Last week I was invited to attend the Latino Commission on AIDS' Reunion Latina in Albany, NY. This annual training institute brings together AIDS service providers, activists, and people living with HIV/AIDS mainly from New York state but also other communities.

What an amazing experience!

I arrived after Teatro El Puente's performance during the opening.  While I was sad to miss the performance, it was incredible to walk into a room of 200 of the most diverse group of Latinos I've ever seen, nearly all in tears, giving thanks to the performers for sharing stories they all knew too well.  Teatro El Puente is a bilingual HIV/AIDS educational theater troupe by young people and for young people. I saw what everyone was talking about when they performed at the Pachanga that night.  This piece was about two young men who fell in love and soon learned they were a HIV-discordant couple.  Choosing to stay together, the audience saw a story about the power of love.  And yes, I think most of us teared up...again.

During the conference, I attended workshops on community mobilization, educating young people, outreach to Latino MSM, and legal issues facing PLWHA (people living with HIV or AIDS).  What made this conference different from many others I've attended was seeing peoples' lives change during the workshops.  During the community mobilization workshop, staff from an ASO were literally planning how to reach out to religious institutions with their newfound knowledge.  During the workshop on legal issues, presented by an attorney, PLWHA were learning how to be better advocates for themselves when it comes to supplementary income and housing assistance.

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Just a few days ago, it came to my attention that South Carolina's House Ways and Means Committee approved a measure that would make cuts to HIV/AIDS funding for South Carolina. Explicitly, the measure would completely remove funds for South Carolina's AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), which is a program that provides  low-income, uninsured, or underinsured people living with HIV/AIDS access to antiretroviral drugs.

To cut ADAP is problematic on so many levels, but i'll just cover a few from my perspective.

1. The removal of funds for ADAP is very clearly saying to me LET THE POOR PEOPLE LIVING WITH HIV/AIDS DIE! I wish I was being melodramatic, but i'm really not. We know that the immune system of a person living with HIV/AIDS not being treated with antiretroviral therapy decreases more rapidly than an a person living with HIV/AIDS who is receiving antiretroviral therapy . The reality is that the HIV virus will overwhelm the immune system, lower the T-cell count, and will increases a persons susceptibility to opportunistic infections-- which will ultimately lead to death.

2. With South Carolina ranking 8th in the nation for AIDS rates, you would think that saving people's lives would be the primary mission of the House Ways and Means committee in SC and not saving a few dollars. What this cut says to me is that there are people in powerful positions, who set policy that affect millions, saying that certain populations of people are expendable. Based on the numbers, let's see who are expendable. According to the South Carolina Health Department:

• More than eight out of 10 S.C. women with HIV are African-American
• African-American women have a HIV/AIDS case rate 12 times greater than that of white women in South Carolina.
• In 2007, African-American women comprised 30 percent of persons who died from AIDS in S.C.
• Men who have sex with men (53 percent) represent the largest
  proportion of recent infections, followed by men who have sex with women (MSW) and
  women who have sex with men (WSM) (39 percent). Seventy-eight people (eight
  percent of total) were infected through injecting drug use (IDU).

So, let me get this right. Black/African-Americans, gay and lesbians, and injection drug users. Got it. No surprise there. This country has a history of strategically propagating attitudes and polices that target and attempt to cripple those deemed socially undesirable or those who are unwilling to continue to pick cotton.

All in all, to cut ADAP is a crime against humanity. It is gross negligence on the part of those representatives who passed the measure and they should be held accountable for attempting to deprive people of life saving treatments. To even consider this measure is a blatant disregard of this country's history of exploitation and discrimination of POC, LGBT people, and Women and Children. We can pretend that racism, sexism, and homophobia don't exist, but let me assure that a bill that would cut ADAP is operating at the intersection of all those issues and more. Structural violence is real! We must not allow this to happen! This tomfoolery needs to end today.

by Eric Jost

Right in the middle of women’s history month, a woman made film history! At the 82nd Academy Awards, Kathryn Bigelow won Best Director for her film, The Hurt Locker. She was only the fourth woman to be nominated for the award. The night was also marked by another historic moment when Geoffrey Fletch became the first Black man to win Best Adapted Screenplay for Precious.

The fact that neither of these wins occurred before 2010 is astounding and the Academy should be embarrassed.

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The recent events in Kenya surrounding the parliamentary committee's completion of deliberations on a draft constitution -- which defined life as beginning at conception and omitting language that would support everyone's right to reproductive services -- is a major setback for progressive language surrounding the topic of abortions for this country. These actions fail to recognize the value of women and also fail to acknowledge the rights of women in this country while giving rights and protecting the unborn.

I strongly believe that a woman should be able to control her body and have the right to make decisions regarding her personal reproductive health for her own life as well as family. As women practice their right to choose, others must learn to trust and honor their decisions about their bodies and lives. Personal reproductive decisions should be made at the free will of the woman, not governed.

Women in Kenya face great challenges as abortion is permitted only to save the life of the mother. Many are forced to resort to unsafe methods of terminating their pregnancies. Creating hurdles and restrictions around abortion services simply leads to the rise of unsafe abortion practices and consequently a rise in maternal deaths. According to the Kenya Obstetric and Gynecological Society and Kenya Medical Association, 800 unsafe abortions are performed every day and 2,600 women die from unsafe abortions in Kenya each year, representing 30 to 40 percent of Kenya's total maternal deaths.

I hope that other countries around the world will begin to acknowledge the importance of expanding abortion rights as the right to an abortion should be rendered a human right!

Editor's Note: The ACLU just filed a lawsuit against the schoo on this student's behalf.

So I was looking at Yahoo's daily featured articles as I normally do when I'm at work and I came across an article called, "Miss. school prom off after lesbian's date request." The first thing that I thought to myself was, are you serious? It turns out an entire Mississippi school district will not have a prom in any of their schools simply because a lesbian student wanted to dress in a tuxedo and bring her girlfriend to prom. Of course, the school board did not admit that this was the reason why they decided to cancel the prom. I am guessing that the school board doesn't what to be viewed as discriminating against people whose sexual orientation is anything other than heterosexual, so they decide to not only cancel the prom at the particular school the female student attends but all of the proms in the district. Perhaps, the school board is cancelling the prom at all of the schools as a punishment and warning for any students who ever think of bringing a date of the opposite sex. But, according to the author, the school district actually has a policy that requires senior prom dates to be of the opposite sex. What upsets me is how Mississippi tries to uphold this image of old America in their state, where gays aren't accepted and segregation is o.k., and instead of dealing with the issues and solving them the school board gets rid of whatever is causing the "problem."

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Note: This is the first installment of a two-part post examining the recent firestorm over a new Utah law that allows women to be prosecuted for criminal homicide if they have or seek an illegal abortion. This post looks at the events of the past week as activists forced changes to the proposed law, and the national implications of a slightly-modified version has been signed into law. Next time, we take a look at the case that led the Utah legislature to remove criminal immunity for women seeking abortions – and imagine what a sane and effective legislative response might have looked like.

On Monday, Utah Governor Gary Herbert signed H.B. 462 into law, amending the state’s criminal code to classify illegal abortions as criminal homicide. Utah is the first and only state to pass legislation to criminally prosecute women who seek or have illegal abortions.

It is important to note that this law was nearly even worse – and it would have been if not for the efforts of thousands of activists around the country. The Utah legislature passed a previous version of the bill, then H.B. 12, by overwhelming margins that included language defining some miscarriages as illegal abortions. Specifically, any miscarriages that occurred after “intentional, knowing, or reckless” behavior on the part of a woman would be open to prosecution as criminal homicide.

Beyond the scope of an already abhorrent bill, the standard of “reckless” behavior would have been open to wide interpretation by overzealous prosecutors. Experts at the ACLU of Utah expressed concern that this would leave women vulnerable to criminal prosecution in a wide variety of all-to-plausible circumstances: if they failed to leave abusive relationship and suffered a miscarriage, if injection drug users became pregnant and miscarried, or if a miscarriage resulted after something as simple as a car accident but the woman wasn’t wearing a seat belt.

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Editor's Note: This post is by Missy Bird, Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Action Council. 

For over two years, advocates concerned about the reproductive health care of Utah’s teens have campaigned for a reform to our current sex education curriculum in Utah. Planned Parenthood Action Council (PPAC) ran a statewide campaign, the Prevention Now Campaign, whose staff and volunteers worked tirelessly to gather more than 10,000 petition signatures in support of this change. We held numerous town hall meetings, and garnered the endorsement of many policy makers and elected officials including the Utah State Attorney General.

Support of a change to our current curriculum is so widespread that the American Academy of Pediatrics-Utah Chapter, National Assoc. of Social Workers-Utah Chapter, Utah Nurses Association, Utah Public Health Association, March of Dimes, Association for Utah Community Health, Utah Sexual Violence Council, American Association of University Women-Utah Chapter, Utah Coalition Against Sexual Assault, and the YWCA Salt Lake City all signed on in favor of Senate Bill 54.

Unfortunately, the Utah legislature has not only been unresponsive but impertinent. In fact, at a legislative hearing in October 2009, sexually inappropriate and substantively inaccurate testimony was given at the request of the Senate Chair of the Health and Human Services Interim Committee in a direct attack against Planned Parenthood and sex education.

Despite all these efforts, there was a rallying cry on the part of parents, students, teachers and medical providers and an active groundswell continued into the 2010 legislative session.

When Utah’s legislative session began in January, the sex education bill was introduced by a Republican Senator, Stephen Urquhart (Dist. 29). When the bill came before the Senate Education Committee for review, Senator Urquhart asked the members of the Committee to substitute his bill. This substitute was the draft that everyone on all sides of the issue could live with and it was the result of months and months refinement and conversation.

Senator Urquhart’s request was met with dead silence for over 5 minutes. Not a single member of the seven-member Committee, not even the one Democrat in attendance, would make a motion to hear the Senator’s bill. This stonewall tactic was used even after the Committee Chair asked the packed room full of spectators how many were there to testify regarding the bill, and approximately sixty people raised their hands.

The legislature’s treatment of this issue clearly demonstrates their unwillingness to consider the facts or to hear from their constituents. It also blatantly represents an unwillingness to even have a discussion about a policy that involves thousands of young people and their future health and fertility.

To say we are disappointed is an understatement.

It is the hope of all the groups, advocates, and community members who have bee involved in driving this conversation to the forefront that when the Utah State Legislature has another opportunity to learn about this incredibly important issue that they will be willing to listen and will not impose such a deafening silence on such an important issue.

There’s about a million and one things that I want to do with my life at this point in time.

I can still feel myself buzzing from the success of the play that I helped to put on.  (More on that soon, promise!) I want to take that show and blow it up, make it bigger and better and do it again and again until I have reached out to so, so many more people.

I want to work with Rape Crisis Centers and find some way to educate men and women to the point where we all understand what rape is and how we can avoid it. (The only answer? Rapists need to stop raping.)

I want to be a sex therapist, I want to help women and men who struggle to accept their bodies and let themselves feel good.

I want to do family counseling, specifically I want to help families to accept their children, or siblings, or cousins, or partners who are different from them (maybe even queer, if you will, in some way.)

I want to work with eating disorder survivors, helping to broaden the definition of eating disorders to something that comfortable fits the experiences of everyone who suffers, and then find a way to end that suffering for them once and for all.

I want to work for a suicide prevention hotline.

I want to write novels for young teen girls that encourage them to be smart and bold and to love themselves just as they are while they never, never stop reaching for their impossible dreams.

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This weekend, activists and allies from all over the Midwest will meet at Columbia College for the Equality Across America: Unite + Fight Midwest Conference. Equality Across America is the organization formed after the passage of Prop 8 in California  that organized the National Equality March last October in D.C.

I am on the host committee for the conference and will be leading a workshop discussion called “Beyond the Ballot Box: How to Win Votes Before You Have To.” My idea for it was inspired by the Question One campaign in Maine last fall. After learning about Question 1 at the Netroots Nation conference in August, I covered the campaign extensively here on Amplify, and while at the time I wasn’t in the position to donate to the campaign financially, I gave a few hours of my time to calling Maine voters urging them to vote No on One and to vote early. Unfortunately, we didn’t win. It was a hard loss to take, but situations like that, instead of getting us down, must inspire us to fight even harder next time. So that’s why I wanted to do a workshop for Unite + Fight.

It has been a great experience being on the host committee for this conference. Even though I haven’t been the most active member, I love knowing that when change happens, it will be in part because of the incredible dedication of these people I’m working with and those that their efforts bring together.

I will update everyone next week with how the conference went. I know we have a few Chicago-area readers/writers here, so I hope to be able to meet you. I am very excited about this and the opportunity that we have to build a strong Midwest network for full federal LGBTQ equality.

~ Samantha

According to Adfreak, "McCann Erickson is rolling out a new spot for Dentyne that compares gum with condoms."

Using the tagline "Practice safe breath," the commercial shows a trio of men in need of protection from halitosis, lest it inhibit freaky time. One is about to get into it was a comely blonde in the backseat, another is nervously buying protection in a drugstore, and a third wakes his roommate late at night because he's got a guest.