“A Trump appointee walks into an AIDS conference” sounds like the beginning of a terrible joke, doesn’t it? Just wait until you hear the punchline. It’ll kill you. The sight of the Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar standing before more than 4,000 public health and community-based providers of HIV services is shocking [...]
The musty gym bag stays in my closet, ironically enough. Inside, a crumpled black wig fights for space with a sequined dress, heels, a string of fake pearls and a bag of make-up. After more than twenty years since performing with the Armorettes, this is all that remains of Ms. Anita Mann. That is, until [...]
Richard King and Emil Matzner, 1982 My brother Richard smiles a lot. He has an easy laugh. But there was a time, years ago, when he held a poisonous drink in his hands and begged his dying lover not to swallow it. A time when Richard held the concoction they had prepared together [...]
Remembering the moment in March of 1985 when I learned I was HIV positive is difficult. I speak and write about it often, but the actual emotions aren’t easy to access. I know it was horrific because my brain tells me it was, but putting myself back into the mind of my 24-year-old self and [...]
"Sing Your Song" follows the awakening of a young man living with HIV in Mississippi. Stop what you’re doing. An exhilarating new short film produced especially for people living with HIV (PLHIV) is about to grab your heart and make you stand up and cheer. To commemorate World AIDS Day 2018, the Sero [...]
Mary Bowman performing at the opening of the 20th Anniversary Community Summit. The team behind the 20th Anniversary Community Summit, being held in Atlanta this weekend and sponsored by ViiV Healthcare, knew how to open the event today on exactly the right foot. The first words attendees heard were the poetry of Mary [...]
Original ACT UP activists Mark Harrington, Peter Staley, Gregg Gonsalves, and Ann Northrup at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health on October 11, 2018. The AIDS activists who regularly stormed the homes, offices and even churches of the powerful beginning in the late 1980’s weren’t the only ones who were scared [...]
Very little happens by accident. The most iconic moments in HIV/AIDS activism – the appearance of the early SILENCE=DEATH meme, the footage of AIDS activist Peter Staley being peeled from a building during a protest, the photos of Sen. Jesse Helms’ home wrapped in an enormous condom – were the product of weeks of careful [...]
A moment of reverence, please. In 1975, I went to the movies and discovered everything I needed to know about men, sexual allure, chest hair and the masculine ideal that would fuel my fantasies for the rest of my natural life. The film was Lifeguard and the star was Sam Elliott. You unfortunate folks under 40 may only [...]
It is every bit as absurd as it sounds. The International AIDS Society (IAS) plans to hold their global AIDS2020 conference in San Francisco – an insanely expensive and privileged city located in a country that has become dangerously inhospitable to the very populations the IAS claims to serve. Thank goodness for a growing army [...]
