Oh, for the love of ... what on earth would it take?
Gay Activists Demand a Seat in 'Big Tent'
By Spencer S. Hsu and Vanessa Williams
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, August 30, 2004; Page A07
NEW YORK, Aug. 29 -- The gay Log Cabin Republicans, backed by such GOP allies as New York Gov. George E. Pataki and Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.), said Sunday that the party has been "hijacked by the radical right" and demanded that President Bush square his actions with his rhetoric of inclusiveness or risk losing their endorsement. [...] For many gay party activists this week, the Big Tent is a place of uncertainty, bitterness and disappointment. Four years ago, they basked in what many thought was the warmth of compassionate conservatism, meeting with then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush in Austin and backing his campaign for president. Now those leaders say they are confronted with stark choices: to stay home in November, switch parties or support a party that wants to codify discrimination against them in the form of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. [...] Steve Gunderson, a former member of Congress from Wisconsin who is gay and was active in Bush's 2000 campaign, said, "If the president actively pursues that amendment, no gay Republican with integrity can be supportive of his campaign."
HoustonChronicle.com - Convention Notebook: Gay GOP group delays its decision to endorse Bush
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle News Services
A gay Republican group angry about the party's stance on gay marriages won't decide until after the convention whether to endorse President Bush. On Sunday, about 200 members of Log Cabin Republicans earned praise during a meeting with New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, New York Gov. George Pataki and Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. But the group's leaders were still debating whether to stage a convention floor protest today over Bush's support for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.
Executive director Patrick Guerriero told reporters it also was hypocritical for Republicans to showcase moderate convention speakers on television while adopting a platform that was "an insult" to gays and lesbians.
I mean, really, what would it take? The federal marriage amendment position is in the freaking GOP platform, people. Just how much self-loathing is one group required to demonstrate before some of their members say, "You know, a little sanity might be appreciated in these here parts. The people who control the Republican Party hate us. The Shrub hates us -- or at least is willing to voice the opinions of those that do, so there's no functional difference. They are willing to state publicly that we shouldn't have the same rights as everyone else in this country. Why in the name of sanity would we endorse a man who holds these positions? Surely our love of capital gains tax relief should not be allowed to compromise our enlightened self interest. Perhaps we don't want to endorse Kerry -- apart from being political suicide in the Republican Party, to which for some unexplainable reason we are illogically attached, his position on gay marriage is that he doesn't like it either, but at least he's not in favor of the damn amendment -- but maybe, just maybe, we can get more bang for our buck by staying neutral this time. If The Shrub loses a very close election, well, maybe the party will see the our value. (Note: History would not seem to support this position, but remember that we're trying to appeal to the apparently delusional.) At worst, the party will consider us traitors for not supporting The Shrub, and cut us loose ... oh, well, they've pretty much done that anyway, haven't they? So we don't really have much to lose by sitting on our endorsement this time around, do we?"
Ah, well. It would be nice if sanity would enter that peculiar enclave, but one doesn't expect that to happen any time soon.
Posted by iain at 05:23 PM
Apparently, the US has become a plurality minority Protestant country, and nobody noticed until now.
U.S.'s #1 Religion Loses Ground: (CBS, DALLAS, Aug. 24, 2004)
It is a sign of the times: Baptists, Presbyterians and Methodists worshipping together in Valley, Nebraska. As CBS News Correspondent Bob McNamara reports, not enough of them are around any longer to support a church of their own faith.
"There's more strength in numbers," says Cindy Matteo, a Methodist. "We can do more as a group. We can reach out to more people."
But finding more members could be a long reach. A University of Chicago research center study says the number of Americans who still identify themselves as Protestants is dropping to a historic low. "They're very close to falling below 50 percent, which would be the first time in American history that the majority of Americans are not Protestant," says Tom W. Smith of the National Opinion Research Center.
Though the elderly are more apt to practice the oldtime religion, in the last decade, nearly 10 percent of younger adults who were raised as Protestants, now identify with no religion at all.
NORC survey finds America’s Protestant majority is shrinking (University of Chicago Chronicle -- NORC is a UC-supported research center): The increasing secularization of American society has taken a particular toll on Protestant identity, presenting the prospect that after more than 200 years of history, the United States may soon no longer be a majority Protestant country, according to a new study by the National Opinion Research Center.
The percentage of the population that is Protestant has been falling and will likely fall below 50 percent by mid-decade or may already be there, the study showed. Between 1972 and 1993, the Protestant share of the population remained stable, but then a decline set in. In 1993, 63 percent of Americans were Protestant, but by 2002, the number was 52 percent, the NORC research found. During the same time, the number of people who said they had no religion went up from 9 percent to nearly 14 percent. [...] The survey shows continual erosion on many measures for Protestants in the past generation, while the proportion of people who report they are Catholic has remained fairly steady at about 25 percent of the population. People who said they belong to other religions, including Eastern faiths and Islam, Orthodox Christianity, interdenominational Christianity, and native-American faiths increased from 3 to 7 percent between 1993 and 2002, while the number of people who reported they were Jewish remained stable at slightly under 2 percent.
PDF - The Vanishing Protestant Majority (NORC report, Adobe Acrobat required.)
The CBS article, for what it's worth, is mistitled, if you think about it; Protestants aren't one monolithic religion. But anyway.
Perhaps the shrinking numbers explain some of the increasing shrillness and stridence of the religious right's attempts to inject religion into public life. They're vanishing, and think that their best shot at holding onto prominence is to make certain that they do their level best to make the entire country more like them. Otherwise, they may simply disappear from public awareness and life. (No fear. But anyway.)
Of course, it may well be that said shrillness and stridence are contributing to the decline. Granted, there's the pressure and pace of everyday life, work, etc. People do want to have more time to themselves for relaxation, to be with their families without anyone else around, to pursue other interests. That said, life was always busy, one way and another, and yet people still made time to go to church. I wonder if part of what's happening as well is that people are finding other social outlets. One of the reasons that people go to church or espouse a particular creed is for the social aspects -- to be with other people with the same interests, ethical systems and beliefs. A type of community, if you will. It may be that with other social outlets, people are discovering that they no longer need the church to fulfill that communal aspect, or that they no longer want it to do so. And given the insistence of more conservative factions on announcing their particular beliefs, people may be finding that their ethical systems are no longer aligned with the religions in which they were raised.
It will be interesting to see if and when these changes filter out enough to make a difference. Will we go back to the days when politicians did not profess a religion in public because, simply put, it was none of the public's business? Will the public, in fact, move to feeling more strongly that religion should be moved out of the forefront on public life?
Posted by iain at 04:33 PM
The New York Times : Image : Connections and Contradictions
The above is an image from the NY Times, detailing the myriad connections between the Swift Boat Veteran's Tour group, the Bush Family, and Karl Rove. It's really quite detailed.
There is, however, a connection the Times article seems to have missed.
A lawyer for President Bush's re-election campaign disclosed Tuesday that he has been providing legal advice for a veterans group that is challenging Democratic Sen. John Kerry's account of his Vietnam War service.
Benjamin Ginsberg's acknowledgment marks the second time in days that an individual associated with the Bush-Cheney campaign has been connected to the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, which Kerry accuses of being a front for the Republican incumbent's re-election effort.
The Bush campaign and the veterans' group say there is no coordination. [...] Ginsberg said he never told the Bush campaign what he discussed with the group, or vice versa, and doesn't advise the group on ad strategies
One of the campaign's lawyers has been advising the SBVT group ... but there is no coordination. Right.
Even assuming that he's telling the truth, there's a quite clear and apparent conflict of interest. And any lawyer -- any person -- with a brain cell in his head would realize that no denial would be believed, and that the appearance of ... well, impropriety is probably too strong a term, but of coordination would be damaging to their candidate.
And this will, one hopes, be the one and only post on that particular mess. Someday, both campaigns will, it is hoped, decide to discuss issues again.
Posted by iain at 12:47 AM
Darrell Garrett remembers many things about the 21/2 years he spent in several California prisons.
The 41-year-old can tell you about cafeteria brawls and selling cigarettes at San Quentin. He can tell you the exact size of his cell at Vacaville.
He can tell you about men finding places to have sex where guards couldn't see.
He can't tell you what caused him to develop AIDS several years ago.
"I used to shoot dope, but I always kept my own needle," said Garrett, an El Cerrito resident. "I had a lot of women back in the day, too. I really just don't know."
What parolees don't know or won't say about their HIV or AIDS status, or how they deal with the illness after they return home has become a concern of health educators.
State prison officials say 1,163 HIV-positive men currently live in state prisons. Because prisons don't routinely test inmates, the number of infected parolees likely is higher. Community health workers say an unknown number of parolees return to the East Bay often ill-educated, impoverished and uninformed.
"People just don't understand how the virus can spread so easily," said community health worker Sandy Johnson.
HIV rates in minority women have increased in Pittsburg because some are the spouses of parolees who don't know they're infected, she said. Health educators with the Pittsburg Pre-School and Community Council Inc. talked to 113 high-risk women from July 2003 to June of this year and found 60 percent had had sexual relationships or shared needles with a partner who had been in prison or jail. Also, 20 of 28 HIV-positive women with whom the council works said they had sex with men who have been behind bars. [...] But the most basic protective device -- the condom -- is illegal, as are inmate sexual relations. "I have heard stories where the guards just turn their heads the other way, so why not let condoms protect them?" Johnson asks. The answer: Sex between inmates is illegal and so issuing condoms would not be appropriate, said Margot Bach, a state Corrections Department spokeswoman.
Here's the question: assuming that AIDS education in prison was much much better -- that they had the time and resources to make sure that prisoners understood the consequences of unprotected sex -- exactly what would they expect the men to do about it? The state is unlikely to concede that men are, in fact, having sex in prison against the rules. Only two states -- Vermont, and, of all places, Mississippi -- and four cities distribute condoms to inmates. Most state administrators would rather be shot than to admit that prisons do, in fact, facilitate sexual contact between men, especially those in for long-term sentences.
The other thing is this: even if the prisons were to concede that point and allow condom distribution, it wouldn't take care of all the disease transmission because it would be making the assumption that all sexual contact in prison is voluntary and controlled, and that's simply not the case. Sexual assault is notably frequent, and rapists are relatively likely to be unconcerned about the health of their victim, and many feel that the insertive partner in intercourse is far less likely to come down with HIV. (That said, a truly cynical approach would be to mention, when making condoms available, that they lessen the ability to collect evidence against a rapist. To be sure, most victims in prison are too cowed to report an assault unless they're so badly damaged that they have no choice.)
Posted by iain at 02:14 PM
Apparently, quite a lot.
Many African-American parents say they're returning to their roots by choosing names that sound uniquely black. For some a unique name has been an asset. For stars like Oprah Winfrey or Shaquille O'Neal or Denzel Washington, a distinctive first name can become a unique, identifiable brand, almost a trademark. But some ordinary folks say being different is just too difficult.
Tiqua Gator says people just can't seem to get her name right. But she says her real burden runs even deeper. She's concerned about getting a better job, and sees her name as a potential handicap. "Something that was supposed to separate you from everyone else is now at the same time hindering you," she said.
Gator has come to believe she'd have an easier time lining up a job in her chosen field of marketing if she had a plain name like Jane. "I think that they feel that they can identify better with a Pam or Amber rather than a Tiqua," she said. [...] A job recruiter for Fortune 500 companies in northern California revealed an ugly secret. "There is rampant racism everywhere. And people who deny that are being naïve," said the recruiter, who spoke on the condition her name would not be used. The recruiter said if she were given two résumés, all else being equal, except one says Shaniqua, and the other says Jennifer, she would call Jennifer first. It's a choice she says she was trained to make: When representing certain companies, do not send black candidates. And on a résumé, a name may be the only cue of the applicant's race. "I think that the way that I had been taught and what has helped me to succeed in the industry is unfair," she said.
It's also racist, and, quite possibly, illegal.
That's why author Shelby Steele feels African-Americans must think long and hard before giving their children unusual or "black-sounding" names. "It's a naïveté on the part of black parents," Steele said, "to name their children names that are so conspicuously different than American mainstream names. ? It suggests to people outside that community who hear those names a certain alienation. Certain hostility." Steele, a researcher specializing in race relations and author of A Dream Deferred: The Second Betrayal of Black Freedom in America, is essentially telling black folks, don't name your child Deshawn or Loquesha. "Yes. ? I'm saying don't name your son Latrelle. Don't do that. ? He's going to live 50, 60 years in the future. Give him a break. You know, call him Edward."
It's interesting. I come from a family that absolutely, positively would never have dreamed of giving their children "African-sounding" names. Not because they thought it would hurt, but because they thought it was terribly pretentious when it started happening in large numbers in the 60s and 70s. (Instead, I have a name that nobody can pronounce or spell correctly, but which doesn't "sound black". Oh, well.) And, for the most part, that attitude has continued to the present day, when my generation has started having its children.
That said, I can't see how having such names would suggest "a certain alienation," precisely. (Then again, I suppose I wouldn't, would I?) I don't imagine most parents have thought, "Will picking the right name help my child get ahead in the world?" Then, I don't suppose that most parents have realized that the name itself might actually matter.
Sad, isn't it.
Posted by iain at 03:27 PM
Living with AIDS
By Connie Lauerman
Tribune staff reporter
Published August 18, 2004
About 12,000 women become infected with HIV each year--30 percent of the estimated 40,000 new U.S. infections annually.
But the true extent of the epidemic is not known, because data reported to the federal Centers for Disease Control comes from only 29 states. Chances are the toll is much greater.
At year-end 2003, 19.2 million women worldwide--a number equal to the combined populations of Lon-don, New York and Singapore--were living with HIV/AIDS, almost half of the estimated 40 million adults with the virus, according to the World Health Organization.
In the U.S., heterosexual African-American women are experiencing the greatest increases in AIDS diagnoses--a rate 23 times greater than that of white women, according to the CDC.
In Chicago, the number of AIDS diagnoses has de-clined overall--but not for women. During 1991 to '92, women represented 13 percent of newly diagnosed AIDS cases. Ten years later women accounted for 24 percent of all AIDS diagnoses. The number of Chicago HIV/AIDS cases in Hispanic women rose from 13 percent of all diagnosed Hispanic cases to 16 percent during the same period.
The virus does not discriminate, infecting women from all walks of life and demographic categories.....
Living with AIDS: Menopause a complicating factor
By Connie Lauerman
Tribune staff reporter
Published August 18, 2004
Patrice Dean must cope with AIDS--and menopause. That combination is unknown territory. Dean, 49, was diagnosed with HIV eight years ago as a result of 28 years in a world of heroin, crack and prostitution.
Now she's part of another subculture, the isolated world of HIV/AIDS, in which she must grapple with the virus, the side effects of medications, the "stigma and fear" on the part of others who believe she's "a bad person" and somehow deserves to have AIDS--and menopause. "I feel the aging process coming on," she said. "It probably comes on a little sooner for us. We forget a lot. I think that's a combination of age and the disease." Her bones hurt, and a year ago she was diagnosed with osteoporosis, a known side effect of some of the medications, and "degenerating joint disease." She is also taking antidepressants and anti-anxiety medication, which she said cloud the mind. She blames the anti-retroviral drugs for everything. "They're not normal for the body. They're potent. They have to be destroying things."
The anti-retroviral medications affect the liver, especially in women, and raise the level of fats in the blood, thus increasing the risk of heart disease, said Dr. Pat Garcia, director of the Women's HIV Program at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Some can impair sleep, cause headaches, nausea and diarrhea, and abnormal tingling sensations in the hands and feet. "They're not a panacea," Garcia said.
The success of anti-retroviral drugs in extending life means that a whole group of HIV-positive women, like Dean, are passing into menopause. "Will changes in hormonal structure have an effect on immunological issues that women are going through because of their HIV?" asked Dr. Mardge Cohen director of the Women and Children's HIV program at Cook County's Ruth M. Rothstein Core Center. "We are in the process of [developing an] understanding of how menopause affects HIV."
On the upside, if there is one this particular concern does mark an improvement in care. After all, not that long ago, menopause wouldn't have been something to worry about if you had AIDS; you weren't expected to live long enough to have to really deal with it.
On the downside, however, is the sheer increase in numbers and proportion of women dealing with the disease.
Posted by iain at 12:27 PM
Charlotte, N.C. -- It was a scientific discovery that no scientist wanted to make, an outbreak one likened to a looming genocide of young, black men.
In November 2002, North Carolina health officials began a new form of blood testing designed to catch HIV infection far sooner than standard screening, which often doesn't detect the virus for two or three months after it enters the body. They quickly found five HIV cases in people with infections so fresh they had tested negative in conventional screenings. Surprisingly, two were black college students from the same small town, yet they didn't know each other.
"That got us to thinking there might be a problem," said Dr. Peter Leone, an AIDS researcher with the state Department of Health.
He and others began reviewing known HIV cases in North Carolina college men dating back to 2000. They were alarmed at what they found. In 2000, the number infected with HIV was six. In 2001, it was 19. By 2002 the number was 29. By the end of 2003, it had jumped to 84, and 73 of them -- 88 percent -- were black. Interviews with the students uncovered a total of 119 HIV cases once their sexual contacts were added in, and indicated a network of sexual activity spanning two dozen colleges in six states and the District of Columbia.
"There has never been a description of a cluster of HIV cases among college students like this, ever," said Leone, who called the trend a "potential genocidal issue" affecting young black men. "It's not a good foretelling of where HIV is moving," he said. "This is the next wave."
The numbers are indicative of the racial disparity involving the spread of AIDS in the United States, where blacks comprise 12 percent of the population but accounted for 54 percent of new HIV cases in 2002, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
When new cases are concentrated in such a young population, as in North Carolina's college students, researchers say the numbers are particularly ominous because of the potential threat to the best and the brightest of America's young black men. [...] Researchers, educators and students are trying to determine what led to the spike and how to stop it, an effort that is forcing them to confront issues such as homosexuality and bisexuality that are often ignored or hushed up in the black community. In addition, it is highlighting some of the shortfalls of AIDS education programs, which blacks say for too long have presented the disease as one of older gay, white men.
"I ask people, 'How do you get AIDS,' and they say, 'Oh, by being gay,'" said DeMishea Charleston, 20, a student at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, N.C., who teaches fellow students about HIV and AIDS. She is among 32 so-called peer educators at the school, which is in the system of historically black colleges.
Here's the thing: they found this cluster in North Carolina because they were looking for it, more or less. They did preliminary tests that found something odd, did more tests, and discovered what was out there.
But that's just one state and one cluster. The behavior of people probably isn't going to be any different away from North Carolina and in some other place. So one wonders: what's happening in South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi ... The discovery of this cluster in North Carolina would suggest that you've probably got similar clusters around any of the historically black colleges, and for much the same reasons. But nobody knows about them, because they haven't had the chance to look. And now that the study's been publicized, they'll have fewer chances to find information, because that's the sort of thing that nobody wants to know, and nobody wants revealed.
Posted by iain at 11:49 AM
And so we continue to have schizm with the Anglicans and Episcopals. And it looks to get ugly, in a legal way if nothing else.
Two Southern California Episcopal parishes announced Tuesday that they had broken with the national church over the issue of homosexuality, placing themselves under the jurisdiction of a conservative Anglican bishop from Africa. The announcement by All Saints Church in Long Beach and St. James Church in Newport Beach escalated a confrontation in the Episcopal Church over the role of gay clergy and the interpretation of Scripture.
The move marked the first time any of the 147 parishes in the six-county Los Angeles Episcopal Diocese had made good on threats to pull out of the 2.3-million-member national Episcopal Church. Conservative leaders in Washington and South Carolina said Tuesday that the Southern California developments had broad implications. "It's only the beginning," said the Rev. Canon Kendall Harmon, a theologian in the Diocese of South Carolina who has frequently defended the cause of "biblically orthodox" Episcopalians.
In Washington, Cynthia Brust of the conservative American Anglican Council estimated that 45 to 50 and perhaps as many as 100 Episcopal parishes nationally had left the church in one way or the other. There are 7,305 parishes in the United States.
The Episcopal Church is the U.S. member of the worldwide Anglican Communion, which claims 77 million members. Debates over homosexuality have increasingly split the communion, with many churches in the United States and Western Europe accepting gay clergy and same-sex weddings, while churches in Asia and Africa uphold the authority of biblical verses that condemn homosexual relations.
The latest move could lead to a legal battle, including a dispute over who owns the church buildings and property — the parishes themselves or the diocese.
The move by the two churches caught Los Angeles Episcopal Bishop J. Jon Bruno by surprise, he said. Bruno said Tuesday that he had served notice in a letter to the African bishop, the Rt. Rev. Evans Koseka of the Diocese of Luweero in Uganda, that he had violated church law by intervening in the affairs of the Los Angeles Diocese. Bruno also said he was not ceding his authority over the two parishes. [...] The 12-member boards of directors, or vestries, of both parishes voted unanimously to break with the Anglican Communion, the two priests said. Then, in meetings they described as joyous, parishioners backed their vestries' decisions in overwhelming votes Monday night. Thompson said the vote at All Saints was 131 to 10, with three abstentions. Bunyan said the vote at St. James was 280 to 12, with possibly one abstention.
I continue to be astonished that schizm hit the Anglicans first, and over that particular issue. The fundamental differences between papal dictats and Catholics at large would seem to be far greater and have far more applicability to more people's daily lives. Add to that the not-yet-ceased drumbeat of the discovery of clerical misconduct, and you would think that Catholics would really and truly be angry to the point of schizm.
Interestingly, both of the LA churches seem to be quite small, at least as judged by the number of voting members. Either that, or a quite small minority dictated a rather major policy change, and that would have its own consequences.
I have to admit, I do find one statement thoroughly amusing:
Members of St. James, including Eric Evans of Costa Mesa, said they saw the developments not so much as leaving the Episcopal Church as remaining within what they called the Anglican mainstream. "The Episcopal Church has left the traditional values to chase after a liberal agenda and stay within a pagan religion. We have freedom from an oppressive church for oversight by a Bible-believing, born-again bishop," Evans said.
The concept of the Archbishop of Canterbury as a pagan is nearly as funny as the concept of him as a liberal. Any minute now, he'll be painting himself with woad and conducting ceremonies at Stonehenge.
Posted by iain at 11:07 AM
How very ... odd.
The Bush Administration has taken the first step towards releasing the American-born "enemy combatant" whose case resulted in a landmark US Supreme Court defeat for the White House six weeks ago.
Four months after telling the Supreme Court that holding Yaser Esam Hamdi in military confinement was crucial to national security and the war on terrorism, Administration lawyers told a judge on Wednesday that they were negotiating arrangements for sending him back to his family in Saudi Arabia. Lawyers for both sides of the case said they hoped "to resolve this matter under terms and conditions... that would allow Mr Hamdi to be released". They asked the judge for 21 days to work out the details.
"If all goes well, this is a huge victory for the rule of law," said Deborah Pearlstein, a lawyer for Human Rights First. "The reality is that the Supreme Court handed the Administration a huge defeat, and releasing Hamdi is one way of complying with that ruling."
But a Government official said that Hamdi had been thoroughly questioned for more than two years and had no further intelligence value.
The government knew pretty much immediately that Hamdi had no intelligence value. It's just taken them two years to admit it to everyone else.
Government officials familiar with the negotiations said they were not seeking punishment for Hamdi, only some assurance that he would not return to fighting in Afghanistan.
Well, watching them enforce that ought to be fascinating. Not that they'll really care; even if he does go back, it's unlikely that he'd be seen or captured again.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the government simply didn't want to take this case into a real trial. The military tribunals they're using for foreign nationals -- which even now don't pass the legal "sniff test", as it were -- couldn't be used for Hamdi, and in a genuine court, the government would likely have not only lost, but lost badly.
Still, we'll see if the government goes through with this. It's entirely possible that they're just making accommodating noises before the election.
Posted by iain at 10:38 AM
Media Relations: southern comfort/ August 11, 2004
Posted by iain at 05:40 PM
It seems that there aren't as many differences between the presentation of HIV/AIDS in the US and in Africa as one might have thought.
You just have to know where to look.
Fiddling with a cigarette, Louise, a straight-talking 23-year-old who has been living with H.I.V. for four years, grimaced as she discussed life in the black neighborhood of her small town, a sleepy outpost east of the state capital.
The only jobs, she said, were generally at fast-food places, farms or factories. Entertainment consisted of hanging out on the street corner or at the strip mall. And as for men, she said, with an air of resignation, "They've either been in prison, they're married or they're gay."
It never seemed unusual, said Louise, who asked that her last name be withheld because some people close to her are unaware of her H.I.V. status, that nearly all the men she had been involved with - including the one who passed the virus on to her - had been in prison. "In a grocery store you have a big selection of meat laid out in front of you, and you can chose which grade you want," she said. But in her town, she added, "you don't have that choice. There is no way to really decide the good from the bad. It's all what you decide you can deal with."
As health specialists continue to grapple with global challenges to combating AIDS, Louise, a black woman living in the South, infected through heterosexual sex, represents the continuing struggle with the epidemic in the United States. Her story also illuminates a complex domestic issue: the link between high rates of imprisonment among African-Americans and high rates of H.I.V. and AIDS...
Women in Lesotho Prove Easy Prey for H.I.V. (Lakeland, Polk County, Ledger)
By MICHAEL WINES
New York Times (reprinted)
Published: July 20, 2004
MASERU, Lesotho - Boxes of laundry detergent sometimes adorn apartment windows in Ha Thetsane, a rough-and-tumble neighborhood near this city's booming garment district. It has nothing to do with clean clothes - and everything to do with the AIDS pandemic among young women here.
Ha Thetsane is home to thousands of women who have fled Lesotho's impoverished countryside to seek jobs as garment workers. But the average wage for such jobs, about 70 cents an hour, is seldom enough to both sustain a worker and allow her to send money to the family she left behind.
Thus the detergent boxes in the windows. They signal that the women's husbands or boyfriends are visiting - and that the men who have been supporting them in exchange for sex should lie low.
"One woman will go out with four or five men," said Bolelwa Falten, a 26-year-old former seamstress. "One will help with the rent. One, maybe, will drive a taxi and take her to and from work. One will help with food. One will help her pay her installments."
Experts refer to such desperate arrangements by the dry term "transactional sex." This is one reason, though hardly the only one, that in Lesotho H.I.V. infects one in four men aged 15 to 24 - and one in two women.
The situation in Lesotho (pronounced le-SOO-too), a tiny, mountainous kingdom with the world's fourth highest H.I.V. infection rate, mirrors the catastrophe barreling through sub-Saharan Africa. A confluence of factors - including culture and the destitution that turns sex into currency - has transformed AIDS here from an indiscriminate killer into a plague against women.
At the recent international AIDS conference in Bangkok, United Nations officials said young African women are three times as likely as young men to become infected with H.I.V, the virus that causes AIDS. Worldwide, 48 percent of those with H.I.V. are women, up nearly a third in 20 years. But in sub-Saharan Africa, including Lesotho, women are 57 percent of the infected. [...] In an interview in Bangkok, Stephen Lewis, the United Nations envoy on AIDS in Africa, said he envisioned a southern Africa 20 years from now in which "you are going to sense and see the loss of women."
"There will be portions of Africa," he added, that "will be depopulated of women."
Patients With H.I.V. Seen as Separated by a Racial Divide (New York Times)
By LINDA VILLAROSA
Published: August 7, 2004
Last January in Manhattan, at the memorial service of a colleague who died of an AIDS-related illness, Joseph Bostic lost feeling in his legs and had trouble standing. A friend, Keith Cylar, hailed a cab, crumpled some bills into the driver's palm and sent Mr. Bostic home to Brooklyn. Two months later, Mr. Bostic died of heart and kidney failure related to H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. Within three weeks, Mr. Cylar, too, was dead of heart disease related to the virus.
The loss of these two men - both of them AIDS activists who had lived with H.I.V. for years - shocked many who had nearly forgotten the days when attending funerals and memorial services was a constant, unsettling ritual. In the United States, death rates from H.I.V./AIDS have sharply dropped in the past eight years as new medications have made the disease manageable for many patients.
But among African-Americans like Mr. Bostic and Mr. Cylar, AIDS is still a killer.
In 2002, almost twice as many blacks with AIDS died compared with whites, a gap that has been increasing since 1998. Researchers say the reasons include late diagnoses and inferior care, along with complications because blacks are more likely than whites to suffer from other illnesses. As a result, health experts say, many blacks in the United States have far more in common with their counterparts in Africa than they do with white patients....
newsobserver.com | Lifestyles | Down-low buzz may drown message
Public health educators see pitfall in author's exposure of some black men's secret sex lives
By SHEARON ROBERTS, Staff Writer (Raleigh News and Observer)
Published: Aug 11, 2004
Modified: Aug 11, 2004 6:36 AM
Author J.L. King has a mantra: Always practice safer sex. With his book, "On the Down Low, A Journey into the Lives of 'Straight' Black Men Who Sleep With Men," he has given a face to the down low phenomenon.
It's a phenomenon with a lot of buzz. Essence magazine did a two-part series on it. An episode of "Law and Order: SVU" featured the issue and sparked online conversations among heterosexual African-American women, whose ranks make up the fastest-growing new cases of HIV in the country. King's book is a New York Times best seller, landing him a spot on Oprah's couch. But while King has used his fame to talk about safe sex, some local researchers who examine HIV cases among college students say all this focus on the down low -- known as the DL -- actually may be hurting their HIV education efforts.
Typically, men on the down low secretly have sex with men while maintaining relations with women. But they may not define themselves as gay or even bisexual. It's the emphasis on that secret nature that's the problem. "If we develop messages on sexual orientation, rather than prevention, for students who don't want the world to know that they have this proclivity, then we've missed the mark," says Phyllis Gray, the project manager for the HIV/STD prevention and care branch for the North Carolina Division of Public Health....
Durban Journal: South Africa 'Recycles' Graves for AIDS Victims (NY Times, registration required)
By MICHAEL WINES
Published: July 29, 2004
DURBAN, South Africa, July 23 - At S Cemetery in Umlazi Township, Innocent Gasa's handiwork is everywhere: endless mounds of fresh red earth topped with headstones, unpainted wooden crosses, or, for the most miserable, bricks bearing a painted identifying number. Mr. Gasa has dug graves on this lumpy, unkempt, Halloween-spooky hilltop for two years now, five holes a week, 52 weeks a year, well over 500 holes in all.
Which may seem peculiar, seeing as S Cemetery exhausted its last space for new graves five years ago. City records sum up its status succinctly, even dismissively: "Full."
But in Durban, "full'' is a term of art. This city is being battered by an AIDS pandemic so sweeping that people are dying faster than the city can find space to bury them. And so gravediggers like Mr. Gasa are reopening existing graves - the city calls it "recycling'' - and interring fresh bones atop the old ones....
Yay! We have our very own carpetbagger!
Buckle your seat belts.
Former presidential hopeful Alan Keyes has told Illinois Republicans that he will take on Democratic Senate nominee Barack Obama -- setting the stage for a three-month debate between two gifted, Harvard-educated orators from opposite ends of the political spectrum.
Members of the Republican State Central Committee insisted the former radio and television commentator from Maryland make the promise before they would vote to offer him the nomination Wednesday night, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times on Thursday.
"So he went back into the room and basically said, 'If you offer, I will accept,' " said a source close to the negotiations.
This is really just so very sad. (Leaving aside the fact that it makes me snicker.)
The Republicans are running a man who couldn't win for senator in his own state -- one that is, one might add, trending gently Republican. They're now trying to run him here, in a state that is trending Democratic, where he couldn't reach 10% of the Republican vote in two presidential primaries. The Republicans wanted name recognition to bring attention to their candidate; well, yes, one must concede that they've achieved that much. Of course, the downside to that name recognition is that it's been pretty clearly demonstrated that the Republican voters ... don't actually like him. For some reason, they also seemed to think it was important to "neutralize the race issue" by throwing it into sharp relief -- after all, by noting (repeatedly) that it will be the first time that two African-Americans have ever run against each other for senator from the same state, that manages to thrust the race issue, such as it is, into everyone's face. The problem is, of course, for all the Republicans' insistence that Illinois is a sincerely conservative state, it's actually pretty much moderate. Keyes' stance on most issues is pretty much appalling.
The thundering irony of all this is that the extremely conservative voters who would appreciate Keyes' somewhat reactionary views are pretty likely to be appalled not only at the way in which the GOP politburo selected him, not only that he hasn't lived in this state at all ever, but at the fact that he's black. (He is, by those terms, a slight improvement over Andrea Grubb Barthwell, who was not only black, but a woman.) So they'll have managed to alienate a significant chunk of the extreme right that they would need to win this election. The question is, will they feel that with a president that's unpopular with the right for not vigorously and visibly supporting some of their issues, and a senate race they find quite distasteful, will they still hold their noses and vote the party line?
If nothing else, assuming that Keyes does in fact make this official on Sunday, the next few months promise to be vastly entertaining, if not precisely informative.
Posted by iain at 06:19 PM
Ah, yes. If there's a way to screw up elections, we'll find it.
When poll workers could not find Kelly Pierce's name on the registration rolls during the primary here in March, they told him to take advantage of a new election rule that allowed him to cast his vote using a provisional ballot. The rule is intended to prevent one of the major problems experienced in Florida during the 2000 presidential election, when scores of voters, especially minority voters, were turned away at the polls over registration questions that could not be resolved quickly. So Mr. Pierce, who had voted regularly since 1989, filled out his paper ballot. Election administrators then proceeded to throw it out, determining that poll workers had Mr. Pierce file it in the wrong precinct.
He was hardly alone. Of the 5,914 provisional ballots cast in the Chicago primary, 5,498 were disqualified, mostly on technical grounds. Provisional voting, the centerpiece of the Help America Vote Act that Congress passed in 2002, will be put into effect across the nation in the coming presidential election in an effort to ensure that more votes are counted. But election officials say the experience of Mr. Pierce - and hundreds like him across the country during primary season - show how failures in carrying out the measure could end up disenfranchising voters instead.
All but a handful of states have passed legislation creating some form of provisional balloting. Most states adopted the new rules to make a deadline to get federal election money this year. An examination of those rules, however, shows there is no uniformity in how they are applied. Some states, for example, allow provisional ballots to be counted even if they are filed in the wrong precinct, but at least 16 states, including Illinois, throw them out. And few states have worked out the details of how to train workers to carry out provisional balloting and other voting changes, setting up the potential for a protracted ballot-by-ballot fight in any election that is close.
The fun thing is that the ballot spoilage rate in Cook County far exceeded that in Florida in 2000. Looks like we'll be headed to more fun results again. (Although Florida has so "improved" things that they may make us look positively competent by comparison.) Thing is, for the national races -- for president, senator and the house -- the spoilage rate isn't likely to make any difference, at least in the city of Chicago. Not one of those races is likely to be close. Where it will make a difference, again, is in the local races, county races, advisory and other referenda, the types of things that tend to have small numbers voting in any event, so anything with a substantial spoilage rate will alter the results.
Posted by iain at 05:51 PM
Democratic state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer on Thursday warned Republicans not to "dare" use the memory of 9/11 for political purposes when they convene for their convention in New York City next month.
"Do not go there," Spitzer said at a breakfast he sponsored for the New York delegation at the national convention Thursday. "We have seen in the 9/11 report how many errors were made and opportunities were missed. No one, and I mean no one, should use it for politics. It would not be fair or right," the attorney general continued. "And we will not let you do it."
Here's the thing: I do agree with Spitzer that the event should not be used in the way he fears.
But ... what's he going to do about it? It's pretty clear that the GOP convention plans to use the event for political gain if they can (although they seem to have been talked out of having Our Glorious Shrub accepting the nomination at the World Trade Center, and I'm sure that many people are relieved thereby). Moreover, the GOP doesn't remotely care about offending New York state -- it votes Democratic, for all that New York City seems to keep electing Republican mayors these days. Those electoral votes are already counted as lost, so there's no downside to offending New Yorkers somewhat.
Somewhat.
In this area, at least, after a few initial flurries, we haven't seen much of Bush's 9/11 ads. Granted, it may be simply that once the Illinois GOP fell apart, there was no longer any reason for them to pay attention, so the ads aren't being played here while maybe they're still in rotation elsewhere. On the other hand, the national reaction was fairly negative; it may well be that they're discovering the limits of how far they can push the political aspects.
One can but hope, anyway.
Posted by iain at 06:49 PM
Well, this could make things interesting.
Barack Obama might get a race, after all.
Former GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes told Illinois Republicans Monday that he is ''open to the idea'' of taking on the Democrat in the U.S. Senate race -- a move that would pit two eloquent, nationally known African Americans against one another.
''It would be a classic race of conservative vs. liberal,'' said state Sen. Dave Syverson, a member of the panel looking for a candidate to go up against Obama. ''It would put this race on the map in this country -- just for excitement.''
Syverson spoke to Keyes several times Monday and said Keyes did not commit to making the run. The former State Department official and radio and television personality was unable to fly from his home in Maryland to Chicago for a meeting the Republican State Central Committee is holding today to interview potential candidates. [...] Keyes lives in Maryland, but Syverson argues that is not an insurmountable problem, pointing to Hillary Clinton's successful run for a New York Senate seat. ''It's not necessarily where you live as much as who you represent and the views you represent," Syverson said. "He believes that there is a void in Illinois and that Obama certainly does not represent Illinois. And he believes that he would be, if he were to run, much more representative of Illinois.".....
11 step forward to challenge Obama (Chicago Tribune, registration required)
By Liam Ford and John Chase
Tribune staff reporters
Published August 3, 2004, 3:49 PM CDT
The Illinois Republican State Central Committee this afternoon was interviewing 11 people who hope to replace Jack Ryan in the race for U.S. Senate. Some committee members, meeting at the Union League Club in Chicago, said they hoped to find someone to take Ryan's place today. They began by interviewing the candidates in alphabetical order. But GOP leaders appear to be far from settling on one after the most recent favorite, Cook County Commissioner Elizabeth Doody Gorman, took herself out of the running Monday.
And one committee member said he would ask party leaders to allow a 12th entrant -- Republican presidential candidate Alan Keyes, a Harvard-educated former State Department official who was not at today's meeting. Bringing Keyes into the picture could delay a decision. If selected, the Maryland man would have to move to Illinois by Election Day.
The new nominee must be chosen by late August. He would face Democrat Barack Obama in a race to replace retiring U.S. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, a Republican.
The state committee is made up of 19 representatives from each of Illinois' congressional districts. Their votes are weighted according to how many Republicans in each district turned out in the most recent primary. State Sen. Dave Syverson (R-Rockford), who has the largest percentage of votes, was pushing for Keyes to be considered....
Well, I suppose if New York can elect a Democratic carpetbagger (and much as I like Hillary, that's exactly what she was), then there's a chance that Keyes might make it here. Mind, the situation isn't quite the same. To be sure, Keyes is a known quantity (which brings its own baggage along for the ride). However, he's also going to be a Republican in a state that's increasingly trending Democrat; he's a extremely conservative person running in a very moderate state (except, you know, on that whole icky gay marriage thing); and he ran very badly indeed here in the last Republican presidential primary in which he was a candidate. To be sure, a primary in which you're being compared to others of your party is quite different in many ways from a general election. (Although I can't imagine Keyes trying to trend toward the moderate middle the way national office candidates generally do.) And one suspects that the carpetbagger issue will have a certain negative influence inside the GOP Central Committee. (And why does that somehow sound like we're talking about the Politburo? But I digress.)
Mind, the very concept that Keyes, a man who has never lived in this state, would be "much more representative of Illinois" than Obama, who was a representative in the state assembly for some years, made me roll my eyes so hard that I think I sprained something. That said, he's theoretically a reasonably bright man -- relatively few people get out of Harvard without a few brain cells functioning pretty well -- so he could get up to speed on state issues, wants and needs fairly quickly, one would think.
The problem with comparing Keyes to Hillary Clinton, in terms of relative carpetbaggerhood if you will, is that the example is turned almost precisely on its head. In Senator Clinton's case, she was coming into a race which had no strongly established challenger on the Republican side; the person running against her didn't have the greatest name recognition even within New York state itself. She also stepped into the race at a much earlier stage, allowing her time to go through the state, make herself familiar to voters in an entirely different way than they thought they knew her as First Lady. In Keyes' case, he'll be coming into a race backed by a party which has been quite publicly disorganized and floundering, so there may be a certain lack of local support. The national GOP has clearly written off this race, so there may be only indifferent support from the national organization. He'll be running against a solidly established candidate -- one, moreover, who has had not only a quite recent national platform on which to get out his message, but who has been campaigning unopposed for a goodly amount of time.
Still, if the GOP wants to get someone with name recognition and their own private fortune with which to finance most of this race, it's either Keyes or Oberweiss. And in either case, the Central Committee will be metaphorically holding its nose to block the stink of picking one of these undesired candidates when it chooses. (They really really don't like Oberweiss.)
So, yes, the next few days will be terribly interesting indeed.
Posted by iain at 05:57 PM
President Bush said Monday he is asking Congress to create the position of a national intelligence director to serve as the president's principal intelligence adviser.
"We are a nation in danger," Bush said as he referred to the elevated terror levels in three regions of the country.
The national director of intelligence will report to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Bush said.
Wait ... wasn't the point of the national intelligence director supposed to be that the person would sit both on top of and somewhat outside the existing intelligence structure to coordinate between the CIA, FBI, DIA and all the other IAs running around the government? Wouldn't it be flying in the face of the recommendation to put the national intelligence director under the CIA? (As well as exposing the CIA to intelligence information to which the agency is currently barred by statute.)
To be sure, this gets around two terribly problematic aspects of that recommendation from the 9/11 Commission: that a national intelligence directorate actually inside the White House would wind up politicizing the intelligence it receives, and that creating a directorate by necessity creates an entirely new layer of bureaucracy. Keeping the directorate in the CIA would keep it out of the administration's direct line of fire somewhat, and putting it inside the CIA would keep the creation of bureaucracy to a minimum (Or has the hope of doing so, anyway.) However, putting a person whose job it will be to review and critique CIA intelligence and methods directly under the head of the CIA would seem to be spectacularly unwise, to put it mildly.
Posted by iain at 12:02 PM
