“NewsWrap"
for the week ending September 20, 2008
 (As broadcast on "This Way Out" program #1,069, distributed 9-22-08)
[Written by Greg Gordon, with thanks to Rex Wockner with Bill Kelley]

Reported this week by Chris Wilson and Pam Marshall

  The President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, strongly defended the idea of civil unions for same-gender couples during a television interview this week.  He also criticized politicians who oppose rights for lesbigay people but still seek their votes and take their taxes.  "We must stop this hypocrisy,” he said, “because we know they exist... There are men living with men, women living with women, and many times they live extraordinarily well.”  Lula became the first national leader earlier this year to launch a conference to specifically focus on lesbigay civil rights.  Consensual adult homosexual acts have long been legal in Brazil, but homophobia and gay-bashing remain significant problems in the country of 184 million people.
Brazil’s constitution defines marriage as between a man and a woman, and a civil unions bill granting same-gender couples many of the rights of married heterosexuals has been stalled in Brazil's Congress for more than 10 years.
But battles for equality have been successful in a few Brazilian states.  Rio Grande do Sul established same-gender civil unions in 2004.  Rio de Janerio grants equal benefits to the same-gender partners o f state employees.  And a Sao Paulo state court allowed a gay couple to adopt a 5-year-old girl in late 2006.  A series of court rulings in the predominantly Roman Catholic country have also given gay and lesbian couples some rights in areas such as immigration, welfare, pensions and inheritance.

  The Paris AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power � ACT UP � �� protested Roman Catholic Pope Benedict XVI prior to a mass he conducted during his visit to the city last week.
Benedict regularly denounces same-gender couples, and the Church has consistently opposed the use of condoms to prevent HIV/AIDS.  The protestors erected a large banner which read, "The condom is life," and laid a large black-and-pink carpet down the stairs of the venue to, as they said in a statement, "denounce the obscenity of the red carpet deployed in Paris by (President) Nicolas Sarkozy for Benedict XVI and his reactionary theses.”  Opposing condom use, they charged, “amounts to facilitation of evil."
There were reports that LGBT and AIDS advocacy groups were under extensive surveillance prior to the Pope’s visit.

  At least five percent of gay men in Beijing are HIV-positive, and too many gay men are having unsafe sex, according to a statement issued earlier this month by the Beijing Center for Disease Control and Prevention.  Deputy Director He Xiong told reporters that local gay men use condoms less than 50 percent of the time when they have sex.  Meanwhile, He sa id, infection rates have dropped from needle sharing, blood products and mother-to-child transmission.
The number of HIV cases in China has always been unclear, but it’s believed to be at least 650,000, according to the Ministry of Health and international health organizations.

  The U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention � or CDDC � announced last month that the annual number of HIV infections inn the country is 40 percent higher than previously thought.  The agency confirmed during a conference call with reporters last week that the highest rates of new infection are among Black gay and bisexual men, especially those under 29 years old.
Of the more than 56,000 Americans diagnosed with HIV in 2006, 72 percent were gay and bisexual men.  Of those men, 46 percent were white, 35 percent were Black and 19 percent were Hispanic.  The new figures also show a much higher HIV rate among women of color than for white women.
Kevin Fenton, director of the HIV/AIDS Division at the CDC, called the new data about Black gay men “alarming,” and said that 80 percent of them never come in contact with CDC-approved HIV prevention programs.  But only 2 of 18 CDC programs specifically target Black gay and bisexual men.
Activists have consistently criticized the CDC for long ignoring the group most affected by HIV.  Cornelius Baker, national policy adviser for the National Black Gay Men’s Advocacy Coalition, said in a statement that “Despite20continuously accumulating data, there has been little commitment from policy makers and elected officials at the federal, state or local level.  The silence still equals death.”

  An Australian government report this week announced an almost 50 percent increase in the number of HIV/AIDS cases in that country over the past 8 years.  It says the surge is in large part due to Australian gay men bringing the virus home with them after vacationing in Asian countries with high HIV infection rates, such as Thailand, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji.
The report by the National Center in HIV Epidemiology and Clinical Research was also critical of the federal government, noting that Australia was once among the world’s leaders in HIV/AIDS education, but that cutbacks in funding have crippled prevention efforts.

  A report in the U.K., National Guidelines for HIV Testing 2008, is recommending that sexually active gay men be tested for HIV at least once every 12 months.
Recent figures show that more than 30 percent of gay or bisexual men living with HIV there don’t know they are infected.
The National AIDS Trust, the U.K.’s leading independent HIV/AIDS advocacy group, endorsed the new guidelines.  It reported earlier this year that symptoms of early-stage HIV infection are routinely misdiagnosed by doctors.  It also found that 30-to-50 percent of new HIV infections are thought to be passed on by people in the early stage of infection, so the need to catch new=2 0cases early in order to prevent the spread of HIV is a top priority.
The new testing guidelines were published by the British HIV Association, British Infection Society, and the British Association of Sexual Health and HIV.

  In other news, John Burnside, longtime partner of the late LGBT rights pioneer Harry Hay, and an activist in his own right, died on September 14th at his home in San Francisco.  He was 91.  Hay died in 2002 at the age of 90. Longtime friend Joey Cain told the “Los Angeles Times” that Burnside was in declining health, and had recently been diagnosed with spongioblastoma brain cancer.
In his early career, Burnside’s interest in optical engineering led him to invent the teleidoscope, a variation on the kaleidoscope that transforms what the viewer sees into a colorful design without the use of colored glass chips.  His California Kaleidoscopes became a successful design and manufacturing company in Los Angeles.  He later created the symetricon, a large kaleidoscopic device that projects patterns, which was used in several Hollywood films.
But it is for his relationship with Harry Hay that LGBT people will best remember Burnside.  Hay led a handful of men who formed the Mattachine Society, a pioneering gay rights organization in Los Angeles, in the 1950s.  Burnside met Hay in 1963, and, after what was called a whirlwind romance, they moved in together, and remained a couple for 39 years.

  Hay and Burnside were a highly=2 0visible activist couple in Los Angeles throughout the 1960s.  They founded the Southern California Council on Religion and the Homophile in 1965, and a year later took part in one of the country’s first gay rights demonstrations � a 15-car motorcade through downtown Los Angeles to protest the ban on gay men serving in the military � but they were aalso active in the anti-war movement.
In 1979, frustrated by what they saw as the queer rights movement's drift toward mainstream assimilation, the couple helped organize the first Spiritual Gathering of Radical Faeries at an ashram near Tucson, Arizona.  Since that first event, which drew about 200 men, the faerie movement has held dozens of gatherings around the world.  "The people who have come to the gatherings came looking to find themselves," Burnside once said, "but they found each other, too."
The couple relocated to San Francisco after Hay’s health declined.  A group of Radical Faeries, dubbed the Circle of Loving Companions, cared for the two men during their final years.
Mark Thompson, a well-known lesbigay historian and longtime friend of Burnside's, told the “Times” that Hay and Burnside "were totally committed to peace-and-justice issues on a wide spectrum of social concerns, including Native American rights, women's and labor issues, fair employment and housing � they were just good social activists."
Plans for a memorial service in San Francisco for John Burnside are pending.

  And fi nally, U.S. televangelist Pat Robertson and other holier-than-thou homophobes often warn that God uses bad weather to punish those who accept gays and lesbians.  So he’ll have a hard time explaining why one of the few businesses left standing in the wake of Hurricane Ike, which devastated Galveston, Texas last week, was Robert’s Lafitte � a gay bar..
It’s become a major gathering spot now in the city of 60,000. Some 20,000 people are thought to still be on the island, and emergency workers are on the scene.  Food and water remain scarce, and residents have been told that it could be months before full power is restored and the city is up and running again.  People have been dropping off food and other necessities at the bar for anyone who needs them.
Brian DeLeon, a grateful self-identified heterosexual, told the “Reuters” news service that he’d never thought of entering the bar before, but that “These are the people who take you up out of the water and make life livable.  Once I get back to work, I’m coming back here.”
The bar’s owner, known locally as “Big Mouth Robert,” told “Reuters” that the building was flooded with about 3 feet of brackish water, but after mopping up, the bar reopened the next day.  They’re even offering a drag show, and � in an appaarent salute to the woman who was also notoriously battered by another Ike, her husband at the time � a=2 0Tina Turner sing-along.  “Big Mouth Robert” summed it up nicely:  “We’re survivors,” he said.




Find phone numbers fast with the New AOL Yellow Pages!