Well, the irony fairy is hauling out the big anvils for this one, isn't she?
Abstinence-only programs -- the hallmark of the Bush administration's federal sex education policy -- seem to have little impact on the behavior of Texas teenagers. The first evaluation of programs used throughout the state has found that students in almost all high school grades were more sexually active after abstinence education. Researchers don't believe the programs encouraged teenagers to have sex, only that the abstinence messages did not interfere with the usual trends among adolescents growing up.
"We didn't find what many would like for us to find," said researcher Buzz Pruitt of Texas A&M University. He and his colleagues discussed their data this week with state health authorities in Austin, who sponsored the research.
The study has its flaws, and Dr. Pruitt and others cautioned against overarching conclusions. But scientists welcome the fact that Texas is contributing to a field lacking in solid data. The federal government will spend $131 million this year on a smorgasbord of abstinence-only education programs. Many public health experts are concerned that no one really knows what the government is buying.
Among the findings in the Texas study: About 23 percent of the ninth-grade girls in the study already had sexual intercourse before they received any abstinence education, a figure below the national average. After taking an abstinence course, the number among those same girls rose to 28 percent, a level closer to that of their peers across the state. Among ninth-grade boys, the percentage who reported sexual intercourse before and after abstinence education remained relatively unchanged. In 10th grade, however, the percentage of boys who had ever had sexual intercourse jumped from 24 percent to 39 percent after participating in an abstinence program.
The researchers bemoan the lack of a control group, but you have to wonder: what exactly would a control group under these circumstances be? Kids who got no information at all? (The pregnancy rate in that group would likely be appalling?) Kids who got accurate and useful health information about sex and sexuality and birth control and all that fun stuff? (In TEXAS? HA! ... although, to be fair, an adolescent's chances of getting useful and accurate health information about sex and sexuality in this country's schools are practically non-existant these days.)
The doctors in the article note that we should get over our fear of research. Of course, research is not exactly the point, is it?
Unfortunately, discovering that abstinence programs don't work, or give out active misinformation, isn't likely to stop the advocates of these programs. Again, accuracy and effectiveness are entirely irrelevant to their longterm goals. These types of programs seem to have two goals. First, they constitute another way to try to shoehorn conservative religious values into the classroom. Second, they're an attempt to put sexuality back in a box, so that it can -- in theory -- be more easily controlled. Unfortunately, this isn't likely to work terribly well; partly because, despite their fears, people at large really don't want things back in a socially constrained box, and partially because the country really isn't -- yet -- quite as theocratically and conservatively religious as they might like.
But, as these people would likely say, just give them time. Given current trends, we'll probably get there eventually.
Posted by iain at 11:27 AM
So.
You feel the need to serve your country by joining the military, generally considered an honorable thing to do. You go out, you fight, and you're injured -- generally pretty severely, if you wind up at Walter Reed Army Medical Center for any length of time. You would think that your country would be willing not only to house you, to help you get well again, but also to simply feed you, in honor of the fact that you have sacrificed your time, your effort, and your bodily integrity for your country.
You'd be wrong.
Most patients at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington have a lot on their minds: the war they just fought, the injuries they came home with, the future that lies ahead. The last thing a wounded soldier needs to worry about is where the next meal is coming from. But for hundreds of Walter Reed patients, that's a real concern. Starting this month, the Army has started making some wounded soldiers pay for the food they eat at the hospital.
Paying out of pocket for hospital meals can impose a serious financial burden, costing hundreds of dollars every month. That can be a lot of money to a military family. But perhaps worse, the meal charge feels like an ungrateful slap in the face to some soldiers. "I think it sucks," said a soldier from West Virginia who broke his neck in Iraq after falling off a roof. "I think that people should be able to eat. They get us over there, get us wounded and shot up and then tell us: Fend for yourself. You are all heroes, but here you go." [...] A veterans' advocate who lost the use of his legs fighting in Vietnam said the meal charges constitute a personal affront to soldiers. "I don't care what bureaucratic bullshit they come up with, this is an insult," said Bobby Muller, chairman of the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and director of the foundation's Alliance for Security. "I cannot believe that people are being charged for their meals. This is a showstopper."
For its part, the Army explains -- and defends -- the food charges at Walter Reed by saying they apply only to some outpatients, not inpatients confined to hospital beds. "I have been absolutely assured ... that no inpatient has been charged for meals," Walter Reed spokesman Don Vandrey told Salon. But until Jan. 3, outpatient soldiers who served in Iraq or Afghanistan ate for free in the chow hall. Now outpatient soldiers there longer than 90 days pay for meals in cash. Although Walter Reed did not disclose the exact number of soldiers affected, the policy is most likely to affect at least the estimated 600 soldiers getting long-term outpatient care at the hospital in what the Army calls "medical hold."
Soldiers in medical hold are considered outpatients, but they usually live on hospital grounds -- some are put up in nearby hotels if housing on the grounds is full -- and have little choice but to buy food at the Walter Reed chow hall. Even as outpatients, soldiers in medical hold often have serious injuries. Some have been blown up by roadside bombs or crumpled in Humvee wrecks. They have serious head wounds and amputations. Others are struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder after being flown out of Iraq with shellshock. Some soldiers in medical hold are waiting to get processed out of the Army because their wounds are so serious that they will never return to duty. But processing at Walter Reed can take over a year, much to the frustration of the soldiers who would prefer to get outpatient treatment near their homes and families. Soldiers in medical hold also complain they are still expected to line up for daily formations and buy new uniforms even as they struggle with debilitating physical and mental trauma from their service in Iraq. They say being charged for food while they're recovering is one more indignity.
You can't leave, the amount you're paying for food exceeds the food allowance, for soldiers with families -- especially the former reservists -- the entire situation already imposes all sorts of financial hardship, so this is just one more indignity heaped on top of all the rest.
Perhaps, if feeding soldiers is such a financial strain, Walter Reed could break out some of those Girl Scout cookies from storage to defray costs. It wouldn't be precisely nutritious, but at least it would be something.
And no, I'm not being -- entirely -- sarcastic.
Less is more is the message from Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The hospital has received so many gifts for wounded soldiers and their families that it has run out of space.
The hospital announced yesterday that it would not begin accepting new donations until February, at the earliest. "I bet we have at least 10 tons of goods," said Michael Wagner, director of the Medical Family Assistance Center. "It's kind of a pleasant problem." A 40-by-60-foot storage room is nearly stacked up to its 12-foot ceiling with stuffed animals, clothes, shaving kits, books, videos, CDs and DVDs. Girl Scout and Boy Scout troops have sent photographs of themselves along with boxes with goodies. Schoolchildren have sent stacks of handmade cards.
The goods are desperately needed and appreciated by the soldiers and their families, who sometimes arrive at the hospital in Northwest Washington late at night without more than a few pieces of clothing. They could end up staying at the hospital for months while the soldier recovers, Wagner said.
Walter Reed receives patients daily who have been injured in Iraq or Afghanistan. Since the Iraq invasion, the hospital has treated 3,735 patients, 955 of whom have been battle casualties. The length of stay can range from several days to a year. [...] Until space becomes available at Walter Reed, officials encouraged those still wanting to help to donate money to organizations that help soldiers' families with living expenses, transportation, meals and other needs during their stays in the Washington region.
So. One might be wondering why, in recent days, I've been making the odd pointed comment about Texas prisons and their attitudes toward their prisoners.
One might, indeed.
AMARILLO – Garrett Cunningham refers to it only as "the incident," the five or 10 minutes that forever changed the way he saw himself. Four years ago, Mr. Cunningham said, a state corrections officer raped him near the showers of a prison. Afterward, the inmate lay in bed, weeping. "When I was awake, I thought about wanting to die, because I didn't want to live with this," said Mr. Cunningham, 33.
Since 2000, at least 129 Texas prisoners, including Mr. Cunningham, have alleged that they were raped or had had sexual contact with corrections officers, according to state records. Allegations of inmate-on-inmate rape are even more frequent and appear to be increasing. Overall, the number of reported sexual assaults in Texas prisons has increased 160 percent, to 609 in 2004 from 234 in 2000.
Inmate advocates -- who have launched a nationwide legal campaign against assaults and the complacency that they say allows them to flourish -- say that the problem is greater than the statistics show, with the situation in Texas acute.
"I really have become convinced over the last three years or so that Texas is the prison-rape capital of the country," said Margaret Winter, a lawyer who represents two inmates who sued the prison system. "When prisoners report it, they are ignored, laughed at and often punished." [...] But some who have studied prison rape believe that even the rising numbers don't capture its prevalence.
"Recurrence is the great fear" if they report it, said Cindy Struckman-Johnson, a University of South Dakota psychology professor who has studied inmate rape incidents in Midwestern prisons. "They fear harm by perpetrators, poor treatment by staff, and shame and embarrassment."
Mr. Cunningham, who went to prison on a probation violation, said all those factors influenced his decision to keep quiet. "He [the corrections officer] told me he'd have me sent to another prison, where this would happen to me all the time from gang members," Mr. Cunningham said. "That he could have me killed in there."
[...] At least three other inmates and former inmates reported that Mr. Chaney raped them at the Luther Unit in Navasota. [...] The former guard is charged with two counts of improper sexual activity and one count of aggravated sexual assault. Prosecutors said they intend to bring another sexual assault case, involving a former inmate from Garland, to a grand jury this month. In November 2001, another inmate reported that Mr. Chaney had sexually assaulted him. He was able to save semen on a handkerchief, and an analysis later showed it belonged to Mr. Chaney, court records show.
This even goes beyond the previously noted tendency for Texas prisons to tolerate and sometimes encourage prisoner-on-prisoner rape. Although it is the sort of outgrowth one would expect. After all, this sort of thing happens in womens' prisons, so why wouldn't it happen (albeit probably somewhat less frequently) in a men's prison?
Here's the thing to consider: whether in prison or outside, men tend to report being raped only when the physical damage is too great to deal with on their own, when they are simply too badly hurt to do otherwise. In prisons, people tend to hide greater degrees of physical damage than they would on the outside, because it's far more likely that the rapist or his friends will take some sort of revenge against them if they report it. So, if anything, sexual assault would be far more underreported inside prisons than it is outside.
Posted by iain at 03:11 PM
... Oh, dear.
More than 20 years after the AIDS epidemic arrived in the United States, a significant proportion of African Americans embrace the theory that government scientists created the disease to control or wipe out their communities, according to a study released today by Rand Corp. and Oregon State University. That belief markedly hurts efforts to prevent the spread of the disease among black Americans, the study's authors and activists said. African Americans represent 13 percent of the U.S. population, according to Census Bureau figures, yet they account for 50 percent of new HIV infections in the nation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Nearly half of the 500 African Americans surveyed said that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is man-made. The study, which was supported by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, appears in the Feb. 1 edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.
More than one-quarter said they believed that AIDS was produced in a government laboratory, and 12 percent believed it was created and spread by the CIA.
A slight majority said they believe that a cure for AIDS is being withheld from the poor. Forty-four percent said people who take the new medicines for HIV are government guinea pigs, and 15 percent said AIDS is a form of genocide against black people.
You know ... there's just no way these beliefs aren't a multilevel indictment against government at all levels -- federal, state, county, and local. Clearly, for example, education about AIDS is signally failing to reach people most in need of that information. That can only be seen as a failure of local and state governments.
At the same time, the belief in government conspiracies is not entirely unfounded, historically. Given that the Tuskeegee experment ended only in 1972, there are still probably quite a few people alive who were directly affected by those experiments, who were seriously damaged by how the federal government behaved at that time. For all that it was 40 years ago, many people who were in their teens, twenties, thirties at that time will still be alive and will still have vivid memories.
All that said ... the organizations and people putting out prevention information aren't all governmental. Even if there was a conspiracy, what would it hurt anyone to use those prevention methods -- to use condoms, to use clean needles? At worst, if there is a conspiracy, then no, it really wouldn't make any difference. At best, without a conspiracy, you're still far less likely to catch the disease, right? Either way, abdicating personal responsibility to conspiracy theory is just plain stupid.
Elsewhere, apparently the government -- conspiracy ridden or otherwise -- is finally moving to recommend prophylactic AIDS treatment for rape victims:
U.S. Recommends AIDS Drug Regimen for Rape Victims
ATLANTA, Jan. 20 -- The government recommended for the first time Thursday that people exposed to the AIDS virus from rapes, accidents or occasional drug use or unsafe sex receive drug cocktails that can keep them from becoming infected.
Previously, federal health officials recommended emergency drug treatment only for health care workers accidentally stuck with a needle, splashed in the eye with blood, or exposed in some other way on the job. That recommendation was first made in 1996. [...] It is a shift away from a policy that some doctors had called unconscionable and that put the United States years behind much of Europe and other nations....
Antiretroviral Postexposure Prophylaxis After Sexual, Injection-Drug Use, or Other Nonoccupational Exposure to HIV in the United States: Recommendations from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
MMWR Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Reports
Recommendations and Reports
January 21, 2005 / 54(RR02);1-20
The most effective means of preventing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection is preventing exposure. The provision of antiretroviral drugs to prevent HIV infection after unanticipated sexual or injection-drug--use exposure might be beneficial. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) Working Group on Nonoccupational Postexposure Prophylaxis (nPEP) made the following recommendations for the United States. For persons seeking care <72 hours after nonoccupational exposure to blood, genital secretions, or other potentially infectious body fluids of a person known to be HIV infected, when that exposure represents a substantial risk for transmission, a 28-day course of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) is recommended. Antiretroviral medications should be initiated as soon as possible after exposure. For persons seeking care <72 hours after nonoccupational exposure to blood, genital secretions, or other potentially infectious body fluids of a person of unknown HIV status, when such exposure would represent a substantial risk for transmission if the source were HIV infected, no recommendations are made for the use of nPEP. Clinicians should evaluate risks and benefits of nPEP on a case-by-case basis. For persons with exposure histories that represent no substantial risk for HIV transmission or who seek care >72 hours after exposure, DHHS does not recommend the use of nPEP. Clinicians might consider prescribing nPEP for exposures conferring a serious risk for transmission, even if the person seeks care >72 hours after exposure if, in their judgment, the diminished potential benefit of nPEP outweighs the risks for transmission and adverse events. For all exposures, other health risks resulting from the exposure should be considered and prophylaxis administered when indicated. Risk-reduction counseling and indicated intervention services should be provided to reduce the risk for recurrent exposures. [...] In a study of sexual assault survivors in Sao Paolo, Brazil, women who sought care within 72 hours after exposure were treated for 28 days with either zidovudine and lamivudine (for those without mucosal trauma) or zidovudine, lamivudine, and indinavir (for those with mucosal trauma or those subjected to unprotected anal sex) for 28 days. Women were not treated if they sought care >72 hours after assault, if the assailant was HIV-negative, or if a condom was used and no mucosal trauma was seen. Of 180 women treated, none seroconverted. Of 145 women not treated, four (2.7%) seroconverted (25). Although these studies demonstrate that nPEP might reduce the risk for infection after sexual HIV exposures, participants were not randomly assigned, and sample sizes were too small for statistically significant conclusions.
In a study of rape survivors in South Africa, of 480 initially seronegative survivors begun on zidovudine and lamivudine and followed up for at least 6 weeks, one woman seroconverted. She had started taking medications 96 hours after the assault. An additional woman, who sought treatment 12 days after assault, was seronegative at that time but not offered nPEP. At retesting 6 weeks after the assault, she had seroconverted and had a positive polymerase chain reaction result (Personal communication, A. Wulfsohn, MD, Sunninghill Hospital, Gauteng, South Africa).
Of course, since this does not constitute a recommendation that such treatment be covered through Medicare or Medicaid, then poor and elderly rape victims are dependent on the kindness of the emergency room ... and even then, most emergency rooms are unlikely to stock 30-day treatment courses; that's not what they're for, after all. And big city emergency rooms, at least, could never stock a 30-day course in quantities great enough. Maybe they'll have enough supplies to give people a two, three day series of treatments until they can get to their doctor, but then, how many of the poor and elderly will have a doctor to get to? And even if they do, how will they afford the prescription?
Still, for those people who do have some form of health care insurance, this is at least something. Since most private health care plans treat HIV/AIDS in and of itself, they're likely to see the benefits in spending once for a 30-day course of treatment, which will keep them from spending more and more for lifetime treatment of those who do seroconvert.
Posted by iain at 03:22 PM
My, my, my. Some prison guards and prisoners are alleging that California's attorney general's office may have been very naughty indeed.
Correctional officers say state officials have lied to the U.S. Supreme Court about racial segregation in California prisons.
One correctional officer filed a whistleblower's complaint in December with the California state auditor, asking for an official investigation. He contends that the state Attorney General Bill Lockyer and the Department of Corrections knowingly downplayed and lied about the extent that race is used to set prison policies. Many other correctional officers and inmates corroborate his claim.
Officials with the state attorney general's office and the corrections department contend that they never misled the court.
In November, the California attorney general's office went to the high court to defend the state Department of Corrections' unwritten 100-year-old policy of segregating prisoners by race during the first two months of their sentence. California Senior Assistant Attorney General Frances T. Grunder told the high court that the segregation is limited to "reception center" housing of inmates during their first 60 days at a prison. New inmates are initially segregated to determine their propensity for racial violence, state attorneys told the court. Beyond the reception centers, the prisons are fully integrated, the brief submitted by Attorney General Bill Lockyer said. "All other aspects of an inmate's life in prison both while at the reception center and afterwards are managed without reference to his race or that of his fellow inmates," the brief stated. "There is no distinction based on race for jobs, meals, yard and recreational time, or vocational and educational assignments."
Inmates and correctional officers say segregation is rampant.
Six officers, all presidents of their prisons' union chapters, told The Press-Enterprise that with little exception, inmates are assigned cellmates and dorm-room bunkmates by race. "It's all about segregation. It's all we do," said Charles Hughes, a lieutenant at California State Prison in Lancaster. "We segregate permanently and use race for job placement and everything, and for them to say otherwise is an absolute lie. And for them to lie to the Supreme Court is appalling." [...] After the state argued its case, Deixler told the California attorney general's office that Lockyer and Grunder may have misled the court when they said the segregation is a temporary measure, said attorney general spokesman Nathan Barankin. His office checked into the matter and was assured by the corrections department that the segregation is temporary, he said.
"What we argued before the Supreme Court were the facts about what the California Department of Corrections policy is and how they implement it," he said. "No one we've spoken with at the California Department of Corrections said those facts aren't accurate."
A spokesman with the Department of Corrections tells a different story. "We never said in the argument that the inmates are not segregated in the institutions . . . (or) outside the reception center," said Youth and Adult Corrections Agency spokesman J.P. Tremblay. Race is one of many factors considered for permanent housing assignments, he said.
However, that's not what the state's attorney told the court during oral arguments when justices repeatedly asked for assurance that the practice doesn't apply beyond the reception centers. "It does not happen outside of the reception center cell practice. Once they go to their permanent housing assignment, they may choose their own cellmates," Grunder told the court.
[...] "There is no way I'd put a white and a black together," said Hughes of California State Prison in Lancaster. "I'd be putting my job on the line if I did that." Housing the two together would be to disregard the safety of the inmates because the gangs would require one of them to hurt the other, he said. "If a black inmate asked for a white celly (cellmate), there is no way in hell I would do that," Hughes said. "I'd refer them for a mental-health evaluation."
I wonder if there's any penalty for lying to the Supreme Court. If proven, would it automatically constitute a default judgement against the lying party?
What gets me is, why would anyone expect that a prison wouldn't be segregated? It is unconstitutional, yes. Nonetheless, given the propensity for prisons to break out in racially-motivated violence every so often, it would seem entirely unrealistic to expect that a prison wouldn't be segregated. Especially given racially defined gangs that are active within prisons, not segregating by race would seem to be saying, "No, please, go ahead and rape and maim and kill each other! The state doesn't mind, not a bit!" Of course, the state of Texas actually doesn't mind, but we're talking about California, which would not seem to have quite the draconian mindset of Texas regarding prison administration.
And speaking of the lovely and talented Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which administers that state's prisons, it seems that Texas is running out of both space for its prisoners and money with which to run its prisons.
Texas prisons are running out of beds more quickly than expected and may need to lease space in county jails by March. But there is no money in the prison system's budget to pay the jails. Prison officials confirmed Tuesday that they may need to ask lawmakers for an emergency appropriation to get through fiscal 2005, which ends Aug. 30. The Legislative Budget Board projected last June that prisons would not exceed capacity until October. The prison crowding crisis comes 2 1/2 years after the state ended 30 years of federal control with the dismissal of the Ruiz prison-reform lawsuit.
The news also comes at a particularly difficult time for lawmakers, who are under a judge's order to put billions of dollars in new funding into public education. And, in the wake of hundreds of child deaths, state leaders want to significantly increase spending on its systems to protect children and the elderly.
"Based on the offender-population patterns we've seen, we believe it's possible that we may need to contract for beds by March, and so we are briefing various leadership offices at this time," said spokesman Mike Viesca. Viesca said the department has no money in its current fiscal budget to pay for space in county jails. He said the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is compiling information it received last month from county jails about how much space is available.
Viesca said that as of Sunday, the prison system held 150,575 inmates, which represents 97.3 percent of capacity. The department considers 97.5 percent of capacity the level that it cannot safely exceed, taking into account the need to house different types of offenders separately.
So they have nowhere to put prisoners, no money with which to pay the counties that might have extra space, the legislature has other priorities dictating that they're not likely to have funds for an extra appropriateion any time soon.
On the other hand, with Our Glorious Leader firmly in the saddle for another term in Washington, and the Torturer-in-Chief in charge in what was once actually the Department of Justice, it's highly unlikely that Texas will be forced to do anything to alleviate overcrowding any time soon. Prosecuting human rights and constitutional violations, however egregious, is hardly likely to be at the top of the agenda for an administration that seldom saw a torture justification it didn't love. And, to be fair, easing the lot of prisoners is also not likely to be at the top of the agenda for most of the people of Texas; after all, those people were convicted of crimes to get where they are today, so who cares if they're a little uncomfortable, or crowded in so tight that it's far more likely that the prisoners are going to get raped and/or killed. (Of course, this is Texas, where such things are encouraged in prisons, so it may take them a while to notice.)
Posted by iain at 04:21 PM
For seven years methamphetamine helped Ron Conner believe he was the talented, sexy, bold man he had always dreamed of being. The 37-year-old graphic artist would have sacrificed everything to hold onto that glamorous vision of himself -- and, ultimately, he nearly did.
"I lost my house, two cars, my checking and savings accounts, my piano, my boyfriend," he said. "I had sex with guys I knew were [HIV] positive, who said they were positive, and I just didn't care," he added.
Although Conner, who is sober and working again, did not end up HIV-positive, such is not the case for many gay meth users.
Health officials and AIDS activists nationwide are alarmed at the increasing correlation between new HIV diagnoses and methamphetamine use among gay men. The drug's ability to heighten arousal and erase inhibitions is proving a deadly combination %u2014 leading to sexual behavior that increases the chances of infection with HIV and syphilis. [...] In Los Angeles County last year, a third of all people recently diagnosed with HIV reported using methamphetamine, a survey found. The majority of those people are believed to be men who have sex with men. [...] In San Francisco, where one-third of gay and bisexual men are HIV-positive, the situation is equally grim. The STOP AIDS Project, which surveys 10,000 gay and bisexual men yearly and has analyzed county health data, reports that one-fifth of gay and bisexual men in San Francisco have used speed in the last six months. A third of men who recently tested HIV-positive had used the drug in the previous six months, the project found.
The curse of methamphetamine, also called speed, crank, tina and tweak, is not unique to gay men. As addictive as crack, more powerful than Ecstasy and cheaper than cocaine, methamphetamine has become the leading demon in drug treatment programs nationwide.
But meth's inroads into the lives of middle-class, professional gay men threaten to destabilize gay communities at a time when they have largely bounced back from the initial ravages of the AIDS epidemic. Otherwise productive "weekend warriors" who believed that they could limit their use to special occasions or weekend parties are finding themselves hooked.
On the one hand ... I kind of get it, you know?
And on the other ... I kind of don't.
And age isn't quite the excuse the article presents it as being. After all, the main they lead with, Ron Conner, is 37. He's old enough to have lived through the worst of the plague years. He's old enough to remember the worst of the plague years, if just barely.
I will admit to feeling somewhat ... irked at people who say that preachy ads made them feel so guilty about using that they started using even more. That has to be one of the worst excuses I've ever heard. Maybe it's just that drugs aren't among my particular addictions, such as they are, so that type of thing I really don't quite understand.
But I do get the desire to feel sexy and attractive, and above all, not to care about anything but the moment. And to take something that makes you feel all that, and allows you the courage to go out and find people who help validate that feeling ... Oh, yes. That I get.
Posted by iain at 04:12 PM
JONATHAN M. PERRY has never been shy about being identified as gay at Johnson C. Smith University, a historically black college here. He tells anyone who asks, and plenty who don't. At 6-foot-2 and a trim 150 pounds, he's hard to miss. He sometimes paints his fingernails and toenails black and wears flip-flops so no one will miss the fashion statement. He has an "I Like Your Boyfriend" T-shirt. "I don't believe in having any skeletons in any closets," he explains. So Mr. Perry was a logical choice to speak at a sorority-sponsored forum on AIDS during his sophomore year. As he recalls, he started off by posing a question: "How many of you know someone who has H.I.V.?"
"Turn to your left; turn to your right," he told them. "Do you know anyone with H.I.V.?"
No one raised a hand.
"Well," he added, "how many of you know me?"
On this campus of 1,600 students, they all knew Mr. Perry, and many in the audience began to cry. They had never associated AIDS with their own campus. In fact, Mr. Perry is the only student at Johnson C. Smith who is openly gay.
"I want black college students to hear my story," says Mr. Perry, now a 28-year-old senior. "I don't want them to be able to avoid thinking about this." He adds: "My school and lots of schools are very homophobic, and they are not going to address H.I.V. on black college campuses until they are able to get over the homophobia."
[...] ''The stigma of being gay drives kids into higher-risk behavior such as doing club drugs and engaging in anonymous sex,'' says Dr. Peter A. Leone, the state's medical director for sexually transmitted diseases and an associate professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ''There's nowhere for them to go to explore their sexuality safely.''
That, according to Dr. Leone, is a key reason for the results he saw last year in a study of H.I.V. among North Carolina's college students.
Although the growth of the virus among minority groups is well documented, public-health officials had assumed the problem was greatest in low-income, poorly educated communities. College students had not been considered at risk for AIDS because prevention education and awareness is usually high on campuses. But the study -- of 42 colleges, public and private, historically black and predominantly white, secular and religious -- produced results that stunned Dr. Leone, the lead researcher. From 2000 through 2003, 84 male students were found to have H.I.V., and 73 of them were black. In a state where only 22 percent of college students are black, 87 percent of students contracting H.I.V. are black.
Data from 2004, not counted in his study, indicate the numbers are rising and will likely increase exponentially.
''We are seeing this huge outbreak among young black men who don't view themselves as at risk, and we're not doing a good job of delivering the message that they are,'' Dr. Leone says.
The problem the researchers documented also raises concerns about the vulnerability of young women. About 40 percent of the H.I.V.-positive black male students said they had also had sex with women in the year before their diagnosis. In the last two years, five female students in North Carolina, all of them black, have been found to have H.I.V. .....
No, no. Not the various and sundry electoral issues. After all, those are now officially moot.
As noted by the director of Cleveland's Domestic Violence Center, these could fall in a category called Laws of Unintended Consequences.
Ohio's new constitutional amendment aimed at denying special legal rights to gay and unmarried couples also may strip legal protections from thousands of unwed victims of domestic violence.
Legal and victim-advocacy circles are buzzing over motions from the Cuyahoga County public defender's office to dismiss domestic-violence charges against unmarried defendants. The argument: that the charge violates the amendment to Ohio's Constitution known as Issue 1 by giving spouselike status and protection to victims who live with, but aren't married to, their accused attackers.
"The thing is, you can only get a domestic-violence charge now if you are a wife beater, not a girlfriend beater," said Jeff Lazarus, a law clerk for public defender Robert Tobik and chief architect of the motions to dismiss.
Issue 1 became law on Dec. 1, and none of the cases in Cleveland Municipal and Cuyahoga County Common Pleas courts has produced a judge's ruling yet. But the filings have stunned domestic-violence victims advocates, who expect that the office's novel tactic will start an avalanche of copycat pleadings across the state.
"It's a bad, bad thing," said Cathleen Alexander, director of the Domestic Violence Center in Cleveland. "We're very worried that some victims will not be granted the protection they need because they're not married. That could jeopardize people's lives. "I think," she added, "that this is consistent with the law of unintended consequences."
Yet the public defender's tactic gives hope for opponents of Issue 1, which Ohio voters approved in November. Some lawyers who oppose the amendment say if a judge sides with the public defender's reasoning, the court could declare the amendment a violation of the U.S. Constitution's 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law. Specifically, a married victim of domestic violence would have more protection than an unmarried neighbor beaten by a live-in lover, and married and unmarried defendants would be treated differently as well.
It will be interesting to see what happens with this. My suspicion is that (1) a judge will state that clealy, undermining the domestic violence law was not the intent or design of the legislators; (2) the Ohio legislature, somewhat peeved by all this, will pass a law either specifically noting that Issue 1 was not meant to amend the Domestic Violence laws. Either way, Issue 1 is likely to survive all this -- somewhat dented, to be sure, but essentially intact.
Posted by iain at 02:03 PM
Because, really, using antipiracy software to pirate your computer is really just about perfect irony, isn't it?
Hackers are using the newest DRM technology in Microsoft's Windows Media Player to install spyware, adware, dialers and computer viruses on unsuspecting PC users.
Security researchers have detected the appearance of two new Trojans, Trj/WmvDownloader.A and Trj/WmvDownloader.B, in video files circulating on P2P (peer-to-peer) networks. According to Panda Software, both Trojans take advantage of the new Windows anti-piracy technology to trick users into downloading spyware and adware applications.
"When a user tries to play a protected Windows media file, this technology demands a valid license. If the license is not stored on the computer, the application will look for it on the Internet, so that the user can acquire it directly or buy it," Panda Software explained.
An unsuspecting user attempting to download the DRM (digital rights management) license will instead be redirected to a Web site that loads a large quantity of adware, spyware, modem dialers and other viruses, the company said in an advisory.
I think I'm completely in shock.
The Illinois House voted to ban discrimination of gays and lesbians Tuesday, sending the governor a bill that gay rights activists have sought for more than a decade.
Gov. Rod Blagojevich called it "a landmark day in Illinois" and said he looked forward to signing the legislation. "This legislation sends a clear message that we will not allow our citizens to be discriminated against," Blagojevich said in a statement.
The House's 65-51 vote came on the last possible day; the bill would have died had it not been approved before the new Legislature is sworn in Wednesday. The Senate, which had held up previous attempts to pass similar legislation, approved the bill Monday by a vote of 30-27, the minimum number of votes required.
The legislation, once signed by the governor, will add "sexual orientation" to the state law that protects people from bias based on race, religion and similar traits. It applies to discrimination in jobs, housing, public accommodations or credit.
It took four years to amend the Illinois Human Rights Act by adding the words "sexual orientation" to Section 1-102, paragraph A. One word every two years. (Of course, that's not entirely fair. While those are the two most important words, there's also an explanatory paragraph to be added to Section 1-103. But those are, of course, the two words to be explained; once they're allowed in, the rest is fairly simple.)
Still, progress is progress, and there are no doubt people in other states wondering how in hell we managed to get that much progress only three months after that dreadful election. (So am I, frankly.)
It's going to be fascinating to see what happens after this. The governor has said he will sign, and there's no reason to expect that he wouldn't.
There will be lawsuits, of course. Conservatives say that religious and "values-based" organizations and businesses will find themselves sued to force employment ... and frankly, they probably are right about that. This despite the fact that the Illinois Human Rights Act is fairly clear in exempting such institutions and organizations from its scope. And I expect that archconservative groups will sue to get the Human Rights Act struck in its entirety as violative of their constitutional rights. They won't succeed, I shouldn't think, but I'd be astonished if they don't try.
Posted by iain at 02:44 AM
Media Relations: queer eye for irony/ January 11, 2005
Posted by iain at 02:55 PM
Well, I'll be...
For the first time ever, the Illinois Senate approved a controversial measure Monday that would ban discrimination against gays and lesbians in matters of housing and employment, clearing a long-standing hurdle to passage and inspiring one key sponsor to proclaim a victory for "fundamental freedom."
With only two days left in the term of the outgoing General Assembly, the Senate sent the House the proposal under pressure from Senate President Emil Jones (D-Chicago), Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the governor's sister-in-law, gay activist Deborah Mell.
Senators passed the bill 30-27, with one member voting present.
The measure now heads to the House, where sponsors vowed to pass it. The lower chamber pushed the same measure through committee Monday and now has it queued up for a floor vote on Tuesday.
If sent to Blagojevich and signed into law, the measure will add "sexual orientation" to the list of reasons for which people cannot discriminate in housing, lending and employment. The measure specifically states that the law would not require any employer, lender, real estate agent or landlord to give preferential treatment or special rights to people based on their sexual orientation. [...] Gay activists expect the House to approve the measure. Rep. Larry McKeon (D-Chicago), the only openly gay member of the legislature, said he thinks he has more than the minimum 60 votes needed to pass the measure. Four years ago, when the proposal was last before the House, no fewer than 63 lawmakers committed to vote for it, he said. Whether they have a strong opinion about homosexual behavior or not, McKeon said, many House lawmakers think the measure is simply a matter of fairness. "I know firsthand the extent of discrimination in employment and housing," McKeon said. "It's usually those with the least amount of resources that are impacted. The whole issue is quite real. ... I will sleep very comfortably when I know that this last bastion of sanctioned discrimination has been wiped out."
So now that the more conservative chamber has passed the bill, the question is whether or not the more liberal chamber will act in time.
And whether or not those 63 lawmakers are (a) still in the chamber -- we've had an election since then, after all -- and (b) whether or not they were telling the truth when the committed to voting for it. If the law actually passed, the state would stand in stark contrast to all those other states passing antigay laws and amendments in the past few months.
Mind, I'll believe it when I see it on Hot Rod's desk, ready for him to sign.
But still ...
Posted by iain at 12:16 PM
Another day, another problem with IE.
Secunia recommends users drop IE and use an alternative browser. "Although hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on securing SP2, perfection is impossible," the security firm said in a statement.
Millions of Internet Explorer 6 users are at risk from three "extremely critical" security Relevant Products/Services from Verisign -- Free E-Commerce Start-up Kit holes that give hackers open access to PCs running the browser -- even if Windows XP Service Pack Two has been installed.
The first issue centers on the browser's drag-and-drop capability, which does not validate new files correctly. This means that, potentially, a document downloaded from a Web page using drag and drop may contain malicious code.
The other problems affect all Windows systems, including those protected by Local Computer zone lockdown, which comes with SP2. The first allows specially designed (.hhk) files to be used to include malicious code on systems, and the second stems from a zone restriction error that could allow code to be downloaded from Web sites involuntarily.
At least one of the flaws was reported to Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) Latest News about Microsoft last year, but no patches have so far been made available. Security firm Secunia has released an advisory warning that the holes are "extremely critical" and recommends users dump IE and use an alternative browser.
Of course, the problem with everyone dropping IE and moving to a new browser -- aside from all the IE specific sites out there -- is that should such a thing happen, the hackers and crackers will merely turn their attention to the new browser du jour. All browsers are large, complex programs; it's impossible to get all of the flaws out of them. The sort of people who write these things will then just turn their attention to whatever the new hot thing is, if it achieves enough market share. (These days, it looks like Firefox would be the target of opportunity.) What's really needed is a large, diversified market with several products, doing the same sorts of things, but with different behind-the-scenes architecture, and no one dominant product.
That, of course, will not happen any time soon.
Posted by iain at 11:09 AM
Mildred McDonald was getting her annual physical in 1995 when the nurse asked whether she would like to be tested for HIV.
McDonald laughed.
"I was in a relationship with a man I loved dearly," McDonald recalls. "I was like, 'Lady, please, you must be joking ... but, sure, come on with it.' "
McDonald, 30 at the time, was working the switchboard for a Jackson cleaners when someone from the state Department of Health called and told her she had tested positive for the virus that causes AIDS. She thought it was one of her friends pulling a prank. "But then the person said, 'Would you believe me if I read you your Social Security number? 428 ...' " McDonald says, the memory glazing her eyes. "When I heard those numbers, my world shattered. I was in a committed relationship. How could this happen to me?"
McDonald's partner, who eventually died from the disease, unknowingly passed it to her.
McDonald is one of a growing number of African-American women who have been infected with HIV. About 50 percent of those with HIV will develop AIDS within 10 years. Recent statistics reveal black women represent almost 70 percent of new HIV cases in the United States each year. In Mississippi, black women represent about 25 percent of the new HIV cases, health officials said. As of Dec. 1, 2003, Mississippi had 7,387 residents living with HIV. Of those, 1,072 are males and 2,314 are female. Another 4,001 are in those considered transgender.
Many Americans are oblivious to the problem. Vice President Dick Cheney said during an October debate he was "not aware" of the toll AIDS is taking on black American women.
"Believe me, if I got it, nobody's safe," says McDonald, who has a teenage daughter. "People want to label folks with HIV as nasty. If you tell them you got it from your mate, they don't want to hear that. "It's either you were out on the street, sleeping with five or six men a night, or you were doing (intravenous) drugs. The truth is too boring, or it hits a little too close to home.
"HIV touches everybody's world. The only way it doesn't is if you don't have sex — period."
Administration officials are preparing long-range plans for indefinitely imprisoning suspected terrorists whom they do not want to set free or turn over to courts in the United States or other countries, according to intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials.
The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions, including for hundreds of people now in military and CIA custody whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts. The outcome of the review, which also involves the State Department, would also affect those expected to be captured in the course of future counterterrorism operations.[...] The administration considers its toughest detention problem to involve the prisoners held by the CIA. The CIA has been scurrying since Sept. 11, 2001, to find secure locations abroad where it could detain and interrogate captives without risk of discovery, and without having to give them access to legal proceedings.
Little is known about the CIA's captives, the conditions under which they are kept -- or the procedures used to decide how long they are held or when they may be freed. That has prompted criticism from human rights groups, and from some in Congress and the administration, who say the lack of scrutiny or oversight creates an unacceptable risk of abuse.
So, let me see if I understand this: in order to defend our democracy and our constitution, we will freely and enthusiastically violate the rights of those whom we do not have enough evidence to charge under our constitution by keeping them prisoner forever! Or paying other countries to do it, which amounts to the same thing.
Really, given the express train to hell this administration has put us on, one wonders what will be left of our system worth saving when they're done with it.
Of course, most Americans aren't thinking that there are too many problems with this. Most are sitting back, comfortable in the thought that, since they're not those awful foreigners, things like this won't happen to them.
Ahmed Abu Ali, a twenty-three-year-old Northern Virginia man, is being held without charges in Saudi Arabia. Arrested in June 2003, he has spent eighteen months in custody but has yet to see a lawyer. [...] As the weeks went by, Abu Ali's parents received worrying reports that their son was indeed being tortured. They claim that an eyewitness informed them that Ahmed's hands were in such pain that he was unable to pick up a pen.
But perhaps more shocking than what Abu Ali's parents learned about their son's treatment, was what they discovered about its causes. A U.S. district court ruling issued last week cites evidence suggesting that U.S. officials initiated their son's arrest, that the U.S. government is behind their son's continued detention, and that the reason the U.S. is keeping their son in Saudi Arabia is to avoid the scrutiny of the federal courts.
In short, far from trying to protect Abu Ali, the American government may have simply outsourced his abuse.
...Saudi officials have reportedly described the detention as an American concern and have said that they would release Abu Ali if the U.S. requested it. According to Abu Ali's parents, U.S. State Department and embassy officials have said that their son would be freed as soon as the U.S. Justice Department's investigation was done. [...] Abu Ali's situation may not be unique, or even so unusual. The United States has developed a whole host of practices since the September 11 terrorist attacks that appear to be designed to evade judicial scrutiny of the detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists.
So, for all you people sitting there, tsking about the government shredding the constitutional rights of foreigners and thinking, "Well, but this couldn't happen to me, after all" ... think again.
Posted by iain at 11:57 AM
