SF Chron: Gay Hooker Says
Kill Other Sex Deviants

(Rusty McMann, from his site.)

A gay male sex worker who operates under the pseudonym Rusty McMann, from Las Vegas, penned a somewhat daring defense of using Craigslist to make his living provide adult body-contact services.

It ran on the op-ed page in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle, and made many predictable points about consenting trade among mature individuals. But it went one dangerous step further in calling for outright vigilante barbarism against a select group of criminals:

Am I sick to death of heterosexual white male "Christians" making political hay off the backs of consenting adults who have made difficult choices with their eyes wide open, while leaving people these politicians have professed to help twisting in the wind? Damn skippy!

And I want to be clear: I hold those responsible for the sexual exploitation of children in the deepest contempt. If it were up to me, the pimps and johns who perpetrate these crimes would be fed alive to wild boars.

This is exactly why this whole circus is so repulsive: It legitimizes the supposed moral superiority of these politicians to not-very-discerning voters while doing nothing to help catch the real bad guys.

Talk about making political hay off the backs of criminals, who, no matter how reprehensible their crimes, McMann uses to establish some moral superiority for his sexual and monetary activities. I'm also sick to death of any gay endorsing the death penalty.

In Iran he'd be considered a sexual deviant who if convicted of his crimes against the law and local religious rules, would be executed perhaps by the barbaric method of hanging. Afghanistan's Taliban murdered homosexuals by collapsing brick walls on them. One country's sex deviant worthy of killing is another country's happy homosexual hooker.

Rather than back vigilantism, this Las Vegas hooker should renounce his call for a rejection of the rule of law, appropriate penalties and sentencing, and civil liberties for anyone. How about we leave all crimes in the hands of the courts and criminal justice system, and not return to caveman-style justice.

One final point. Again, not that I endorse his call for the violent deaths of one class of criminals, but if he's going to advocate for child sexual abusers to be executed by animals, why limit himself to just johns and pimps? He seems to have forgotten all the priests, bishops and other Catholic leaders who've engaged in the same criminal behavior.

Who wants to wager that the SF Chronicle would not have allowed McMann propose the death-by-boars style of justice by applied to priests who've assaulted and violated kids? If they had, maybe this opinion piece would have attracted some attention.

SF Muni Union Site: Gays Omitted;
Promotes Car-Driving

The local budget battle, in which many constituencies, agencies and public worker unions are grappling with cutbacks and working with The City to share the fiscal pain, has one actor that stands alone - the Muni bus and street car drivers.

The Transport Workers Union 250-A (TWU), have refused to accept reductions in benefits and pension contributions, unlike other city worker unions. The TWU also opposed Muni restoring services, after a few months of scaled-back operations, that would have directly helped passengers, and put more drivers on the road.

This union is losing the p.r. battle, big time, and there's local ballot proposition in November to change the city charter, to force TWU leaders and members to curb their greed and incompetence, and also reform Muni management. Get Vote Yes on G info here.

A story in this week's Bay Area Reporter gives the Muni drivers another blackeye to contend with. The BAR writes that a gay passenger, Larry Richardson, was assaulted and the driver was of little help:

The bus driver stopped, stood up, and told the other passenger [who made the assault] to get off the bus, but the man said, "I'm not getting off this fucking bus. You can't fucking make me get off," said Richardson.

"The bus driver let him stay on," he said. "He didn't call the police." [...] In his report to the transportation agency, Richardson said that the driver refused to give him his name. [...]

There ain't no scientific studies to back this up, but face these facts: Muni drivers are reluctant to lower the front-end for seniors and obviously disabled persons, and for bikers wanting to use the racks, smile as they drive by your stop with a half-empty bus, never ask folks to move toward the rear to clear up the clogged entrance, nor do they request everyone exit through the back doors, and as the BAR reminds us, bus operators do a lot to avoid dealing with troubled riders and tense situations.

But I digress. I was poking around TWU's site and their "About Us" section states the following:

As a member of Local 250-A, you belong to an organization whose mission is to protect and expand your wages, benefits health, and safety to improve working conditions, promote pro-worker legislation, and unite all workers regardless of race, creed, color, gender, or nationality.

Both sexual orientation and gender identity are omitted from that statement. Granted, a minor matter, but in this city, of all cities, I'd like for every union to publicly and frequently stated their commitment to support brother and sister workers who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender persons.

Oh, and the TWU might want to reconsider their promotion of car-driving by members and the general public, to their monthly meetings. The site stresses the large volume of free parking, and not a word about encouraging everyone to take Muni to get there. Excerpted from TWU's site:

GENERAL MEMBERSHIP MEETINGS ARE HELD

3rd WEDNESDAY OF EACH MONTH, AT 7:00 PM

SOUTH EAST COMMUNITY COLLEGE

1800 OAKDALE AVE, SAN FRANCISCO [...]

AMPLE PARKING AVAILABLE

In case the TWU wants to promote public transportation among its members getting to the monthly forums, the closest Muni lines are the T, 23, 24 and 44 routes. If someone says ample parking and omits public transit info, that equals car-driving promotion.

SF Chron: GetEQUAL's Already
Shut Down Castro Street?

A conservative columnist, by San Francisco standards, at the Chronicle, Mr. C.W. Nevius, is blogging this afternoon about a protest by GetEQUAL that is scheduled to take place in less than two hours. Seems as though the gay Astroturf org has put out a release about what happened, before it took place. Confused? Let Nevius explain:

Also, the group sent out a press release describing how the protest went hours before it happened. "At 5:30 pm (PST),'' it read, "after the rally, advocates marched from Harvey Milk Plaza to the corner of Market and Castro Street - in the heart of Speaker Pelosi's San Francisco Congressional District - where they unfurled a banner across the street, blocking traffic, that read,"Pelosi: When Jobs are Lost, the Market Stops."

So in a couple of hours keep an eye out for that, although apparently they have already seen how it is going to work out via some sort of time travel machine.

Paging H.G. Wells and his "Time Machine"! Well, Nevius has more complaining to do about GetEQUAL and one of its local organizers:

The press release that Politico has contains a quote from Gabriel Haaland, a local activist. He's certainly entitled to his opinion. But the release identifies him as a "city-wide elected DCCC Committee member.''

That's a bit of a stretch. Haaland is definitely a member of the San Francisco Democrative County Central Committee. But city-wide elected? I don't think so.

First, Haaland was elected in the 13th Assembly District, which is one of two districts that make up the DCCC in the city. So that's not city-wide.

And second, he got 9,711 votes in the most recent election, which placed him next to last in the district. And, in a city of over 750,000, that hardly qualifies him to speak as a city-wide elected official.

Not that I agree with Nevius on this point, but he has one final kvetch to register with readers:

Just saying. Enjoy the traffic jam at Market Street. I'm sure it will totally turn Pelosi around on the issue.

The planned protest and stopping of traffic in the heart of the gay ghetto may have an impact on Pelosi. Too bad GetEQUAL have done such a lousy job of explaining how the civil disobedience will be effective.

Add Nevius to the large chorus, of gay and straight people, who simply are not impressed with GetEQUAL, its tactics, and their strategy, if they have one, for moving legislation forward in Congress.

NYT: Gay Activist Catches NYPD
Shredding Files on the Street

(Ready for shredding: NYPD files sitting on a sidewalk, waiting to be sliced into millions of tiny pieces of unreadable paper. Photo credit: Bill Dobbs, NYT.)

Congratulations are due to my pal and colleague longtime gay, civil liberties and AIDS activist Bill Dobbs, who recent caught New York's (Supposed) Finest shredding some of their files . . . on the street!

I have to admit a large degree of "you've got to be kidding me," when I read this story. A major American city has a mobile paper shredding operation, one that drives around destroying records? Sounds a bit like it's out of a Hollywood movie.

Good for the New York Times and its City Room blog for giving Dobbs' sleuthing the attention it deserves. Let's hope the Times and other news outlets delve further into what exactly the NYPD was shredding when the activist saw the truck on the street.

Excerpted from the Times:

Last week, William Dobbs sent us a curious photo of an anomalous-looking vehicle with the telltale markings of the New York Police Department.

Though it “looked more like a moving van than a police vehicle,” according to Mr. Dobbs, who saw it Friday parked on the north side of Spring Street, between Hudson and Greenwich Streets, it turned out to be something we had never heard of: the department’s giant mobile shredder.

The boxes of papers, piled on the sidewalk, “seemed to come out of the loading dock of an old office building which has a front office on Hudson,” said Mr. Dobbs, a civil liberties and gay rights advocate. “There were two guys in the truck’s cab and one working the shredder.”

Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s Chief spokesman, provided a copy of Mr. Dobbs’ photograph, was asked to shed light on it. He answered quickly, and with humor, to the query: “I can shred light on it: It was there to shred N.Y.P.D. documents at that location.” [...]

Hey Bill: Keep up the excellent watchdogging of the police in NYC. There can never be enough citizen-driven oversight of a police department.

Foreign Affairs: Mbeki Right on HIV Drug Costs?
Elizabeth Pisani's Reaction

(An excerpted page from Foreign Affair's article on HIV drugs for Africa, with a passage about Thabo Mbeki.)

[Update: Longtime AIDS and health writer Liz Highleyman offers keen insight into this debate in the comments section.]

The July/August issue of Foreign Affairs magazine ran a provocative article titled "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished," written by Princeton N. Lyman, former US Ambassador to Nigeria and South Africa, and Stephen B. Wittels, a research associate at the Council on Foreign Affairs.

The full piece, which is behind a pay-wall, looks at the American program PEPFAR, President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, is summarized thus by the magazine:

The United States' commitment to helping treat HIV patients is limiting Washington's leverage over recipient countries and undermining other development goals.

I was interested in all of the points the authors make, but one passage especially stood out, because it called attention to one controversial theory made by the former head of South Africa:

During the early years of this century, then South African President Thabo Mbeki accused the West of focusing on the HIV/AIDS pandemic in order to hook patients in African countries on expensive drugs produced largely by Western pharmaceutical companies. The West would then shift this obligation to African governments, Mbeki argued, crippling their efforts to reduce poverty or meet other development needs. At the time, Mbeki's argument was dismissed as an expression of his deep-seated resistance to recognizing the seriousness of the epidemic. Soon, African governments may begin to wonder if he was right. [...]

Frankly, I was shocked this scholarly publication would have anything positive to say about a single thing to do with any of Mbeki's many controversial theories related to HIV/AIDS drug cocktails, but at the same time it pleased me to see the author include this single point, suggesting Mbeki may have been correct in his criticism of Big Pharma.

Looking for an expert view of the article, I contacted my friend Elizabeth Pisani, an English writer, epidemiologist and public health consultant, who wrote the controversial AIDS book "The Wisdom of Whores," which is also the name of her terrific blog. She sent a long and considered response to what Foreign Affairs published, and I've excerpted key points:

The article doesn’t use the term “AIDS exceptionalism”, but it clearly calls into question the wisdom of putting so many eggs into one basket, on focusing so much spending and attention on HIV, and in particular on treatment. The article frames this in very US-centric terms: the over-emphasis on AIDS treatment is bad for the US because it reduces our ability to use aid as a big stick, to wield when governments don’t act nicely with their people or otherwise do what we want. [...]

The article is concerned that the “bait and switch” dependency foreseen by Thabo Mbeki has come to pass. One cannot fault Mr. Mbeki’s accuracy in observing, at the time, that PEPFAR created a giant market for US-made pharmaceuticals (not for nothing did we all joke that the initials really stood for Purchasing Expensive Pharmaceuticals From American Retailers). [...]

And it was the activism of Africans (including the South African government) that broke PEPFARs initial compact with US-based Big Phama and forced PEPFAR to buy generics and drugs made more cheaply by non-US producers. [...]

What I don’t understand so well is why it is necessarily such a terrible thing if some of the responsibility for paying for drugs reverts to African governments. For one thing, PEPFAR (and external funding for HIV treatment in general) has had a huge displacement effect. It’s true that African governments don’t pick up much of the tab, but that’s not always because they can’t, it’s sometimes they don’t need to — PEPFAR’s already paying. [...]

What the piece does not say: the true dereliction of PEPFAR has been on prevention. Part of the reason we can’t treat everyone even now, let alone in the future, is that there are TOO MANY PEOPLE with HIV. That’s not a value judgement, it is a fact. [...]

The policies of PEPFAR’s first 6 years, in particular the obsession with abstinence-only prevention programmes and the prohibition on working constructively with sex workers are likely actively to have contributed to the further spread of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, and thus the intractability of the treatment problem. In short, the treatment problem exists in part because PEPFAR’s approach to prevention has been so wrong-headed.

Right now, on the prevention front, we’re clutching at new straws, in particular the Quixoitc hope that more treatment will in itself act as effective prevention. While recent data from San Francisco are encouraging, the same cannot be said for any other site bar Sydney. Looking at the dynamics, it is my expectation that treatment roll-out will, in the absence of better prevention, lead to MORE new cases of HIV in most African settings, not fewer [...].

Elizabeth also said my query to her made have inspired her to write something up for her own blog, regarding the article. I hope she does that, and in the process, brings more international attention to the article, its many criticisms and suggestions.

We need all need to continue the debate about PEPFAR, the US's donations to global HIV programs, Big Pharma's greed and high cost of cocktails, the responsibilities of African governments, and lots more important issues. The Foreign Affair piece is a good jumping off point for that debate.

Please email me, if you need a PDF version of the full text of the article.

CA HIV Stats: Up, Down or Stable?

The director of California's Office of AIDS, Dr. Michelle Roland, and her highly valuable staff of epidemiologists and statisticians, have knocked themselves out in the past year or so cleaning up the state HIV stats.

I have been critical of them in the past, but today I am giving them much praise for getting California's recent infections properly counted and helping us to better understand where the epidemic has been trending. Actually, I should say the endemic, since the stats are basically stable, to slightly declining, and epidemic refers to expanding infections.

A recent HIV report explained why summaries weren't published for a while:

[The spring 2010 summary] is the first HIV/AIDS surveillance report published by the California Department of Public Health, Office of AIDS (OA), since the data migration process began in April 2009. No reports were published on HIV/AIDS between April 2009 and September 2009 the migration process.

Part of this process entailed OA and local health jurisdictions collaborating to clean and/or deduplicate data that resulted in minor case count shifts in some jurisdictions. [...]

Translation? Because we've had several reporting systems, that sometimes overlapped, before names reporting began, the data was migrated, or converted, into cleaned up figures. Dr. Roland and her staff are doing an admirable job of improving our HIV tracking and now let's look at the charts.

This chart shows historical data, using unique identifiers to follow infection rates. Of keen interest are the flat 2005 and 2006 lines hovering close to the 500 mark:



The next chart is the most current, and I believe the lines for 2006 and 2007 fluctuate and spike because of data clean up. The 2009 and 2010 lines, pretty much stay close to the 500 mark, except for the fall of last year:


Even taking into account the massive clean up of the confusing and complex data, and implementation of names-based reporting, I hesitate to come right out and say new infections are assuredly on the wane. But I will say, given that none of the yearly lines show upswings and their relative stability, that California is at endemic HIV status.

That is a good development, and I hope we soon see genuine decreases in new infections reflected in future reports.

Gay WaPo Pundit Capehart
Falls for Fake Congressman

Check this out, for a few laughs, at the expense of a gay political writer, Jonathan Capehart. From the New York Observer:

Jonathan Capehart is an editorial writer for the Washington Post, an MSNBC contributor and a seemingly smart, nice guy. If he is indeed a nice guy, he will probably have to just grin and bear it for a few days after a somewhat ill-conceived blog post made Monday night. In an entry in WaPo's "PostPartisan" weblog, Capehart led with the following:

"Why have the wars cost so much under Obama?" tweeted @RepJackKimble (R-Calif.) at 7:40am on Sept. 2. "Check the budgets, Bush fought 2 wars w/o costing taxpayers a dime." This stunning bit of fiscal ignorance earned him a tart barnyard expletive from @MWJ1231.

Capehart didn't realize that Kimble's ignorance is "stunning" because "Jack Kimble" is a joke Twitter account. A pretty obvious joke at that:

This story is also being reported on over at the Huffington Post.

Gay Inc Endorses
Oct 2 March on Washington

One of the recommended diaries yesterday at the progressive DailyKos site, promoted an upcoming labor movement/Democratic Party constituencies October 2 One Nation Working Together (ONWT), march on Washington. This was the first I was learning about the march and the diary listed the big orgs behind the effort, including the Human Rights Campaign and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force.

Just as we saw last year with Cleve Jones' gay march on DC, there have been no public forums to debate whether gay orgs and gay activists should get behind the upcoming demonstration. If HRC or NGLTF have held any town halls to discuss the One Nation Working Together action, their endorsement of it, and potentially mobilizing the gay community to schlep to DC for it.

This action, in less than a month, may be the best thing for the gay community since we adopted the rainbow flag as our emblem, and I'm not necessarily opposed to the agenda and demands of the march, but I'm so tired of Gay Inc and big egos making decisions about such action without transparent community discussion first.

I followed the DailyKos dairy's link for more info on ONWT, and saw this image:


Is a photo of Charlie "Thirteen Pending Ethics Violations" Rangel the best political image to use, in order to recruit folks for ONWT? And what is with the product placement in the photo for Fox News? I doubt the organizers are fans of the conservative cable news outlet and wonder why they can't find a more suitable, motivational snapshot for their opening page.

To their credit, ONWT organizers do mention sexual orientation and gender identity in their combined Mission/We Are statement, but I'm not sure how this October march is expected to directly benefit ordinary gays.

HRC's latest news and blog haven't said anything in recent headlines about the org getting on board for ONWT, but Googling for anything relevant turned up a single hit. In her report from the Reclaim the Dream march on DC last month, HRC's diversity director Donna Payne made passing reference to ONWT:

The [August 29] morning started with a religious gathering given by One Nation Working Together and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR). [...] One Nation Working Together is a broad range of civil rights, labor, faith, immigration rights, and progressive organizations. They will be leading a march on the Mall on Oct. 2, 2010 and all of the LGBT organizations will participate. [...]

Isn't that special? Every gay group has joined up for the march next month. Someone, maybe in the HRC press office, should tell the community what Gay Inc orgs have decided on our behalf.

Over at the NGLTF site, a few more details emerge, but HRC is mysteriously not mentioned:

The Task Force, Pride At Work/ AFL-CIO, National Black Justice Coalition and National Stonewall Democrats are co-conveners of the “LGBT Table” for ONWT, and we’re working together to organize national LGBT groups around the Oct. 2 march and labor issues generally. [...]

Whatever happened to the days when national gay orgs in Washington would at least go through the motions of seeking community input, regarding participating in massive demonstrations on DC? Is Gay Inc certain their top-down approach to community organizing, in which the rank and file are disrespected and treated as extras in Democratic extravaganzas on the Mall?

On this Labor Day, I again call for real democracy in the gay political movement, staring with regular public meetings organized by HRC and NGLTF, that allow for sunshine and transparency. Gay democracy when?

SF Clinic's HIV Poz Rate Fell 46%

The 2009 annual Sexually Transmitted Disease report from the San Francisco Department of Public Health was released last week and it's full of good news, about controlling, and obviously preventing all kinds of new infections, with disease rates continuing to drop. Where increases are seen, the DPH summary spells out the rise is due to expanded testing.

Let's go over key findings, starting with HIV testing and results information from just City Clinic, where most municipal HIV and STD testing takes place. For 2009, the summary notes, on page 108:

Change in HIV seropositivity from 2005 t0 2009 = 45.9% decrease

Change in HIV testing volume from 2005 to 2009 = 36.6% increase

Over a five-year period, when the number of tests skyrocketed, the figure for antibody positive results dramatically plunged. Clearly an indication of much serious good prevention behavior by people with AIDS, and associated factors including sero-sorting, low infectivity of treatment-adherent persons, and social marketing.

Even though the almost 46% fall in HIV seropositivity at this major testing site, in America's AIDS Model City, is not the rate for the city, City Clinic's testing services are a damn fine surrogate marker to be included in the municipal HIV rate.

For the one-year 2008 to 2009 trend (page 108), the HIV seroposivity went up 11.1%, while there was a 17.6% increase in testing volume. DPH does not explain what's led to the jump, and it is of concern to me, but I also know that one-year comparisons might not reflect a genuine trend in new infections. The five-year figures above, I believe, are the chief things to bear in mind.

What about other diseases? The report's executive summary (page 2), shows one-year jump of 1.2% and five-year rise of 12.5% in chlamydia, and the increases are explained later on as due to more testing.

For gonorrhea the one-year figure fell 10%, and the five-year rate dropped almost 25%. Syphilis figures for one-year saw a 5.1% decrease, while the five-year rate soared 21.2%, because of additional testing programs.

The rates for rectal infection in gay men, come from page 69, ahem. Male butt chlamydia from 2008 to 2009 increased 12.1%, and for rectal gonorrhea the one-year rate fell 1.3%.

Why is the butt chlamydia rate up? DPH says:

Rectal and pharyngeal screening for gonorrhea and chlamydia for men who have sex with men began in 2003 and has expanded beyond [City Clinic, to such sites as the Magnet gay health center in the Castro] and other local providers serving MSM populations. As a result, increases in case detection may be a function of increased screening for these often asymptomatic infections.

In 2009, cases of rectal chylamydia increased while cases of rectal gonorrhea declined. This trend has been consistent since 2006.

My translation of that last part is that more chlamydia tests are detecting the easy-to-transmit infection among anally active gay men, while gonorrhea numbers remain on the wane.

Overall, the 2009 SF DPH STD Report demonstrates remarkable and healthy trends for gay men, and the report should be held up as prime example of how this city is doing much right to control STDs and HIV.

Obama's Part-Time AIDS Czar Jeff Crowley

(The President with Jeff Crowley. Photo credit: The White House.)

A friend and political observer in Washington sent along an announcement from a major healthcare think-tank and advocacy org, about an important forum next week related to the needs of people with disabilities, and one of the participants caught my friend's eye:

At 9:30 a.m. on Sept. 8, the Kaiser Family Foundation will hold a policy forum examining the health care issues facing people with disabilities and the opportunities and challenges presented by the new health care reform law enacted earlier this year. The discussion will explore the changes in health reform that could affect access to affordable health care for people with disabilities as well as the current and future role of the Medicare program in serving this population.

Panelists will include Jeffrey Crowley, senior advisor on disability policy at the White House [...]

I thought the openly gay Crowley was the Obama administration's full-time point-person for the many complex issues concerning the needs of people with AIDS in America and other domestic HIV matters.

Part of the reason why I believed Crowley's sole responsibility was running the White House Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP), is because when he signs posts for ONAP's blog, such as this one from mid August, he is identified as director of that office. Period.

However, his official ONAP bio gives a fuller picture of all that he's tasked to do for the administration:

Jeffrey Crowley is the Director of the Office of National AIDS Policy and Senior Advisor on Disability Policy at the White House. In these roles, he is the President’s lead advisor on HIV/AIDS policy and he is responsible for coordinating disability and health policy issues for the Domestic Policy Council. [...]

If the "AIDS Czar" position is just a part-time job under Obama, is that a downgrading of it from when George W. Bush occupied the Oval Office? Also bear in mind that not every person living with HIV/AIDS is a disabled individual. Disability and HIV concerns each deserve a presidential advisor solely focused on that concern. An undated and "frozen" WhiteHouse.gov page says nothing about non-HIV duties for Bush's AIDS assistant. An excerpt:

On July 2002, President Bush appointed Joseph O’Neill, M.D., M.S., M.P.H., to serve as the Director of the White House Office of National AIDS Policy. Dr. O’Neill, who is also a member of the White House Domestic Policy Council, leads an expanded AIDS office that is responsible for both domestic and international HIV/AIDS issues. [...]

This is just my humble opinion: I fully believe in 2010 that America's AIDS agenda, requires nothing less than an ONAP director whose sole responsibility is AIDS.

Putting the new facts (to me at least) about Crowley's part-time position in the larger context of the Obama administration's ridiculous slowness in creating and unveiling their National AIDS Strategy, among other issues such as not fully funded at-home and global drug programs, illustrate a diminished commitment to solving myriad AIDS problems.