#WAD2014 – #Reagan, #AIDS, and ACT-UP

For those of you who don’t understand why I dislike Reagan so much, here’s a poster from 1987 protesting our president’s silence on the deadliest virus that America had seen.

Think about that for a minute. Hundreds of thousands of Americans were sick and dying, and the American president was silent!

Ronald Reagan’s silence led to the organizing of LGBT protest/action group, The AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power, or “ACT-UP”. Their slogan, “Silence = Death” is based on Reagan’s silence.

So the next time a conservative talks about how great a president Reagan was, ask them if they think it’s okay for an American president to ignore the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Ask them if they ever wonder how much closer we might be to finding a cure for HIV had Reagan actually done something.

If it sounds like I’m angry it’s because I AM angry. A whole generation of gay men from artists, writers, athletes, and teachers to doctors, lawyers, friends, lovers, and family, an entire generation was lost because of the callous attitude of Ronald Reagan and his successor, George HW Bush. Those of us who survived watched the ones we loved die all around us.

Both Ronnie and Georgie Sr have blood on their hands.

I am dedicating World Aids Day 2014 to the fighters, the people who stand up for justice. From ACT-UP to protesters in Ferguson, we are all fighting for our lives. Never stop fighting. Sometimes shouting is the only way we’re heard.

#VOTE DAMMIT! No excuses. Here’s how to find your polling place.

If you are a registered voter in the United States, you have no excuse NOT to vote.

The midterm elections are much more important than the presidential elections. The midterms determine local politics, the stuff that affects you on a day-to-day basis. If you’re unhappy with what is or isn’t being done, don’t blame Obama. Blame your local elected officials. The president isn’t king. There’s only so much he can do on his own.

Are you out of work? Are you underpaid? Are you barely able to make ends meet? Republicans are giving away the store to corporate interests, leaving us to foot the bill.

Remember this scene from Rosanne?

That scene could have been written yesterday, but it was two decades ago! Republicans are still shoveling the same crap. Tax breaks to lure companies who provide low wage jobs to families who then still have to rely on food stamps.

What the hell??

We can’t keep letting the GOP sell America to the lowest bidder! We can’t let congress give religious extremists the right to bastardize the constitution to suit their needs!

Please. Vote. Vote as if your life depended on it. If not for yourself, do it for the future of your children, your family, your country.

Thanks to the folks at Word Press, here is a voter information tool to help you find your poling place on Tuesday, November 4th.

World AIDS Day

“There will never be a cure! Big Pharma is making too much money stringing me along from one treatment to another.” – Sam W.

In order to help keep AIDS awareness in the minds of people around me, I thought I’d share some of my personal experiences, and how HIV/AIDS has affected people in my life. The following is pulled together from casual conversations with my friend Sam, whom I’ve known for almost two decades. I’ve entered direct quotes as I remember them. Everything you read here is fact.

Sam, quoted above, has been living with AIDS for a little over twenty years. He tested positive in 1991. His survival, he says, is a double edged sword. He feels fortunate to be alive but, like many LGBT folks our age, most of his close friends are gone. “There’s no one left!” he says. “In the early 90s my friends were dropping like flies, one after the other. I thought I was next. My doctor told my parents to make my final arrangements. I was prepared to die.” Sam told me that when he didn’t die, he went into a depression. Psychologists call it Survivor’s Guilt.

Though ten years younger than Sam, I can easily empathize. At the height of the pandemic, AIDS took most of my friends. But the friends that I lost were relatively new friendships. Sam had known most of his friends for ten, fifteen years. You’re not supposed to lose so many friends at such a young age.

Sam says his biggest lament is the cost of survival. He was fortunate enough to have had a decent enough employer who provided him with healthcare, and who was understanding enough to alter his work schedule as needed. He worked for as long as he could, but by the mid-nineties his health had so declined that he had no choice but to go on Social Security Disability and wait for death. Then Protease Inhibitors came along.

The new drugs that saved his life cost a small fortune. Sam takes three Anti-HIV pills which cost about $900 per bottle, and a handful of medications to handle side effects that cost between $20 and $150 per bottle. And that doesn’t include regular blood tests, doctor visits, and medical procedures.

“Remember the assisted suicide controversy in the 90s?” he asks. “All those conservatives wanted to hang Dr. Kevorkian! Now they want to cut my benefits! (Social Security, Food Stamps, Medicaid, Medicare) Where’s their compassion for the sick and dying, now?? If you don’t want to help me live, then allow me to die!”

Sam assures he doesn’t really want to die. He’s understandably frustrated by a system that has failed him. It would be difficult for him to go back to work. He couldn’t even afford a part time job. If he went back to work, he’d lose his healthcare. If he lost his healthcare, he’d get sick again and most likely die.

In a perfect world, Sam could rejoin the workforce, keep his healthcare, and maybe pay an affordable percentage of his salary back into Medicare. The trouble is the cost of prescriptions. As long as he has to take those expensive medications, he can never leave Social Security.

I reminded him of the recent advancements in developing a vaccine. “There will never be a cure!” he says ” Big Pharma is making too much money stringing me along from one treatment to another! It’s a scam, and the American people are too blind to see it!”

Though careful what I say to him, I can’t help but think perhaps he’s right. There’s no money in cures. The money is in treatment. If you cured cancer tomorrow, all those Cancer Treatment Centers would go bankrupt within months. Susan G Komen would cease to exist. I hate to sound pessimistic, but I have little faith in a system that values money over people.

The best I can offer is try to educate people around me and hope that they pay attention.

AIDS (Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome) has been around for three decades. Some of the biggest myths about AIDS that still persist today include, “It’s a gay disease” “It can’t happen to me” and “There’s a cure”. AIDS is not a “Gay” disease. It CAN happen to you. There is NO cure.

Treatment has it’s own issues. Side effects of Anti HIV medication include, fatigue, neuropathy, fungal infections, liver damage, heart disease, kidney disease, body fat re-distribution (buffalo hump), chronic headaches, nausea, vomiting, vision loss, blindness, high cholesterol, diarrhea, constipation, dementia, calcium deficiency, loss of bone density, death and more.

• Sounds fun, right? Especially when you consider prevention is as simple as proper condom use.
• And ladies, because men are so reluctant to wrap it up, there’s a condom designed just for you. – Introducing… The Female Condom!

Knowing all of this, would you rather protect yourself and your loved ones, or spend the rest of your life at a doctor’s office?

To learn more about HIV/AIDS, check out the NIH AIDS info page.  http://www.aidsinfo.nih.gov/

Some Serious Questions For Conservatives

Why do conservatives use the word “Entitlement” as if it was a bad word.

They’re called “Entitlements” because the people who receive them worked hard for and earned them as part of an agreed upon contract with the United States government. Money is taken from our paycheck each week as insurance until such time as we either retire, become disabled and cannot work, or the worst case scenario, a disaster happens and we need help.

Entitlements are not handouts. Entitlements are not charity. Entitlements did not tank our economy. Corporate greed did. So why do you want to punish the least of us just so the wealthiest can have tax breaks?

Conservatives claim to be for limited government and keeping government out of our private lives.

How does amending the constitution to ban same-sex marriage limit government or keep the government out of our private lives? How does one person’s marriage affect yours? Is the foundation or your marriage so fragile that it would crumble under the weight of another couple’s happiness?

Conservatives claim to be for fiscal responsibility, yet they are largely against paying for birth control. Does it not occur to them that tax payers will undoubtedly foot the bill, through welfare, for eighteen plus years of childcare for many of the children that result from unplanned pregnancies? Compared to that, contraception is cheap.

There’s nothing wrong with conservative ideas. Personal responsibility is important. Responsibility to our community is even more important.

Ensuring that companies provide a living wage so that families don’t have to rely on food stamps is the responsible thing to do. A family that can’t afford food isn’t self sufficient. Isn’t that what conservatism is all about; being self sufficient? A family that’s not self sufficient cannot contribute to the economy.

If families aren’t contributing to the economy, the economy doesn’t grow.

One more thing.

As our country experiences extreme weather powerful enough to bring about the destruction of whole communities, more and more people are going to find themselves in need of some kind of assistance, be it food stamps or welfare. These people are not deadbeats. They aren’t looking for handouts either. Yet many conservatives want to reduce these life saving safety nets because of the cost. Are these the “family values” that conservatives claim they hold in such high regard?

The United States of America is a vast and wealthy country populated with people of many different faiths and from every walk of life. In order for us to have a strong country we must look out for one another. United we stand. Divided we fall.

A word about the so-called IRS scandal…

Shortly after President Obama was elected, 501(c) (4) applications started to pour into the IRS by the thousands from anti-government Tea Party groups. Those of you with a short memory might not remember the negative reaction to the economic stimulus and those big business bail outs that saved the auto industry. By 2010, as healthcare reform legislation became law, and the U.S. Supreme Court deemed corporations are people too, the number of 501(c) (4) applications increased.

According to Michael Scherer of Time.com, “many of these so-called social-welfare groups have multiplied–annual applications for the designation have nearly doubled since 2009–with many spending nearly 50% of their money on campaign advertising, almost daring the IRS to challenge their activities. Of the more than $1.2 billion spent by outside groups in the 2012 federal election cycle, at least $254 million came from “social welfare” nonprofits.”

To me, this is a red flag!
“All this outrage threatens to obscure an important point: the IRS does need to crack down on political groups masquerading as social-welfare organizations. Many of the nonprofit groups who claim 501(c)(4) status either flout tax law or flirt with the murky line between electioneering and issue advocacy, all while using their tax-exempt status to conceal their donors.” – Alex Altman “The Real IRS Scandal” time.com

The IRS may have been overzealous, but there’s certainly no scandal here.