Gay news that is heterosexual friendly.

Senate Passes the Lantos/Hyde Act
In an 80-16 vote, the Senate today approved the Lantos/Hyde U.S. Global Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Reauthorization Act (S 2731) which reauthorizes the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and along with it, an amendment secured by Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Gordon Smith (R-OR) that lifts a ban on travel and immigration to the U.S. by those who are HIV-positive. Under the current plan, HIV-positive people can be considered “inadmissible.” Permanent entry and short term visits can be denied by border agents under this policy. The bill now goes to conference committee before heading on to the President.

California Supreme Court Keeps Anti-Gay Marriage Initiative on Ballot
A voter initiative to reinstate a ban on same-sex marriage will remain on the November ballot, the California Supreme Court decided unanimously Wednesday. The court issued a brief order rejecting arguments that the initiative, Proposition 8, was an illegal constitutional revision and that voters had been misled when they signed petitions to put it on the ballot. The decision, reached in closed session during the court’s weekly conference, cleared the way for what some observers expect to be a close vote on the marriage measure. More from the Los Angeles Times.

Genetic Trait in Blacks Makes Them More Susceptible to HIV
New research suggests that people of African descent are much more likely to have a genetic trait that makes them more susceptible to infection with the HIV virus. Scientists estimate that the trait — which also provides protection against a form of malaria — might account for 11 percent of the HIV cases in Africa, the continent hardest hit by the AIDS epidemic. Details in the Washington Post.

South Carolina Is So Gay

No wonder Obama took Donnie McClurkin campaigning in South Carolina. The Palmetto state is a gay heaven. Not exactly.

Some residents of South Carolina are up in arms over an international advertising campaign that touts the state as a gay-friendly destination.

Tourism posters proclaiming “South Carolina is so gay” were plastered all over London last week to coincide with London’s Gay Pride Week, but state tourism officials have now disavowed the campaign and insisted that they knew nothing about it.

An unidentified ‘low-level’ state employee reportedly responsible for greenlighting the posters has since resigned his position.

According to state officials, the employee was unauthorized to approve the campaign.

Despite protests to the contrary by South Carolina state representatives, however, there is evidence that there were some well placed individuals in the state’s tourism department who were aware of the campaign before last week.

Gay Commercials
Gay-themed commercials from Dolce Gabanna, Virgin Atlantic, Levi’s, MTV, Israel Board of Tourism, TEN Male Pheromone Frangrance, ML Telecommunications, Guinness Stout, Gay Adoption, Fernet Cinzano and Israeli Gay Youth TV. We’re so marketable. The Vigrin Atlantic is a classic but the Fernet Cinzano ad from Argentina is clever. The MTV ad is painfully sweet while the Guinness ad will drive me to me have a Guinness this week, any ad that portrays gay men in long-term loving relationships is memorable. Kudos to Guinness. The TEN Male Pheromone, while sexy hot, is more typical.

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Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog. The views expressed in this post are mine only.

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these posts on reports - most of the time by IRIN - on the deplorable conditions under which women and girls live in many parts of the world. However, the articles have been piling up in my Newsreader, so, it’s time for one. So here we go:

First stop, Liberia with the always painful topic of fistula.

“Of 600 rape victims recently interviewed by a Liberian non-governmental organisation, 90 percent of the women were found to be suffering from fistulas – a vaginal tear which results in loss of bladder control and social stigmatisation.

Aid workers say the statistic, provided by the Women of Liberia Peace Network (WOLPNET) from surveys conducted in April 2008, shows the horrifying prevalence of rape and of a phenomenon which Liberian medical officials say they are ill-equipped to respond to.”

There are two types of fistulas that are prevalent in parts of Africa:

• Obstetric fistula, which is a vaginal tear resulting from prolonged obstructed labor. This form of fistulas is responsible for the appalling numbers of maternal death (deaths while in labor) in this area because of the increased risk of vaginal bleeding right after childbirth. And since a lot of women give birth at home, attended by a midwife, if they are lucky, they just bleed to death. Liberia has a particularly high rate of such deaths and this rate has been going up since the end of the war in 2003 as a result of the poor state of the health care system. With only 300 midwives when the country needs around 1,400, it is not surprising:

Maternal mortality has gone up by about 71 percent with 994 women dying for every 100,000 who give birth, compared to 580 out of every 100,000 women in the previous survey.”

The situation is so bad that the Liberian government has put in place different programs to recruit health workers and re-train the existing ones to include more obstetrics and gynecology in their skills as well as get health workers and midwives to emphasize family planning with their patients.

• The other type of fistula is “traumatic gynaecologic fistula that is a vaginal injury resulting from violent sexual assault or when objects are forcibly inserted into the vagina.” (Just typing that makes my skin crawl)

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Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

We all hate Big Pharma, don’t we? We hold pharmaceutical corporations responsible for a lot of ills: the high cost of medications, which drives up the cost of health care, their political influence and their capacity to block meaningful health care reform in the US.

We also blame them for the lack of affordable medications in the countries of the Global South, their resistance to the production of generic medications, through the enforcement of patents, from outside of the Western world. Heck, we even suspect them to use people in the Global South as guinea pigs while developing medications for “interesting” medical conditions such as “restless leg syndrome” in our countries.

We hate them and they know it. As a result, the largest pharmaceutical companies have developed mechanisms to respond concretely to pressures to be more responsive to concerns regarding access to health care and medications in the poorest countries, beyond mere charity. At least, that’s what they tell us. Can we trust them?

We don’t have to because there is a group doing the checking for us: Access to Medicine is a Dutch NGO that developed an index that measures how strongly pharmaceutical companies make an effort to provide access to health care in poor countries. The index has 8 criteria with sub-categories, each weighted differently, by importance:

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Gay news from around the world that’s heterosexual-friendly.

HIV+ Texas Man Sentenced to 35 Years for Spitting
An HIV positive Texas man was sentenced to 35 years in prison for allegedly spitting in the face of a police officer during an arrest for public intoxication. Willie Campbell, a 42 year old resident of Dallas was convicted of ‘assault with a deadly weapon’ for spitting on an arresting officer after being placed in the squad car. HIV is not spread through saliva- a fact which has been known since the early days of the epidemic. The Texas court system is using Mr. Campbell’s HIV status as a weapon against him- and by extension all people living with HIV.

San Francisco Values an Issue In Missouri Congressional Race
This idiotic ad from GOP congressman Sam Graves, whose seat is being challenged by former Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes, is a lowbrow homophobic attempt to smear Barnes by calling her out on her “San Francisco Values”. Does he honestly think we go around dressed like the Village People sipping white wine doing the hustle on cable cars? Geez louise, buy that man a clue.

Portland, Oregon Elects a Gay Mayor
Sam Adams, an openly gay man whose family lived on “food stamps and public housing” as he grew up, has been elected Portland, Oregon’s mayor. As such, he’ll be the first openly gay mayor of a top-40 U.S. city.

Maltese Court: Describing a Person as Homosexual is not Defamatory
The Court of Magistrates in a judgment declared that describing a person as homosexual was not defamatory in today’s society. Magistrate Michael Mallia ruled that a person’s sexual orientation in the current society was not of social interest bar that of assuring that no discrimination is made. The fact that homosexuality was a criminal offence until 1973, said the magistrate, does not reflect the situation in the 21st century. The magistrate’s ruling came after three local papers described a homicide victim as a homosexual and his brother sued them for defaming the memory of his brother. The court sympathised with the man, however, it deemed that the report was correctly based on the fact that the police held the victim’s sexual orientation as central to its investigation. The murder is still unsolved.

Tomorrow is Dining Out for Life in San Francisco. Dining Out For Life is an annual fundraising event where San Francisco restaurants donate a portion of proceeds to San Francisco area AIDS agencies. If you live in the Bay Area, you can check participating restaurants at Dining Out for Life.

I’ll be dining with friends at Sumi on 18th and Collingwood. Hope to see you there!

The Iranian News Agency Fars is reporting that a group of Iranian scientists have discovered an “herbal cure” for HIV/AIDS after seven long years of arduous work. I am sure it was the work of Allah. Iran risks being put in the category of the former Soviet Union whose propaganda department claimed the Russian inventors had invented the automobile during the reign of Catherine the Great.

The news release is here: Iran Introduces AIDS Cure.

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