Monday Morning Perk-Up [I solved world hunger]

"Gay Affluence" Myth - BUSTED

The End of "Gay Affluence:" LGB People More Likely to be Poor

via The Bilerico Project, by Dr. Gary J. Gates (left)

The notion that gay people are disproportionately wealthy represents one of the most common and pernicious myths surrounding the LGBT community. The stereotype is so widespread that it even found its way into US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's dissent in the 1996 Romer v. Evans case that overturned an anti-gay initiative in Colorado.

A new study on gay poverty [pdf] that I co-authored with colleagues from the University of Massachusetts (Amherst and Boston) and the Williams Institute (UCLA), released today in a Capitol Hill briefing, shows just how wrong Justice Scalia was. It turns out that lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals (LGB) are actually more likely than heterosexuals to be living in poverty. Further, one in five children being raised by same-sex couples in the United States lives in poverty, giving further insight into the legal and economics difficulties LGB parents face.

Read the rest.

Via POZ - Sex Tourism and HIV

by Tony Valenzuela on Poz.com

I don’t consider it paying for sex. It’s giving them what I call a ‘money donation,’” says Drey, an American moderator of popular website gaytravelbrazil.com, referring to Brazil’s “rent boy saunas”—a combination of bathhouse and entertainment complex where tourists and locals go to socialize and hire sex workers. “It’s kind of like a gentlemen’s club,” explains Drey, who speaks Portuguese and travels to Rio several times a year for business—and pleasure. “It’s not about going down and getting discounted sex,” he says in earnest. “It’s really about getting to know the people, their lifestyle, their culture. [I] treat them with respect.”

Besides helping gay male tourists book vacations and teaching them the essentials of safely navigating Brazil, Drey’s site also hosts online forums where gay men discuss and share photos of the country’s most popular sex escorts. “Some of the guys have really tough lives,” Drey says. “Some guys take a bus for an hour from the poor sections outside Rio, just to come in to make a little bit of extra money.” Drey claims much of the sex is safe and that the saunas’ management provide condoms and lube to customers who hire the men by the hour. “I absolutely adhere to condom use,” Drey says. “I don’t really have an option. That’s the only way that [the sauna boys] will do it.” He pauses then adds: “The reason they’re very careful is that a lot of them have wives and girlfriends. They don’t want to bring anything home.”

To some people, Drey’s rosy depiction of respectful attitudes and safe-sex practices may sound as realistic as a travel agent’s sales pitch. But whether its reality is darker than its depiction, sex tourism—defined as travel with the intention of hiring sex workers—is a booming industry especially popular in the warm, tropical nations that also suffer higher prevalence rates of HIV and rampant poverty. The industry is full of tales of pleasure and danger; it juxtaposes the levity of vacationers with the gravity of the existence of those who serve them. The sunny side of sex tourism is clouded over by the risks both parties take if the sex is not safe.

Sex tourism encompasses a complex variety of activities and behaviors that facilitate—for a price—social and sexual interaction between people. Around the world, the names for those looking to get paid for sex are as varied as the locations in which they work; in Brazil, they are “sauna boys”; in Jamaica, “beach boys”; and in the Dominican Republic, “bugarrones” or “sanky pankies.”

Read the rest.

Poor and Gay Aren't Mutually Exclusive Categories

By Diana Scholl

Housing Works

When it comes to addressing HIV and AIDS among gay men, there are a host of policy positions that need to be changed to create equality for gay men and men who have sex with men of all races . For example, we need to have comprehensive sexual health and awareness education which includes HIV prevention and treatment education both for students and those not currently in school HIV prevention education that teaches about safer sex for everyone — gay, straight and everything in-between-- in an open and accurate way. And there’s no way for us to have an effective National AIDS Strategy without acknowledging that all levels of government must do all that they can to end discrimination on the basis of who we have sex with.

But it’s impossible to demand that government address HIV among gay men without also demanding a critical examination of race and poverty.

A few not-so-fun facts:

• A black gay man is much more likely to get infected with HIV than a white gay man even if they’re both engaged in the same amount of “risky behavior”

• Black and Latino gay men are more likely to be diagnosed with AIDS and HIV concurrently and less likely to receive lifesaving antiretrovirals and continuing care than his white counterpart.

• 25 percent of gay teenagers are kicked out of their homes and become homeless, making them more likely to become infected with HIV than their non-homeless counterparts.

As Charles King said in a speech on World AIDS Day last year, “The reality is that AIDS is no longer so much a gay disease in the United States as it is a disease of race and poverty. And that brings to light a dirty secret about the organized and politically engaged gay community - that we are overwhelmingly white and reasonably well-off, and our movement is almost exclusively about rights for ourselves and people like us.”

To address both the needs of gay men and of everyone, we need targeted case management and housing to address as both prevention and health care measures. We need to implement targeted campaigns for prevention and getting people into care. We need the government to sponsor media campaigns that can’t be ignored. And of course, we need universal health care so no one falls through the cracks.

But above all, we must combat stigma and discrimination to get at the root of those problems that the government alone cannot solve.

The CDC’s rise in reported infections shows that 45 percent of new infections were among blacks, and 53 percent were among men who have sex with men (MSM). And too often we talk about AIDS as a disease affecting “black people” and “gay people” as though these are always mutually exclusive categories. But 63 percent of new infections among blacks occurred among men who have sex with men, most of them young men.

It’s impossible to talk about HIV and AIDS without talking about the intersection of race, gender, poverty and a litany of other issues, and it is important that the AIDS community and the gay community address these issues head on.

[Click here to read previous input into the 2009 Gay Men's Health Agenda. Please feel free to comment there - or you could send in a full post of your own here. We will be happy to publish it! The feedback we receive will be featured in the closing plenary of the upcoming National Gay Men's Health Summit and will be a means of moving the community forward in the new year around issues that are important to all of us.]