimation of so many systems of care, including those for people living with HIV/AIDS and for children from low-income families. Options are unclear but are frantically being researched.

It’s taken more than 25 years to build up the programs and services for people living with HIV/AIDS in our state. No victory came easy, and many spent their last days and breaths advocating for compassion, for care and for adequate funding. With all of our efforts, it is still true that every 9 ½ minutes someone in the United States is infected with HIV and 1 out of 5 of those people who are infected DO NOT KNOW they are infected.

Governor Schwarzenegger’s blue-pen frenzy dismantles a system of care that had become a model, not only for other states, but internationally. A model that has helped keep people alive and provided a quality of life that people with HIV/AIDS didn’t have just a few years ago. We’re not just taking apart a safety net, we’re destroying the system of care itself, and ensuring that the most vulnerable won’t have access to the care and treatment they need.

While we are still figuring out the exact financial implications of these cuts to services in our region, it is clear that losing this funding will be devastating. Please know that we will keep you informed the moment we have more specific details.

Given our mutual and profound commitment to helping those impacted by HIV/AIDS, many of you are asking what you do to help. We will likely have many calls to action in the next few weeks as the reality of these cuts begins to directly affect San Diego area programs and services.

But today, I hope you will do one thing -- please sign up for AIDS Walk San Diego and send a note to your friends asking them to contribute to your efforts in the wake of this tremendous loss of resources. Right now, in the face of this blow, I believe it so important to show people living with HIV/AIDS that we care deeply and that will continue to fight for them. We will continue to stand up for them -- and we will walk, always by their sides, as we face the challenges of this ongoing pandemic together.


AIDS Walk San Diego is a program of The Center.

We Can Do Better Than This

There are moments when the chaotic noise of political rhetoric about equality and healthcare reform is forced into the background by the reality of the human suffering. The kind of suffering that pierces the hype and spin and speaks directly to my heart. Unfortunately, in HIV/AIDS work, it happens around this time every year as we deal with fears and concerns about governmental funding cuts. This year is different – the stakes are much higher and the fears of those without health care resources are well founded.

Public health, like basic human rights, has been a huge part of my professional life. Three public health issues powerfully shaped my adult life, my work and my focus for the last 20 years -- HIV/AIDS, mental health issues and cancer, particularly breast cancer.

I completed graduate school and entered professional life a couple years before the 1996 medication breakthroughs for HIV. I came of age professionally after losing scores of my closest male friends and mentors and began my career by serving the hundreds who were suffering from and dying of HIV. After 1996, with better health care, better policy and new medications I was able to serve clients who were living with HIV/AIDS. As they began to live longer, I could spend time helping to build an inclusive network of care that could provide access to those who were uninsured or had fewer resources.

Every year in the summer months, the HIV Planning Council of the County Board of Supervisors (a remarkable coalition of more than 50 dedicated consumers, providers and community members) take up an annual review of local San Diego data and the needs of those living with HIV/AIDS in order to make budget recommendations for the coming year.

The committee charged with making those recommendations to the County Board of Supervisors is the Priority Setting Committee of the Planning Council. I have served as chair that committee for five of the eight years I have served on the Council.

This year’s budget process is almost too excruciating for words.

This year I could feel the sting behind my eyes as I listened to a mother of three children who has been infected for three years beg for us to find some money to help case management services stay open so she and her children can survive. I listened to a young man of 18 who haltingly and politely thanked everyone for their work and asked us to try to find prevention dollars to help educate his friends so they don’t have to suffer this disease. I listened, heart breaking, to the gay man of 45 who sero-converted right after the end of his long-term relationship; a man who apologizes for needing services, but he’s lost his job, and thus his health insurance, because he’s been sick.

Every 9½ minutes someone is infected with HIV. Every day in San Diego someone new is diagnosed with AIDS. Yet once again the State of California’s budget is uncertain. Well, I guess we should say cuts are certain to happen, it’s how deep and painful they will be that remains unknown. The Ryan White Treatment Modernization Act hasn’t been renewed or reauthorized by Congress and the costs of providing basic care are spiraling. And the nation continues to debate the necessity of health care reform.

But those are just the facts. As I sit in committee meetings, the facts fade away and it is the people who come into bold relief. The members of the public and consumers who come to this committee to try to participate in their own healthcare, to provide testimony and to try to find hope for themselves and others. These are real people, in real pain, terrified about their future and the futures of their families and all those impacted by HIV/AIDS. People who can’t get health insurance, people who can no longer work, people who need access to health care to continue to live. Each year, while the number of those living with HIV (and their medical needs) grow, the funding doesn’t. And each year, consumers come to testify and beg for health care - beg for hope.

Every year I listen and think, “Is this really the best we can do in America? Really?”

We’re one of the richest countries in the world, where pharmaceutical companies spent $44 billion dollars last quarter on lobbying and our banks awards multiple billions in bonuses to a few individuals? In this country with our new cars, homes and daily doses of Starbucks; the best we can do is to beat the drum of “no new taxes” and then make those who suffer come to beg for life-saving services for themselves and their families?

We can do better than this.
We have to do better than this.
This is not the world I want my children to inherit.