Paul Kawata has been such a fixture of the HIV arena – literally since the epidemic began in the early 1980s - that his retirement from NMAC as Executive Director feels as unbelievable as it is inevitable. In a remarkable conversation between Paul and myself for POZ...
Todd Heywood, known by his friends as simply “Heywood,” has been an outspoken HIV survivor, renowned investigative journalist, and queer advocate for most of his life. So it should come as no surprise that when Heywood got a cancer diagnosis last year, he has used it...
As press conferences go, the one held this week for the #SaveHIVFunding effort by the national advocacy group PrEP4All was a doozy. But not for the usual reasons. There were no shocking announcements from the slate of public health advocates and workers. There were no...
Craig Washington could be forgiven if he has a certain strut in his step these days. His lifetime of community service, building one program after another that lifts up, supports and celebrates SGL (Same Gender Loving) Black men, is written across the history of...
“If this article doesn’t scare the shit out of you, we’re in real trouble... Our continued existence depends on just how angry you can get.” - Larry Kramer, “1,112 and Counting,” The New York Native, 1983 Forty years ago, on March 15th, 1985, I received my HIV...
The phrase sat there on my Facebook feed, staring back at me like an accusation. “If you aren’t resisting, you are assisting,” the post read. I felt flush with self-conscious guilt. It wasn’t a familiar feeling, not after nearly forty years of speaking up and...
When Jeremiah Johnson was perusing the Gilead Sciences website last November, as one does when tracking one of the most insidious assaults in history against people living with HIV, an item he found buried deep in Gilead’s pulldown menus literally took his breath...
The casket of my friend Jesse Peel, an elderly longtime HIV survivor who died in 2023, was crafted of gorgeous wood—oak, I think. As I stood admiring it in the alcove of the church prior to his memorial, a powerful sense of déjà vu brought suppressed emotions rushing...
At Out Front Theater on August 8, 2024, seven Atlanta community members performed essays from my new collection, My Fabulous Disease: Chronicles of a Gay Survivor. It was the last stop of a national tour that included events in Palm Springs, Ft. Lauderdale,...
This is a story about GLAAD’s 2024 State of HIV Stigma Report and why its botched release generated widespread condemnation from advocates throughout the HIV arena. It is also the story of how community leaders who keep their eye on the ball can collectively work...
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