It would be naive to suggest that the queer community invented cheeky protests. Long before inflatable animal costumes, or ACT UP protests, or Black civil rights activists sitting at lunch counters, or women’s suffrage demonstrations, there were barrels of tea being...
During the 2025 United States Conference on HIV/AIDS (USCHA), I watched a speech that may rank as the most beautiful speech I have seen in thirty years of attending this conference. Louie Ortiz-Fonseca, Director of LGBTQ Health and Rights at Advocates for Youth,...
As part of the remarkable program, “Write it Out!,” which helps shepherd the work of hopeful new playwrights living with HIV, I wrote the first scene of a play a few years ago. It has become The Good Survivor, a short one-act play. I’m going to share it with you,...
The steel drums playing by the hotel pool blared like a carnival for the tourists wrangling kids and ordering drinks as they adjusted their uncomfortable new bathing suits. Here, though, over the dunes and down the beach a hundred yards away, the drums faded into the...
Just imagine if there was a runway show during the fashion event of the season – New York Fashion Week – that featured not only several models living with HIV, but couture inspired by molecular science, human resilience, and the communities most affected by HIV. Your...
Oh, USCHA, how we love you. You are the Grand Hostess of the HIV/AIDS community, and nowhere else can anyone working for, volunteering in, or living with the reality of HIV find so many beloved allies, frontline workers, and friends. And sometimes, well, we...
My speech at NLGJA's closing reception where I was inducted into their LGBTQ Journalist Hall of Fame, addressing HIV/AIDS activism, trans erasure, LGBTQ unity, and the fascist regime that is "picking the flesh from our democracy every single day." Here is the full...
Writer, activist, and 40-year HIV survivor Mark S. King will be inducted into the LGBTQ+ Journalist Hall of Fame, it has been announced by the national journalist organization NLGJA. Also being inducted are Charles Blow, celebrated opinion columnist for the New York...
In the center of the latest maelstrom at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the last week – on the heels of a deadly mass shooter who killed a police officer and shot out multiple CDC office windows – has been Demetre Daskalakis, MD, a career...
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...
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