You may be aware that I have a “no bad news after 8pm” policy in order to keep myself sane. And yet, sometimes there is bad news that I just cannot avoid.

Last week, while relaxing into my utopian science fiction fantasy land of Star Trek the Next Generation on Blu-Ray, my social media-addicted brain craved stimulation and I grazed through Facebook updates on my phone.  Hmm let’s see… cute baby pictures, cute puppies, cupcakes someone baked, and oh, what’s this? Some teenage boys drugged and repeatedly raped a 16 year old girl, took pictures and videos of the assault, and finally dumped her on someone’s lawn. After many efforts to conceal and defend the assault (because football players should, apparently, be allow to rape anyone they determine to be a ‘slut’) CNN decided the sentence was worthy of national news coverage. Not because it was a terrible crime. Because the poor rapists got a whole year of prison and were labeled sex offenders, and this, CNN complained, is a charge that will “haunt them the rest of their lives.”

First I read this wonderfully written article on Feministing that captured the multiplicity of problems to do with this case, from the fact that the boys did not believe that what they were doing was rape because it was not “violent” (she was incapable of fighting back,) to the fact that the girl was portrayed as a slut on trial in order to defend the boy’s right to rape her, to the fact that twitter was awash with sentiments that the girl who was not raped, she was just “a loose drunk slut”.  The article drove home the point that what we’re dealing here is a rape culture that endorses violence against women. It endorses rape.

As much as it’s easy to point fingers at an individual level when it comes to perpetrators of crime, we need to take a step back and consider what sociological factors are involved. And nothing drives home the point more than that stupid CNN video. There’s not a whole lot that needs to be said about it because it is so overt. Watch in horror as CNN glorifies the rapists and their promising careers. Apparently, CNN decided that boys getting an entire year of prison and being labeled as a sex offender for raping a girl was worthy of national news coverage. This wasn’t newsworthy because they didn’t get enough time. It was newsworthy because, in the eyes of CNN, they got too much.

Anyone looking for proof that women’s lives and bodies are worth less than men’s, even in 2013 and even in America, there you have it. The biggest news station in the United States argues that boys should be allowed to rape girls and not be punished for it.

If CNN isn’t an example of how media contributes to rape culture I don’t know what is.

It is ironic, I thought, that when we talk about the criminalization of HIV non-disclosure, we need to argue that someone with HIV who uses a condom but doesn’t disclose their status in a single sexual encounter - which does not result in transmission - does not deserve to be convicted for aggravated sexual assault, with a maximum sentence of 14 years. It’s amazing how people resist this premise, even we are talking about consensual sex between two adults. Yet in the case of rape, in which consensus is non-existent, and the intent to humiliate and violate is wholly present, it’s national news that the perpetrators received a whole year in prison.  

We need to talk about these issues in the whole context of women’s equality issues, not in silos. The issue is bigger than Steubenville. Violence against women is a problem around the world, and that includes all forms of violence.  Legally, politically, and economically women do not have the same rights as men. Not only in other far away lands. Here. Not 60 years ago. Today.

I don’t want to blame the media, because the media is only one part of this. But it certainly contributes to rape culture, there’s no denying that. Some of these issues are challenging to deal with. For instance, the media glamorizes drug facilitated sexual assault, and not just CNN. There are so many examples in movies and television in which male violence, in general, is present, and many instances in which men lie, use alcohol, or manipulate women into having sex with them.  (Not to mention rape, kidnap, dismember and kill them). Even though rape is about power, not sex, the media contributes to the idea that male desire for sex is natural and should override a woman’s sense of power over her own body.

In the Feministing article, the author, Maya, writes:

I don’t want to live in a world that assumes guys are naturally sexual aggressors who will opportunistically take advantage of an incapacitated girl, or forever push, push, push at the boundaries of consent until they hear a clear and forceful “no.” I want to live in a world that gives boys more credit than that.

Although this would far from solve the problem, I believe that sex education needs to include an education about what consent actually means and how important it is. It seems so obvious that sex education should include this component but it’s absent. The “no means no” language is so limited that the rapists involved in this case, apparently didn’t even realize they were doing something wrong.  

This blog starts and ends with Patrick Stewart because, earlier in the day, before I learned about the trial, I read an interview with Patrick Stewart on his initiatives to end violence against women. One of the questions asked, do you think we also need to take a closer look at the messages we're sending to boys?

Stewart answered:

Absolutely. Most certainly…. We talk to our children in ways they will understand about morality, about honesty. We tell them that it's not good to lie and it's not good to be deceitful. But I think we rarely have spoken to them about the proper elements of the relationship between a male and a female, a young boy and a young girl. And I look back to my childhood and from quite an early age, my recollection is that the girls that I knew were either desirable, sexual objects or were potential victims - you know, people you could persecute, and it was okay to do that. And so I think in the same way that in our schools things like sex education have now become standard and normal and entirely acceptable, if lessons can be learned about how to be in the world, how to be in society and treat everyone with the same measure of respect.

Thank you to Patrick Stewart. My next blog post will be about hope.

This story by Keith Alcorn first appeared on aidsmap.com here. 

PositiveLite.com says: Since this report was released earlier this month there has been much skepticism/caution in the press as to the significance, or even reality, of this "functional cure", such as this analysis in the Huffington Post or this one in The Guardian.

Researchers in the United States say that they have identified a case of a 'functional' HIV cure in a child infected with HIV who began antiretroviral treatment within days of birth. The child has now been off treatment for a year, and although HIV DNA has been detected at very low levels in the child’s cells, the virus is not reproducing.

Further follow-up will be required to determine whether this state persists, or whether viral replication resumes, but researchers involved in the case are optimistic that what they have found represents a functional cure – a state in which HIV remains in the body, but no longer replicates. One functional cure in an adult has been reported previously – the so-called 'Berlin patient' (see below and related news story).

The findings were presented at a press conference on the opening day of the 20th Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections (CROI) in Atlanta, and further details were released on Monday 4 March in a conference session on 'HIV Eradication'.

Dr Deborah Persaud (below, right) of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, reported on the case of a child treated with antiretroviral therapy from 30 hours after birth, almost immediately after testing for HIV DNA and RNA on the second day of life. The child was born to a mother with detectable viral load at the time of delivery.

The child was delivered prematurely, at 35 weeks of gestation, and the mother underwent rapid antibody testing for HIV at the time of delivery. She had not been in HIV care previously. The child was tested for HIV at around 30 hours of life, and tests revealed detectable HIV DNA and HIV RNA of just under 20,000 copies/ml. RNA tests continued to be positive up until 20 days of life, indicating that this was not an isolated false positive result and that viral replication was taking place.

In line with recommended practice in cases where mothers have detectable viral load at the time of delivery, the infant was initiated on a regimen of AZT/3TC and nevirapine as prophylaxis against infection. In cases of prophylactic treatment to prevent infection in HIV-exposed infants, this regimen would be given for 4 weeks. In this case, because virus was detected and the infant had confirmed HIV infection, treatment continued until the age of 18 months (although lopinavir/ritonavir (Kaletra) was substituted for nevirapine at day 7). At 18 months of age, the child’s caregiver withdrew the child from treatment and the child was lost to follow-up for nearly six months.

Viral load tests were carried out at 7, 12 and 20 days of age that showed detectable virus after the initiation of treatment, before the virus became undetectable on a test with a lower limit of detection of 20 copies/ml at day 29. Subsequent testing until month 26 showed that viral load remained persistently undetectable after this point, despite the fact that treatment was stopped after 18 months.

When the child returned to care at 23 months of age and it became apparent that viral load was not detectable in the absence of treatment, clinicians at the University of Mississippi Medical Center sought advice from research groups outside the state, including Dr Katherine Luzuriaga at the University of Massachusetts.

Collaborating laboratories at the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the University of California San Diego carried out ultrasensitive tests to determine whether HIV had been eliminated, or whether any traces of the virus persisted in any cell types. They found that viral RNA of 1 copy/ml could be detected in tests carried out when the child was two years of age and 2 copies/ml at 26 months. Co-culture of 22 million resting CD4 cells failed to identify any replication-competent HIV at 24 months.

However, testing at 24 and 26 months of age found a reservoir of presumably latently infected cells: HIV DNA was detected in peripheral blood mononuclear cells at a frequency of 37 and 4 copies per million cells. The investigators also looked for 2-LTR circles, fragments of unintegrated HIV DNA that might have the potential either to influence the way in which the infected cell evades immune surveillance, or to establish a prolonged state of latency. They found no 2-LTR circles within the cells containing HIV DNA, suggesting that HIV is completely quiescent, and not replicating – a functional cure of HIV infection.

Speaking at the press conference, Deborah Persaud rejected suggestions that the case might represent an episode of successful post-exposure prophylaxis, noting that several blood samples taken during the first week of life had tested positive for viral RNA, indicating that infection had already become established. However, further testing of these samples is not possible because the samples had not been stored, their future significance not being appreciated at the time the child was diagnosed.

Dr Persaud said that the findings represented a “proof of concept”. Referring to the case of a Berlin man who was declared cured of HIV infection following a bone marrow transplant from a donor with genetically conferred resistance to HIV infection, she said: “We believe this is our Timothy Brown moment.”

She said that trials to investigate whether a functional cure is possible for larger numbers of infants are now in design, and that, if successful, the challenge will be to replicate the results through the existing platform of services for prevention of mother-to-child transmission.

Reference

In the course of a few short months, Lee Thompson (“Uncle Poodle” to reality TV watchers) has managed to personify a variety of hot button issues among gay men today. He has come out as gay and HIV-positive. He has sent an ex-lover to jail and sent nude pictures via Grindr. 

Or not. Depending on whom you believe. Let’s break down the strange case of Uncle Poodle.

In what we can all agree was a positive development, Thompson publicly came out as gay last year and evidently has the love and support of much of his family, the colorful clan of the TLC reality show “Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.” He instantly became an ally and friend of gays everywhere. So far, so good.

Then, in a recent interview with the Atlanta gay magazine Fenuxe, Thompson made the announcement that he tested HIV-positive in May of 2012. What was startling, though, was his explanation of his infection. Thompson claimed that not only had an ex-lover knowingly infected him, but that the man is currently serving a five-year sentence for non-disclosure of his HIV status (an example of what is known as HIV Criminalization).

Almost immediately the details of the story were questioned (by everyone except Fenuxe magazine, which did not delve into the prosecution in their piece; the writer simply “applauded” Thompson’s bravery). Journalist Todd Heywood posed serious questions about the case, including the timeline between Thompson’s infection and the reported prosecution, which would have happened in mere months. Heywood also scoured court records from Georgia to Alabama and could find no evidence of any such case. Requests for more information from Thompson’s people have garnered no response. The defendant has never been identified.

Did Uncle Poodle lie about sending the ex-lover to jail? And why the hell would he do that?

It is my opinion that Thompson made up the prosecution story. And in doing so, he behaved in much the same way that most everyone does who tests HIV positive these days. He looked for someone else to blame. He played the innocent victim. He released himself from personal responsibility.

Because everybody knows that when you test HIV-positive, you don’t call your doctor to start treatment. You call the police to press charges.

Stigma is driving these actions, of course. People who become positive today are judged for being “bad,” for not following the rules, for failing the community and becoming one of the great unwashed. It makes no difference that they were simply caught being human, that they let down their guard for a moment or got drunk or didn’t care or stupidly fell in love. Their friends will furrow their brows. Their dating life will wither.

And so, someone must pay for these indignities. That is one reason HIV criminalization laws have prospered – they appeal to our sense of vengeance. They are also vessels of homophobia, sexism and racism, considering how badly the laws are applied and how often prosecutions run counter to public health or even common sense (some convictions have imposed jail time for decades even when condoms were used and no one was infected, and advocates believe people forgo HIV testing in fear of being prosecuted). Conservative lawmakers and prosecutors — who don’t believe people with HIV should be having sex at all — are more than willing to exploit our feelings of revenge when testing positive so they can lock up some diseased fags.

I empathize with those who test positive today. They suddenly find themselves on my side of the viral divide, and for some, their hearts and minds may not have made the crossing yet. Perhaps they have unresolved issues about becoming infected. Whatever their circumstances, testing positive is a major life event and I can understand if some have an impulse to lash out.

And I believe that Lee Thompson did exactly that when he reported sending the man who infected him to jail. The man who no one can identify. The case that no one can locate.

Things have just gotten a little more complicated for our Uncle Poodle. Now, someone who claims to have communicated with Thompson on Grindr is trying to sell naked photos that Thompson supposedly sent him (isn’t humanity grand?). Thompson being linked to Grindr — the app about which controversy recently arose when a survey indicated half of its users were engaging in bareback sex — presents a delicate situation indeed.

People living with HIV have every right to “full and satisfying sexual and emotional lives,” as the Denver Principles stated thirty years ago. There is no evidence or details about Thompson’s sexual life or choices, so let’s simply hope he is conducting himself as someone with intimate knowledge of HIV non-disclosure laws, considering his contention that he sent someone to jail for withholding their status. The sword cuts both ways, and I worry for him.

Lee Thompson certainly has faced his share of scrutiny, living as an HIV-positive gay man in the rural South, much less someone connected to a wildly popular reality series. But he should consider his moves, both public and private, very, very carefully. Because we don’t simply like to tear down celebrities, or save our judgment and revenge for those with the thickest skin.

As we prove time and again, we can do it to the very best of friends.

Mark

PLUS…

Thank you for your stunning readership in recent weeks, my friends. In particular, the recent post “Your Mother Liked It Bareback” broke all traffic records on my site. I will admit to being precociously provocative with that one, and especially appreciate the comments you left, which proved far more interesting than the post itself. I do believe, as Gus Cairns remarked, that much of this passionate debate is driven by the pure grief so many of us experienced — and that is nothing to be taken lightly. My point remains that our emotions have little to no effect on the fact that nearly half of gay men don’t use condoms at least some of the time; validating other prevention tools isn’t a threat to condom use; and finally, what are we doing for the 50% of gay men not using condoms — or are they expendable?

This article first appeared on Mark’s own site, My Fabulous Disease, here.

Edward Irving Koch, mayor of the City of New York from 1978 to 1989 (at one time a Congressman, lawyer, and enlisted in the U.S Army), died on Friday, February 1st 2013, at the ripe age of eighty eight in Manhattan. The cause of death, so one hears, was heart failure. Naturally, speculation is rife on whether or not this implies he may actually have been in possession of one, and if so, how and for what exactly it may have been used.

As is reliably the case when someone with a television presence passes on, his last breath opened the floodgates of hagiography. First out of the gate, The New York Times: Edward I. Koch, the master showman of City Hall, who parlayed shrewd political instincts and plenty of chutzpah into three tumultuous terms as New York’s mayor with all the tenacity, zest and combativeness that personified his city of golden dreams.

The obit goes on, and on, and on, five pages in a key somewhere between solemn and sentimental. That’s how these things are done. As the saying goes, De mortuis nihil nisi bonum, “Speak only well of the dead”. The media generally loves this stuff; it’s a practical, coincidentally profitable tradition. More papers are sold, web pages viewed and banners clicked, everybody’s happy. Wistful stories of the dear departed do practically write themselves or get recycled from leftover copy.

For example, did you know that the former mayor would have reporters over to his Greenwich Village apartment for grapefruit and coffee? No?

No problem, neither did I, but to civilization’s immeasurable enrichment, we do now. I’d suggest that’s just how Koch would have liked it. His favorite subject was by most accounts he himself – Ed Koch, slayer of dragons, the philosopher-king who (against all odds!) brought the world’s greatest city back from the brink of self-immolation, all the while (a man of the people!) of humble appearance, plain-spoken, all the concentrated authenticity of the outer boroughs made flesh to walk among us. Fine, he laid his head to rest every night in the West Village, with whom we don’t know, but why sweat over scenery details when the show itself makes Broadway look like a school play?

It’s a great story, and some parts of it may even be true.

"If memory serves, and I believe it does, I noticed him staring at my crotch."

I only met Koch a few times in passing, in the elevators of an office building on the Avenue of the Americas where we both worked at the time. If memory serves, and I believe it does, I noticed him staring at my crotch. Take this particular observation with a grain of salt; the morning rush, before I hit Starbucks, is a time of day I’m lucky to successfully dodge traffic, let alone competently evaluate random strangers in an elevator. That said, my gaydar was going off, not at five-alarm levels mind you, but it’s a bit odd to even remember that over a decade after it happened. 

In any event, we exchanged some pleasantries about his then-new book, snarled a bit about Rudy Giuliani (the universally despised mayor at the time, still a fascist pig today), and went our separate ways. I saw him a few more times, said hello, smiled, basic anodyne corporate politeness, nothing of great note to the easily distracted.

Over the years, Koch would turn up here and there, with no regularity or pattern, unless carnival barkers have patterns. Against the backdrop of a City scarred by the terror attacks of September 11th and the technocratic blandness of the Bloomberg administration, Ed Koch at least provided a flash of color. Anything and everything can be gentrified with some effort, but not Ed Koch. If a landmark is what seems to have always been in and of a place, its setting hard to imagine without it, then that’s what he became; part of a sense of place, of the particular fiber of New York. No matter who happened to occupy his seat in his City Hall, Ed Koch would always be the mayor of a shining metropolis that lived in perfect form only in his memory. This was the city that needed him as much as he needed it. For the rest of us, the only constant on this scattering of rocks is perpetual change; for Ed Koch, the only constant was Ed Koch. It’s a small miracle, maybe, that he chose a cemetery for his final rest over having a taxidermist prepare his remains for permanent exhibit.

"The rumors and doubts about his sexuality never went away..."

We don’t know that he ever loved a man, or a woman. All things Ed Koch were, as far as Ed Koch was concerned, matters of consuming public interest, but not that. We do know that he loved the city itself with a fierce, burning passion.  Attention spans being what they are and the man’s taste for microphones legendary, we would get occasional reminders on the continuing vitality of the affair between man and city. It is altogether fitting and deliciously, richly ironic that a documentary titled simply Koch premiered the week of his passing. Ed Koch wasn’t one to be silenced by the minor inconvenience of death, not for an instant. He didn’t so much die as switch channels.

The rumors and doubts about his sexuality never went away, to be sure, and absent some trove of Polaroids or, God preserve us, a sex tape stashed somewhere in the Tombs, probably never will.

Or we could try something new and exciting, just for shits and giggles. Why don’t we skip the sex tape idea, drop the rumor conceit, go all-in and call the same-sex preference of the late mayor what it really was: common knowledge.

I use the phrase common knowledge with deliberation. When a given fact spawns newspaper articles, blog posts, several movies and dramatic plays, along with the occasional Tony Award, maybe it’s time to claw the open secrets out from under weasel words like rumor.

"If you must know, his boyfriend’s name was Richard Nathan." 

Playwrights and authors Larry Kramer and Tony Kushner might agree, maybe even Village Voice columnist Michael Musto, film-maker Kirby Dick in his 2006 documentary Outrage, Max Read at Gawker, Yehudit Mam for Out Magazine, Americablog’s John Aravosis, the incomparable Joe Jervis of Joe My God, even the inevitable Andrew Sullivan. Not exactly, in the aggregate, equivalent to a random crazy person in Times Square with a hand-lettered sign. Now that would justify doubt. Was Ed Koch gay? Yes, and it took me one phone call to confirm it. I made more than one, just to be on the safe side, and still: if ever there was a glass closet, it was his. If you must know, his boyfriend’s name was Richard Nathan. Richard died of AIDS in 1996. Not exactly news over here in Good-Taste-Ville as far as the mechanics are concerned, one might think.

"True enough, Mayor Koch never took that step in front of the cameras to say “I’m gay”"

But when a Bill Clinton can’t even keep a quick blow job off every front page in the known universe, or a certain John Edwards his cliché-hippie mistress from blowing up into a career-destroying media firestorm, while a three-term mayor of the nation’s media capital can manage to evade basic factual scrutiny for decades, something is wrong.

True enough, Mayor Koch never took that step in front of the cameras to say “I’m gay”. He did issue the occasional weak-tea denial or fuck you, but nothing carrying the vehemence of “I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky”. If only Bill Clinton had known that fuck you is a magic spell to make journalists vanish. Or Eliot Spitzer. Or Anthony Weiner.

Put another way, if a simple fuck you can put a definitive end to someone’s journalistic research, they should call their journalism school, ask for a tuition refund, and invest the proceeds in a cupcake shop. More cupcakes at least wouldn’t drag down the collective intelligence of the American people or lend a helping hand to discrimination against a minority.

The principal variable of outcome in these cases is the combination of genders. Powerful men involved with women, that’s news, with other men, not so much. The next conclusion would be that a relationship between two men is ipso facto repellent, not the kind of news fit to print.

That is sexism and homophobia, pure and simple. By law, we’re considered innocent until proven guilty, and by society, straight until we bang someone of our own gender on live national television, preferably to a Lady Gaga soundtrack.

This is not a call for more and better gossip columns, by the way. Some more realism and less hypocrisy in reporting would be great, though, as mind-blowing as it might be to some that hetero isn’t the default factory operating system and gay some optional (and rare) piece of software. If someone does want to think along those lines, Windows and Mac OS are a better start; the latter can run the former’s apps if it has to, but it’s still a Mac under the spreadsheet.

The real and important question is whether Ed Koch’s lifelong stay in the closet impacted his politics or the governance of New York City during his three terms.

When Koch was first elected mayor in 1977 as a different kind of liberal, the world was not the place it is now. One can imagine posters braying Vote for Cuomo, not the Homo being shocking even today, let alone almost four decades ago. Open homosexuality would have been a career-killer for any politician at the ballot box, even a mortal personal danger, as the assassination in 1979 of San Francisco’s gay Supervisor Harvey Milk showed with chilling finality. Koch however had higher ambitions than mayor, running for governor in 1982 and sometimes talked about as a possible first Jewish President. If either seems a stretch in hindsight, it did not at the time, not for a young, ambitious politician effortlessly vaulting from Democratic district leader to the City Council and Congress right into the most powerful municipal office in the country. So what if he was that way, it’s not as if anyone needed to know.

That is the way these things work to this day.

"There have been, and still are, any number of closeted men and women in positions of power and fame."

Koch, along with many others, had every reason to expect the underlying gentlemen’s agreement to be honored. There have been, and still are, any number of closeted men and women in positions of power and fame. They’re quite secure as long as appearances are maintained. Discretion, as they say, is the better part of valor.

It’s not so much a concern for privacy as it is a witness protection program. In 1977, that made some sense for all involved; in 2013, not so much.

Nor is the glass closet merely an academic issue; LGBT rights are a political matter. The New York Times, for example, was forced to edit its ponies-and-flowers obituary of Mayor Koch to reflect the widespread fury over the mayor’s response to the AIDS crisis after the paper got savaged on Twitter. Did Koch ignore the epidemic for years because it was seen as a gay disease, and guilt by association working the way it does, possibly leading the public to suspect his own preferences and hurting his career? Larry Kramer certainly sees it that way, and he is by no means alone. In later years, after leaving office, Koch went on to support homophobic policies and politicians, opposing marriage equality in New York State, endorsing George W. Bush for re-election, the list just goes on.

At least he’s in excellent company. Consider Ken Mehlmann, George Bush’s 2004 campaign manager – gay. That little fact didn’t stop the man from working his little tail off to pass anti-gay constitutional amendments in nine states that year: Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon and Utah. In 2012, these states had a combined population of roughly fifty-six million, which translates to one in six Americans, more people than all but twenty-three sovereign nations.

A pretty shitty deal, you might think, not just for LGBT Americans in those states, but for all of us. Queer Americans know from bitter experience that our worst enemies are more often than not our own flesh and blood, lashing out even as they are scared shitless of what they know to be true of themselves. Nor does this hurt only us queers, given how neatly homophobia dovetails with repression of women, racism and injustice at home, imperialism and support of tyranny abroad.

Can this state of affairs change? I believe it can; but change starts with honesty. Yes, New York Times, I’m looking at you.

While Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act - affectionately known by its supporters as the “Kill the Gays” bill - isn’t new (it was introduced in 2009 by parliamentarian David Bahati), it’s recently experienced an aggressive resurgence; in November 2012, the Ugandan government revived the proposed bill with concerted efforts to pass it before year’s end.

Admittedly, I didn’t know much about the bill when it was proposed in 2009; however, when it began to resurface a few months ago in the media, I quickly starting paying attention and launched into an informal investigation on what was happening and why. Being an avid HIV and AIDS researcher, advocate and activist, once I discovered there was a clause about people living with HIV, I became even more invested. In addition to my life and work in HIV, I’m also a queer identified feminist who has lived in southern Africa and who often finds myself at the crux of various social justice struggles, with Uganda’s current situation being no exception.     

Once I began researching Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Bill*, what I found was stomach-churning and heart-wrenchingly horrifying.

Here are some of the highlights of the original bill: the purpose of the bill – fuelled largely by Evangelical beliefs (and supported by Evangelicals in America) -  is to preserve marriage as a contract between a woman and a man, to protect children from deviant homosexual behaviour, and importantly, to prohibit sexual relations between two people of the same sex while simultaneously prohibiting the promotion or recognition of such relations. “The offence of homosexuality” is roughly defined as any intentional touching, penetrating, or stimulation of sexual organs between two people of the same sex; if found guilty of this “offence”, a person can be imprisoned for life.

If you think that’s horrendous, brace yourself. The charge of “Aggravated homosexuality” is used as an umbrella term under which numerous activities/offences fall, including sex with a minor (someone under the age of 18), sexual abuse of someone with a disability, and being HIV-positive, among others. Upon conviction, those who commit “aggravated homosexuality” will be sentenced to death.   

For the most part, the international community did not respond kindly to Uganda’s homophobic and murderous legislation and countered this legislation with freezes in foreign aid and international calls to abolish the bill (or at least the part of the bill which called for the death penalty). I’ve read numerous articles to suggest that in 2012, the Ugandan government made some amendments to the bill which allegedly included the elimination of the death penalty though the amended draft of the legislation has not yet been made available to the public and therefore, it is nearly impossible to confirm if this is true. 

Whether the death penalty has been removed from the bill is an important fact to clarify, though I would argue that in many ways, the damage has already been done. Once the floodgates are open (i.e. the Ugandan government giving the general public permission to discriminate against, stigmatize and perpetuate violence against the LGBTQ population, the constant threat of a fine plus up to three years in jail for not reporting an “offense”,  etc.), how easy will it be to close them? This is especially true when the bill includes a clause stating that anyone who has been “victimized by a homosexual” can kill the LGBTQ person in question with impunity. Or that the bill trumps confidential relationships typically shared between doctors and their patients (in other words, doctors must report any patients they see who confide in them about being gay and/or being gay and HIV+).

Upon learning this, I immediately began considering the numerous disastrous effects this will have on people living with HIV and the transmission of it in Uganda.   For starters, the inclusion of the HIV-positive clause in the Anti-Homosexuality Bill reinforces the historical and problematic relationship that exists between gay men and HIV and AIDS. To highlight HIV within this bill continues to suggest that HIV is “the gay disease” even though in many African countries - Uganda included - the epidemic is generalized and often more prevalent in heterosexual populations. By underpinning the connection between gay men and HIV, this bill may inadvertently give the straight population permission to distance themselves from HIV education, awareness and prevention and more easily disassociate from better sexual health practices because they don’t feel HIV is as relevant to them. Conversely though, with the increased state-sanctioned discrimination against the LGBTQ population in Uganda, I suspect that HIV and sexual health education targeting this demographic would likely be scaled down if it hasn’t already been.

Effectively, the Anti-Homosexuality Bill has the potential to negatively impact HIV education and prevention for both the LGBTQ and straight populations alike, with different methods of attack. 

Another area of HIV awareness and prevention which immediately came to mind when thinking about this bill is the impact it will have on testing. According to UNGASS, in 2010, only 20% of women and men between 25-49 years of age had been tested for HIV in the previous 12 months and knew the result of that test. We know from experience that stigma and discrimination around HIV exist and when coupled together, create an environment of fear, shame and hostility. Now imagine this environment layered with state-sanctioned violence and oppression against those who are LGBTQ-identified with an unknown HIV status and try to put yourself in the shoes of someone considering an HIV test and how negatively they would be impacted if their test were positive. Wouldn’t it just be easier to not know? For many, this might result in actively choosing not to know their status out of fear of the very real consequences that they may face.

In not knowing their status, it is possible that many folks are carrying the virus and are subsequently unknowingly infecting others. The risk of knowing your HIV status is dangerously compounded for any LGBTQ-identified person in Uganda; receiving a positive test will result in death at the hands of the government yet not getting tested will be a certain demise for those who are unknowingly living with HIV. 

When access to healthcare and access to treatment are compromised, how can we expect the LGBTQ population to thrive, especially when their lives are complicated by HIV? Given that all institutions (education, healthcare, etc.) are expected to follow the proposed bill, what is this going to do for HIV prevention education, especially for the LGBTQ community?

UNAIDS identified men who have sex with men (MSM) as one of the highest HIV risk groups in Uganda and in 2009, MSM accounted for 13.7% of people living with HIV. Not surprisingly, the same year that the Anti-Homosexuality Bill was introduced, Uganda stopped collecting HIV data on MSM. At the time this article was written, 2009 was the last year that UNAIDS reported HIV statistics on MSM and HIV. With only 54% of its poz population on anti-retrovirals (as of 2010, according to UNAIDS), I question how many of these folks are LGBTQ-identified and how access to their treatment might be interrupted by the proposed legislation, if it hasn’t already been. 

To say that there is a lot at stake should the proposed Anti-Homosexuality Bill pass is a vast understatement. The situation is dire and what is at risk is not only the lives, human rights and dignity of many LGBTQ-identified Ugandans but also the potentially disastrous cascade effect that this legislation could have on HIV awareness, prevention, transmission and treatment.   

*Want to read the bill yourself? Here’s a link to the 2009 version.