Same Sex Marriage Bans Contribute to Health Disparities says AMA

The American Medical Association voted Tuesday to oppose the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military and declared that same-sex marriage bans contribute to health disparities.

The nation's largest doctors' group stopped short of saying it would seek to overturn marriage bans but its new stance angered conservative activists and provides a fresh boost to lobbying efforts by gay-rights advocates.

"It's highly significant that the AMA as one of this country's leading professional associations has taken a position on both of these issues," said Rea Carey, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington.

The health disparities measure, "in the long run, will certainly help efforts to win marriage equality," Carey said.

Whether the AMA's lobbying power will hasten efforts to overturn the "don't ask, don't tell" law remains to be seen. President Obama has said he is working with congressional leaders to end the policy, and the AMA's stance will likely help, although gay rights issues have been upstaged by Obama's health care overhaul battle.

The AMA's vote took place at the group's interim policymaking meeting in Houston,

The health disparities policy is based on evidence showing that married couples are more likely to have health insurance and that the uninsured have a high risk for "living sicker and dying younger," said Dr. Peter Carmel, an AMA board member.

But Jenny Tyree, an analyst for Focus on the Family Action, a conservative advocacy group, called it a health insurance problem, not a marriage problem.

Doctors who pushed the group to oppose "don't ask, don't tell" say forcing gay service members to keep their sexual orientation secret has "a chilling effect" on open communication between gays and their doctors.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/11/11/MNBC1AICNU.DTL#ixzz0WZiipNO5

How the world views the HIV/AIDS epidemic is in some cases a stark difference to how we view it here in the states. I just read an article and posted a message on http://www.twitter.com/familyblendz about how Kenya is looking to provide resources to gays for the Census. Problem with that in Africa is, there is punishable jail time that accompanies your admission of being gay. Well who do you think will come forward to get "education" on HIV/AIDS prevention if they think they get thrown in jail? So I clearly question the motives of the Kenyan government and precisely what it expects to gain from such fruitless efforts.

Well that leads us to Russia who also made the news in their awareness of this epidemic spreading. The truth is Russia has no awareness plans because they have only subscribed to the failed "abstinence" strategy. They have come to realize that ignoring the problem doesn't make it go away.

AIDS specialists urged Russia to adopt successful strategies like needle-exchange programs and heroin substitutes such as methadone for drug addicts.

The number of HIV infections in Russia has doubled in the past eight years and there is evidence that in this region the virus is increasingly being spread by heterosexual sex.

The rapid growth of the epidemic in Russia is in contrast to sub-Saharan Africa and South and Southeast Asia, where prevalence of the virus fell during the same eight-year period, according to UNAIDS, the United Nations AIDS agency. So while other nations were addressing the issues and meeting them head to reduce their numbers and deaths, Russia has climbed to double digits.

Russia’s chief public health officer, Gennady Onishchenko, told a regional AIDS conference Wednesday that Russia is "emphatically against" the use of drug replacement therapy. Meanwhile, he criticized programs that exchange clean needles for used ones, saying such programs may promote illicit drug sales and HIV transmission.

Both are part of a so-called harm reduction strategy, in contrast to the just-say-no programs that urge abstinence from drugs and risky sex. Russian health officials say they are committed overall to a "healthy lifestyles" rather than a harm reduction approach to improving public health.

That isn’t good enough, a number of foreign experts say.

"International studies show that an abstinence-based message on drug use or sex simply doesn’t work," said Robin Gorna, executive director of the International AIDS Society. In Russia, she said, "it does appear that ideology is getting in the way of public health care policy."

Russia has increased spending on AIDS programs by 33 times since 2006, making it a central part of an ambitious new national health care strategy. It has expanded drug treatment dramatically for AIDS sufferers and is among the leaders worldwide in reducing the incidence of transmission of the disease between mothers and their babies.

But many Russian officials view harm reduction efforts as encouraging criminal or shameful behavior. The position has left it increasingly isolated, as China recently embraced such programs, foreign AIDS experts here said.

Russia has some highly successful needle exchange programs and free condom programs, several foreign specialists said, but many have been paid for through grants from the international Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.

Now those grants are being terminated under Global Fund rules, the specialists said, because Russia is too wealthy to qualify for them.

Chris Beyrer, a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, said Russian officials "have never really embraced" needle exchange, free condom distribution and other harm reduction techniques.

"It is the reason I think that they continue to have one of the most severe epidemics in the region," said Beyrer, director of Hopkins’ AIDS International Training and Research Program. He was in Moscow for the regional meeting, which runs through Friday.

AIDS was virtually unknown in Russia and elsewhere in the Soviet Union prior to the collapse of Communism. What started as an epidemic among male injection drug users here in the late 1990s has gradually moved into the communities of sex workers. By 2007 about 44 percent of new infections in Russia were among women, according to UNAIDS, raising fears it could move into the general population.

Onishchenko blamed the increase in HIV infections to the surge in Afghan poppy production over the past decade, a trend that has flooded the former Soviet Union with heroin. Amazing, Russia is now blaming Afghanistan!

People living in the region are routinely asked to provide health certificates that reveal their HIV status, the report found. Hospital workers often casually identify HIV-positive patients to bystanders and co-workers, U.N. researchers said, and hospitals frequently segregate HIV-positive patients, treat them with scorn or charge them extra, hidden fees.

HIV-positive children face discrimination at school, including forced disclosure of their status and segregation from other students, while in the labor sector, many employers are wary of hiring HIV-positive individuals.

AIDS activists say that discrimination drives many of those infected to avoid testing and treatment. This is the real problem, the lack of equality and freedom from discrimination prevents education.

*This article, originally posted by the Association Press was amended by Familyblendz for this blog posting.

Arrested Equality?

The White House yesterday, announced that President Obama will speak to GLBT community on the eve of the National Equality March on Washington, D.C. My question to you, 'family, is what does Obama need to say to quel some of the angst building against his presidency?

When campaigning, Obama promised many things to the GLBT community, but has failed to deliver. Being forward about this however, the community has been extremely patient giving the current economic agenda and full plate that now rests on his Oval Office desk.

Now that the National Equality March is approaching, questions are being raised and answers are being demanded from this administration. Promises were made a year ago, so clearly there is no more room at the table for promises or proposals. As states who have already awarded right and benefits are repealing both, action is being required from the president. I truly believe that 'equality's development has been arrested. Shackled by tradition, sentenced by society for a lifetime of injustice to families. He, Obama, better speak and dammit, he better speak fast.

Will Gay Divorce Be As Equal As We Want Marriage To Be?

Okay now here is where I want us to educate ourselves on the whole same sex marriage thingy. It's like fighting for the right to vote, then having to force, pay and coherce the same man to now go and actually vote.

A Texas judge cleared the way for two Dallas men to get a divorce, ruling Thursday that Texas’ ban on same-sex marriage violates the constitutional guarantee to equal protection under the law.Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said he’d appeal the ruling, which he labeled an attempt to strike down the ban approved by voters in 2005.

"The laws and constitution of the State of Texas define marriage as an institution involving one man and one woman," Abbott said in a written statement. "Today’s ruling purports to strike down that constitutional definition - despite the fact that it was recently adopted by 75 percent of Texas voters."Abbott has argued that because the state doesn’t recognize gay marriage, its courts can’t dissolve one through divorce.

District Judge Tena Callahan’s ruled Thursday, however, that the court "has jurisdiction to hear a suit for divorce filed by persons legally married in another jurisdiction."Jennifer Pizer, marriage project director for the New York-based gay rights group Lambda Legal, said it is too early to predict the ultimate implications of the lawsuit, in which neither man is identified.But Cathy Adams, president of the conservative Texas Eagle Forum, characterized the decision as a judicial overreach."

Judicial activism is what they’re after, and it sounds as if they found someone in Dallas to participate in their endeavor," she said. "The people of Texas have spoken very strongly in opposition to same-sex marriage."Peter Schulte, an attorney for the man who filed for divorce, told The Dallas Morning News that he and his client are "ecstatic" over the court’s ruling.

Schulte said the decision was a surprise, and that he hoped to have the judge sign a divorce order in a few weeks.Gov. Rick Perry said state lawmakers and voters have repeatedly affirmed marriage as being between a man and a woman."I believe the ruling is flawed and should be appealed," Perry said.

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said she also supports Abbott’s decision to appeal. Hutchison, who is challenging Perry in the GOP gubernatorial primary, said she has "consistently voted to preserve the sanctity of marriage and as governor I will continue to defend traditional marriage."

A phone message left by The Associated Press at court offices for Callahan was not immediately returned late Thursday. Callahan’s ruling was first reported in The Dallas Morning News.Pizer predicted an eventual end to bans on gay marriage in Texas and across the country."Most people do recognize that, eventually, American law will treat gays and lesbians the same as every other American," she said. "What we don’t know is how may chapters that story will be."

Your support of Prop 8 and Marriage Equality means nothing if we are only preparing for wonderful happily ever afters. Unfortunately that won't be the case, and with that Marriage Equality comes a different kind of Equal-ness at the time a marriage is dissolved. Lets make sure that we fight for the rules to change, so that those rules will not "include us", that we also don't work to change the rules to exclude us from the parts we don't like...that's not real equality.

Gay and Seeking a Job?

Two years ago, Matthew Logan went to the Out to Work job fair for gay men and lesbians, and he met representatives for AXA Equitable. Last year, he went to the fair and decided to work for the company. On Thursday, he was back to recruit.

The Out to Work job fair was originally started as a diversity outreach project to showcase workplaces that are friendly to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered employees. This year, it has become an economic lifeline for thousands who are out of work. More than 2,000 people preregistered for Thursday’s job fair, which took place at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in Greenwich Village. Last year, 300 did, though about 1,500 ultimately showed up.

This year, about 2,500 people attended the job fair. Laid-off M.B.A.’s, recent college grads and entrepreneurs waited in lines that stretched down the block in both directions. A flurry of suits, BlackBerries and résumés converged in a lavender room under disco balls.

Despite the tough economic times, the job fair had the same number of employers recruiting as last year: about 50. They represented a range of enterprises, private and public, big and small: HBO, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Gay Men’s Health Crisis and Pfizer. While finance and Fortune Companies were there in force, the entertainment companies — such as HBO and A&E — had notably much longer lines than the others.

The organizers looked to the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, which evaluates workplaces for gay-friendly policies, like domestic partner benefits and affinity groups for to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered employees.

“We started with the companies that got good marks on the report card,” said Tony Juliano, the president of the Greenwich Village-Chelsea Chamber of Commerce, a sponsored of the fair. Some companies are known to be more friendly than others.

Those who attended the fair emphasized that it was not just about finding a job, but finding a job where they did not have to have second thoughts about putting a personal photo on their desk, bringing a same-sex companion to a corporate social event, or obtaining health insurance for their domestic partners.

Mr. Juliano, who is gay, recalled that 30 years ago, he would have a female friend come to company events when he worked at AT&T. “She was my beard,” he said. (AT&T is now a progressive company, he added.)

Mr. Logan, 42, came out to colleagues 12 years ago and was met with some surprise. “Some friends say I’m the straightest gay person they’ve ever met,” he said. “I’m a boring M.B.A. finance guy” who likes sports. (He even invests in a gay sports bar called Gym.) But he had become tired of having co-workers ask “what her name was” when he mentioned he went to a movie with someone. Finally he would just say, “Her name was Bill.”

“I’m not bashful to talk about who I wake up with in the morning,” he said. “It was career limiting,” Mr. Logan said. “They didn’t discriminate against me, but they didn’t feel comfortable inviting me to dinner.” Without the dinners and the golf outings, a person is not in line for the next promotion, he noted.

“You can’t be part of the old boys’ club,” he said. In contrast, AXA Equitable has marketing materials aimed at gay and lesbian clients. He picked up one brochure. It explained that gay men and lesbians could create trusts so as to leave inheritances for partners. “I wouldn’t have joined if they weren’t progressive,” he said.

Gay Men Better Parents than Straight Men Study finds

A new study will explore whether gay men respond to the challenge of parenting differently than straight men. According to San Francisco State University, the National Institutes of Heath has awarded Professor Colleen Hoff [pictured] a $275,000 grant to study how parenting impacts gay men's health. The two-year study will examine changes in gay dads' stress levels, lifestyle and health habits, relationship dynamics, peer networks and exposure to antigay discrimination.

"When parenting-related changes occur in the life of a gay man, the stakes are much higher since they are already disproportionately vulnerable to risks such as HIV, substance abuse and depression," said Hoff, professor of human sexuality studies and director of the Center for Research on Gender and Sexuality.

The study will be the first to examine whether becoming a parent causes gay men to regulate their lifestyle in ways that protect them from risky behavior, or if the stress of parenting leads to increased health risks.

Nationwide, one in five gay male couples are raising children, and Hoff believes the trend to start families will grow as gay men and lesbians become more accepted by society and gain more legal rights.

"The results of this study will help public health practitioners and community groups to identify the gaps in support for gay parents and design interventions that promote healthy gay families and minimize health risks," said Hoff, a clinical psychologist who has worked extensively in the field of HIV prevention.

The study, which begins this fall, will be conducted by Hoff and David Huebner, associate professor of psychology at the University of Utah.