It hit me one morning this fall as I woke up: I’ve turned 70.
As I’ve been celebrating this milestone, I’ve marveled at the changes that have occurred for our LGBTQ community during my lifetime.
Marriage equality, Pete Buttigieg (or any LGBTQ person) running for president and/or the fab queer rom-com “Bros” would have been unimaginable when I began coming out 50 years ago.
Then, just three years after the Stonewall uprising, I and many other LGBTQ folk felt far more shame than pride about our queerness.
Most of us in that era wouldn’t have dreamed that, decades later, not only LGBTQ teens, but queer people our age would have marched, out and proud, in Pride parades. We’d never have thought that in the 21st century any of us would ever proudly say, shout or chant “we’re queer!”
Nothing is more emblematic to me of the progress made in LGBTQ rights from Stonewall to today than the evolution of the word “queer” from a hateful epithet to an expression of pride.
Today, the term “queer” can be found everywhere from news outlets (including NPR, the Blade, the New York Times and the Washington Post) to museum exhibits such as “Queering the Crip, Cripping the Queer” at the Schwules Museum Berlin through the end of January and “Queer Creativity Through the Ages: Artwork from the Center on Colfax Open Art Studio” at the Denver Art Museum through Dec. 31.
I can’t think of any of my under 60 friends, hetero or LGBTQ who don’t use the word “queer.” Sometimes they’re proudly writing it on Pride parade signs. Often, they use it as a neutral adjective. The way you’d say “they’re from Boston” or “he’s about six-feet tall.”
Many of my over-60 pals are beginning to use the word “queer.” If they’re not comfortable using it about themselves, they’re increasingly comfortable with others using it. My 70-something hetero cousins, who are LGBTQ allies, no longer feel I’m putting myself down when I say I’m queer.
Given that “queer” is so often used as an affirmation of identity or neutral descriptor, I was surprised when New York Times columnist Pamela Paul recently lamented the popularity of the “q-word.”
I’m an avid reader of Paul’s column. Paul, a former editor of the New York Times Book Review, is, like many writers, obsessed about language. She’s an astute observer of the culture and of how we use words.
Yet, I can’t help but wonder what Paul was thinking. “Language is always changing – but it shouldn’t become inflexible,” she wrote, “especially when new terminologies, in the name of inclusion, sometimes wind up making others feel excluded.”
Paul, who is hetero, worried that the widespread use of “queer” excludes LGBTQ people who don’t identify as queer. She was upset that so many Gen-Zers identify as queer, and annoyed that “gays and lesbians can feel crowded out” under the LGBTQ umbrella.
Paul chided new Human Rights Campaign president Kelley Robinson for using the word “queer,” and not saying the words “gay,” “lesbian” or “bisexual” in a video where she introduced herself.
People at HRC do say “gay,” “lesbian” “bisexual” “transgender” and “nonbinary,” Robinson wrote in response to Paul’s column in a letter to the Times.
“I identify as a Black queer woman,” Robinson wrote, “and when I say ‘queer,’ it’s to be as inclusive as possible, to re-center those at the margins, to embrace our differences and to embrace our power, too.”
Robinson nailed what attracts so many of us to the word “queer.”
Of course, many LGBTQ boomers and Gen-Xers vividly recall when “queer” was a homophobic slur.
A hetero friend remembers when she was seven riding on a school bus. “I was mad at a kid,” she told me, “I wanted to call him something mean. So I said he was ‘queer.’”
“My sister told me not to say that again,” my pal added, “She said it was too horrible to tell me what it meant.”
But in recent decades (starting with AIDS activists), we’ve reclaimed the word “queer.” We’ve taken away its sting: transformed it from a hate-mongering, othering slur to a source of power. It’s hard to think of a more inclusive word than queer. It includes and values all LGBTQ folk. In the wake of the Colorado Springs LGBTQ club shooting, it’s more important than ever to be proudly queer.
Kathi Wolfe, a writer and a poet, is a regular contributor to the Blade.
Heartstopper star Kit Connor was forced to come out as bisexual following a barrage of queerbaiting allegations from supposed fans of the show. Connor, who plays the bisexual character Nick Nelson in the Netflix series, came out on Twitter after being harassed on social media for not publicly disclosing his sexual orientation. “Back for a minute. I’m bi,” Connor tweeted on October 31. “Congrats for forcing an 18-year-old to out himself. I think some of you missed the point of the show. Bye.”
For months, many fans had been speculating about the actor’s sexual orientation since Heartstopper first dropped in April, accusing him of being intentionally vague about his identity to queerbait. Before he came out, Connor had said he didn’t feel the need to label his sexuality right away, saying that it made him feel uncomfortable that so many people were trying to pressure him and his co-star, Joe Locke, both of whom are teenagers, into publicly coming out “when maybe we’re not ready.” After being spotted holding hands with actress Maia Reficco in September, however, this scrutiny only intensified.
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Using the hashtag #kitconnorgoawayfromheartstopper, these so-called fans jumped to conclusions. They took to Twitter to berate him for supposedly ruining the show, accusing him of apparently profiting off of LGBTQ people by playing a queer character despite appearing to be straight. This prompted Connor to abandon the platform for nearly a month before ultimately feeling forced to reactivate his account and come out as bi.
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Not only does this type of harassment completely miss the whole point of the series, which is that everyone deserves to be able to come out on their own terms, but it also demonstrates just how toxic and misguided the internet’s obsession with queerbaiting is and just how out of control the discourse around queerbaiting has become.
Queerbaiting is not a term that is even applicable to real people. Essentially, queerbaiting is a marketing device that appeals to a queer audience by hinting that certain characters in books, movies, or TV shows might be queer without anything ever coming of it. It is “the practice of implying non-heterosexual relationships or attraction (in a TV show, for example) to engage or attract an LGBTQ audience or otherwise generate interest without ever actually depicting such relationships or sexual interactions.”
One of the most blatant examples of queerbaiting occurs in the police procedural Rizzoli & Isles, in which the show’s two main characters, Jane Rizzoli and Maura Isles, have a pretty sapphic chemistry despite only being portrayed as friends. The actors and creators of the show even admitted to purposefully playing up the lesbian subtext between the two to attract a more queer audience. Another glaring example of queerbaiting occurs in the BBC series Sherlock, in which Sherlock Holmes and John Watson’s romantically ambiguous relationship inspired many viewers to write their own explicitly gay fanfic to fill in the gaps the show failed to address.
In more recent years, however, some have chosen to co-opt the term and use it to pressure celebrities and actors to publicly reveal their sexual identities for either embracing certain aesthetics and behaviors associated with queerness or for simply refusing to label themselves. Harry Styles has often been at the forefront of this discussion due to his fashion choices and penchant for playing coy whenever the topic of his sexuality comes up.
Accusations of queerbaiting have also sparked an ongoing debate about whether or not straight actors should be allowed to play queer roles, which has proved to be a rather difficult conversation to maneuver, considering such a hard and fast rule would force closeted actors to either come out prematurely or miss out on an opportunity to play a character they can relate to without feeling pressure to publicly declare their sexual orientation.
While queerbaiting has always been an accusatory term, it is intended to call out how characters are portrayed in media, not to force people to out themselves because the internet feels entitled to know whether or not someone is queer. As a result, there is no such thing as queerbaiting in real life — and for a good reason. Real people deserve to be able to decide when, where, and how they come out without being accused of queerbaiting if they don’t do it fast enough. Coming to terms with one’s sexual orientation can take some time, especially for young people, like Connor, and pressuring someone to come out before they’re ready is incredibly harmful and regressive. It’s also pretty biphobic, in Connor’s case, at least. Last time I checked, bi guys can date girls and still be queer.
No one should feel forced to come out or perform their queerness for others to be valid. Coming out should be a liberating and empowering experience. It should not be used to bludgeon people into proving they’re not straight. The internet’s frenzied obsession with verifying people’s queerness through unfounded accusations of queerbaiting is more than just a desire for LGBTQ visibility and representation. It’s a performatively righteous and moralistic witchhunt now being used to gatekeep queerness and actively harm people who are still figuring things out.
As a community and a society, our first instinct should be to protect people who aren’t out yet, not to pressure them into outing themselves before they’re ready. Heartstopper has shown viewers that coming out is a personal journey everyone deserves to experience on their terms and in their own time. Connor should have been afforded that same opportunity, as should we all.
As many in the LGBTQ community in Washington, D.C. discovered recently, our city will now host WorldPride in 2025. Many of the initial reactions I saw from those in my immediate network were a mix of excitement and skepticism – does D.C. have the “gay infrastructure” to support hosting a global Pride event? According to InterPride, the U.S.-based non-profit organization that owns the licensing rights for WorldPride, the answer is yes. However, what seemed to get lost in the conversation was why D.C. was newly awarded as the host for this event after publicly losing its bid to host WorldPride back in 2021 to Taiwan.
In August of this year, the WorldPride 2025 Taiwan Preparation Committee announced that it was withdrawing from hosting the global celebration after a dispute with InterPride over the name of the event. The host committee insisted on calling it “WorldPride Taiwan 2025” while InterPride insisted that the event be called “WorldPride Kaohsiung” in tradition with using the name of the host city and not that of the host country. The committee did not accept this name change and Taiwan will no longer host the event, as revealed in an announcement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Taiwan.
There is much he-said-she-said in competing press releases and subsequent interviews of how InterPride and the committee arrived at this point. It is certain that not all of the behind-the-scenes negotiations are fully available to the public and it appears that the fallout ultimately comes down to the disagreement over the name of the event.
InterPride’s decision that this event would no longer take place in Taiwan is ultimately harmful for the LGBTQ community in Taiwan and East Asia as a whole. InterPride is squarely to blame and fails to stand up for the rights of our community by failing to engage in the public demonstration of Pride that has made the LGBTQ rights movement successful over the better part of the last century.
InterPride’s decision to dictate the name of the event shows a Western-minded lack of regard for the local and regional politics of East Asia and continues the imperialist trend of dictating terms to the Global South. By awarding this event, InterPride should have allowed the committee to choose its own name for the event. Mind you, the name that they initially bid and submitted all of the paperwork with throughout the bidding process and ultimately published for the announcement of the award was “WorldPride 2025 Taiwan.”
InterPride co-president Linda DeMarco has insisted that the reason for the name change was not motivated by geo-political tensions. It is disheartening that InterPride tried to distance itself from politics when the movement they support has its foundational roots in politics. It also seems highly implausible that InterPride did not consider the geo-political tensions in which Taiwan is currently ensnared. InterPride should take a stance in supporting Taiwan and allowing them to choose the name for this global event. In shying away, InterPride is failing to align itself with the country with the best record of LGBTQ rights in East Asia.
Awarding Taiwan with the 2025 event was monumental and invaluable for raising the profile of LGBTQ rights in East Asia, which are tenuous and not widespread. InterPride distancing itself from this stance is a disservice to the LGBTQ community in Taiwan and East Asia as a whole. Dictating that the committee step down from using the name “Taiwan” disregards the complex history and identity of the Taiwanese people and the LGBTQ community there. InterPride’s failure to stand up for Taiwan by allowing them to use their chosen name for the event is symbolic of the Western imperialism mindset that is still pervasive in the LGBTQ community and Western-based international organizations. The committee has every right to make the event in their image. InterPride has taken away agency from the committee and the LGBTQ community in Taiwan from deciding the name of their own event in a way that is hard not to read as imperialist.
We can all agree that Pride is an inherently political event. When forced to take a stance on allowing the committee to use Taiwan in the name for the event, InterPride balked and claimed to not be political. It betrays the history of the LGBTQ movement to not take a political stance and instead disengage with the committee and Taiwan as a whole. To co-president Hadi Damien who is on record saying that traditionally the name of the event is based on the city that the event is held and not the country, it should be asked why InterPride feels they need to cling to this nonsensical and baseless tradition?
While the final preparations for WorldPride 2023 Sydney are underway, D.C. begins to prepare to host its event, and Amsterdam celebrates their announcement of hosting WorldPride in 2026, it is critical that we as a community examine where we sit in the broader context of the global LGBTQ movement. InterPride’s inflexibility and decision to move the event away from Taiwan should be a reminder that we have a duty to support our community both at home and abroad. In America we certainly have a very tough and long road ahead of us in terms of achieving full equality for our community. But that does not excuse us from not exercising our privilege in the global community from seeking to lift fellow community members around the world and support their fight for rights.
I hope that we as a community will keep this in mind and start holding organizations like InterPride accountable to the community at large. I call on InterPride to announce a WorldPride event in a city outside of the Global North. Until then, I will look forward to WorldPride in Washington, D.C. in 2025 and elevating our city to the global stage.
Parker Griffin is gay D.C.-based professional who has worked in international development and is an advocate for LGBTQ rights.
The world watched in horror this week as the proudly resilient LGBT community here coped with unthinkable tragedy.
Sadly, our community has a lot of experience with such things.
From the AIDS crisis in which we fought an indifferent government and hostile neighbors. To an untold number of previous attacks on our bars and clubs, including the 1973 firebombing of the UpStairs Lounge in New Orleans that killed 32 gay men. To enduring the playground taunts and everyday slurs that go along with being “different” in this country.
We were horrified, too, about what happened at Pulse, though not as shocked as our straight counterparts. They will never know what it’s like to walk through life with a permanent target on your back. To pause before each touch; to hesitate before exchanging a hug or kiss with a partner or spouse. To calculate before coming out at work. To endure the judgmental stares when checking in at a hotel or booking a restaurant reservation on Valentine’s Day. To walk around the block, scanning the scene before mustering the nerve to walk into a gay bar. To be insulted, mocked, beaten up just for loving someone of the same sex. We’ve all been there.
So much has been written in recent years about this “post-gay” world in which we supposedly live. A world in which there’s no need for LGBT-identified spaces like bars, clubs, coffee shops, bookstores and, yes, newspapers, because we’re “integrated” and “accepted” now.
What happened in Orlando is a heartbreaking reminder that there’s no such thing as “post-gay,” and that our spaces are sacred. Where outsiders see only a bar or club, we see a community center or the place where we formed our closest friendships or met our significant others. Our bars and clubs have played a heroic role in supporting the community, serving as gathering places in times of triumph and tragedy and helping to raise countless dollars to fund our causes, to fight HIV, to aid our own. When the government turned its back, the first dollars raised to fight AIDS came from the bar and club scene.
The attack in Orlando was an attack on all of us because there’s a Pulse in every city in this country. A place where we can let our guard down, be ourselves, embrace our friends and kiss our partners openly. We need those places because regardless of whether you live in Dupont Circle or rural Alabama, there is a risk in engaging in public displays of affection if you’re LGBT.
A look at the public response to the Orlando massacre reveals just how much work lies ahead. The Florida governor has tried to erase LGBT identity from the attack. We can’t even get validation in death in some quarters. The lieutenant governor of Texas tweeted homophobic Bible verses on the morning of the attack yet somehow still has a job. Last week, before the attack, Rep. Rick Allen (R-Ga.) read a Bible verse on the U.S. House floor that calls for the death of gay people. Shortly after, the House voted overwhelmingly to reject a spending bill that included discrimination protections for LGBT workers.
Even those Republicans who have issued milquetoast statements offering “thoughts and prayers” are left to reconcile those sentiments with their own voting records hostile to LGBT causes. The presumptive GOP nominee for president, whose name I can’t bear to include in a tribute to Orlando, claims to care about what happened, yet has pledged to nominate Supreme Court justices committed to overturning the marriage equality ruling.
Hillary Clinton is right — this isn’t the time for politics. As we struggle with how to respond to the massacre and to those who would demonize and discriminate against us and cast us back into the closet, we should resist the urge to lash out and respond simply with love.
It’s been humbling to be here in Orlando this week, watching members of our community cope with such grace, dignity and determination. They didn’t shut down the community center in fear, instead they opened the doors wide to all while working tirelessly to raise money for the victims, collect donations of water and supplies for blood centers overwhelmed by volunteers, negotiate deals with airlines to fly loved ones to town for unexpected funerals and more.
One of the remarkable people I’ve met here this week, Pastor Brei, said it best: “Have faith and believe that evil and hate can be eradicated one person at a time. How do you treat someone? How do you embrace someone who treats you wrong? We all bleed, laugh, hope and have great victories and major defeats. And so, you know me, even if you don’t know my name — I’m you.”
Kevin Naff is editor of the Washington Blade. Reach him at knaff@washblade.com.
President Andrzej Duda of Poland should veto a regressive and discriminatory bill that threatens sex education, including about sexual orientation and gender identity, Human Rights Watch said today.
The proposed legislation is a revised version of a bill including similar provisions that Duda vetoed earlier this year, calling for unity at a time of crisis due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
“Duda should swiftly veto this harmful new bill,” said Kyle Knight, senior LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Accurate and inclusive age-appropriate sex education is a crucial element of the rights to health and education and is critical to promoting healthy relationships and reducing gender-based violence, adolescent pregnancy, maternal mortality, and HIV.”
The bill would centralize control over Polish schools and limit already restricted access to comprehensive sexuality education. The bill is informally called “Lex Czarnek 2.0” after Education Minister Przemysław Czarnek, who initiated the first bill and has been promoting the revised version. The legislation would give government “educational welfare officers” the authority to decide what extracurricular or educational activities can occur on school grounds and establish a complex bureaucracy around approving or refusing such activities.
On November 29, the opposition-controlled Senate, the upper house of Poland’s national legislature, rejected the bill, sending it back to the Sejm, the lower house, controlled by the ruling Law and Justice party. On December 2, the Sejm rejected the Senate’s veto and passed the bill. President Duda has 21 days to decide whether to sign or veto it.
Nongovernment organizations are the only providers of comprehensive sexuality education in many places in Poland. The state school curriculum includes misinformation about reproductive health and sexuality and perpetuates myths and discriminatory stereotypes rather than providing evidence-based sex education in line with international and regional standards.
The bill would increase the authority of regional school superintendents, appointed by the education minister, over school principals and grant superintendents the power to block activities led by nongovernment organizations in schools, a decision currently in the hands of parents’ councils.
Because school superintendents are appointed by the government and the government has targetedcomprehensive sexuality education and those who provide it, the changes could lead to ideological control over schools and politicized choices about who can provide educational activities. Superintendents would also be involved in decisions about removing principals, potentially politicizing that process as well.
If the bill becomes law, it would have a chilling effect on teachers and organizations that provide comprehensive sexuality education, and de factoprohibit Polish schools from addressing topics of sexual orientation, gender identity, and reproductive rights, Human Rights Watch said. The bill puts a host of children’s rights at risk, including the rights to information, education, and health.
Dozens of civil society organizations, teachers’ unions, and local authorities’ consortiums associated with the Free School Coalition have warned that the measure would gradually deprive schools of autonomy and create fear and distrust among teachers, who may fear repercussions if they step out of line with the government. Education and rights advocates have pointed out that Education Minister Czarnek recently approved a new official textbook that contained biased and discriminatory content.
Czarnek, known for efforts to reshape the school curriculum in line with a conservative, Catholic agenda, claims the new law is necessary to “protect children.” He has promoted gender stereotypes, including emphasizing women’s “destiny to bear children,” and the near-total abortion ban introduced in 2020. Czarnek also positions himself as an opponent to so-called “gender and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) ideology,” a term used to demonize gender equality and the rights of women and LGBT people. In December 2020, over 170 academics from around the world called for an international “boycott” of Czarnek, due to his “homophobic, xenophobic and misogynistic views.”
Another bill that could have a detrimental impact on education was referred to government committees for further review in April. If passed, this bill, introduced by Law and Justice allies, would potentially criminalize anyone providing sex education or information with prison sentences of up to three years. Even without more stringent laws, teachers and school administrators who support sexuality education or reproductive rights have already been harassed, dragged through administrative proceedings, and threatened with losing their jobs.
The bill would also affect 200,000 child refugees from Ukraine studying at Polish schools, which rely heavily on civil society organizations to provide specialized assistance such as psychosocial and language support to refugee children. Many organizations offering such services also work on LGBT or women’s rights. The bill would place additional bureaucratic requirements on such organizations, which could prevent them from receiving approval to work in schools at all.
“President Duda already decided once that vetoing a variation of this law was the right thing to do, and he should do the same again,” Knight said. “Students, teachers, and parents across Poland have spoken up to make clear just how harmful and unnecessary this legislation would be.”
If you were diagnosed with HIV in the first fifteen years of the AIDS pandemic, your doctor might as well have handed you the diagnosis with one hand and with the other a death certificate, just waiting for the appropriate date to be filled in. Having HIV was an almost certain death sentence. Those of us who were diagnosed as HIV-positive in those years were told to “get your affairs in order,” meaning, “prepare to die.”
Many of us did exactly that: we quit work, lived on SSDI payments, settled debts if we could, alerted our friends, and learned to live with the constant expectation that we could meet an ugly, painful death at any time. Very few of us were able to “keep hope alive.”
That long-awaited hope arrived in 1996 with the advent of HAART (Highly Active Anti-Retroviral Treatment), the first efficacious treatment for HIV. Suddenly, the possibility of “living with HIV,” instead of “dying of AIDS,” became a reality for those of us with access to HAART. We rejoiced — we were going to survive the virus that had taken so many of our friends, lovers, and family from us! We tore up those proffered death certificates — we were going to live!
We soon realized, however, that surviving the pandemic, living with HIV, would bring its own problems. Those of us who couldn’t work and lived on SSDI were trapped in poverty; and the outrageously expensive medications we took, while saving our lives, caused innumerable new medical problems: chronic fatigue, accelerated ageing, loss of bone density, liver diseases and failure, a propensity for various cancers, enhanced risk of cardiovascular diseases, and myriad comorbidities. Further, in the pre-U=U days, we lived in fear of transmitting the virus to others. And surviving did nothing to lessen the stigma we faced for being HIV-positive, often within our own communities, causing an epidemic of isolation, loneliness, despair, and depression.
Human beings are meant for more than just “surviving,” we are meant to thrive. But how does one thrive while living with a still-debilitating, stigmatized virus? To find out how some have thrived, and not merely survived, I talked with three long-term survivors, friends from a Thursday night writing group, about their growth from surviving to thriving.
Harley, a San Francisco resident, was thirty-four when he acquired HIV; at seventy-six, he has lived with HIV for forty-two years. Like many of us, Harley said he reacted to his diagnosis with “shock and sadness, fear and depression, isolation and hopelessness, desperation and confusion. I was relieved to finally know my serostatus, but it caused distractions at work and negative projections of my profession, social life, love life, family relations, and fear of the future.” After a period of depression and self-mourning, Harley was determined to take care of himself. “I made a commitment to myself that I would not only survive, but strive to thrive.”
That commitment led Harley to a very proactive approach to living with HIV. He connected with other HIV-positive friends; read all the current information about HIV; attended community meetings led by doctors; joined support groups at San Francisco AIDS Foundation, the Shanti Project, and the Stop AIDS Project; joined an HIV-positive yoga class; quit smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol; and began a healthy natural diet. Of course he continued to encounter barriers to thriving—economic challenges; job stress; the continuous loss of friends, neighbors, co-workers and community members. He credits “yoga, acupuncture, meditation, dharma talks, humor, comedy, dancing, hiking, and swimming” with helping him stay healthy enough to thrive.
Harley said, “service became a new medicine for me. I volunteered at San Francisco AIDS Foundation’s telephone Hotline when it first started at old drafty building on Valencia Street. I also trained at Shanti and became a ‘buddy.’ I spoke at local schools as an AIDS educator and became active with AIDS political activist groups like Project Inform and ACT-UP.” Significantly, he changed professions and started work full-time at an HIV medical clinic. These days, he said, he now deals with “normal geriatric issues rather than HIV fears.”
Rebecca Dennison was diagnosed with HIV in 1990, although she is certain she acquired the virus in 1983 and lived with it for seven years before her diagnosis. “I was devastated. In June 1990, HIV was considered a death sentence. I thought I had only months to live. I was about to start law school when I found out. I decided not to go. Partly because I didn’t think I’d live long enough to finish.” In those days before the ACA, and before the Ryan White Care Act passed, Rebecca continued to work in order to retain her health insurance. “To me, being uninsured meant you were going to die even sooner than you would otherwise. So having insurance was as big an economic issue as having an income.” With the support of her workplace, she continued to work until she could get covered through her husband’s insurance. Despite the support of dear friends and her husband Daniel, “I felt alone and alienated. People were kind but they really couldn’t understand what it was like to be me. I felt like I was living in a 4th dimension where we all saw the same world but experienced it differently. For a while, I felt really angry at HIV-negative people for the privilege of being able to walk away if they wanted. And then I felt ashamed of being angry because I knew it wasn’t fair to be mad at people for being healthy.”
At first, after her diagnosis, Rebecca was afraid to make plans beyond one year. She had planned to become an immigration lawyer specializing in asylum law. When that plan collapsed, “I didn’t know what to do with myself. But AIDS activists, friends, and family all encouraged me to follow my heart and get involved in AIDS activism–and I did.” She threw herself into fighting for herself and others. “I joined ACT UP Golden Gate, went to all the Project Inform town meetings, started going to conferences, and then started WORLD, an organization by, for, and about HIV-positive women (because they were missing in most of those places). Through that work I got to be friends with women from all over the world, especially after I helped start the ICW (International Community of Women Living with HIV/AIDS).
“Of course, coming to love all those people also meant losing hundreds of people as well. That part was tough. It was tragic to see people die in what should have been the prime of their life. And the cumulative grief of hundreds of people dying while most of the world really didn’t give a damn… that wore me down.” She paused her HIV work in 2003 and went off to raise her daughters. After a while, “I just missed it too much. Various histories of AIDS started coming out and the vast majority left women out completely, which really bothered me. So I started writing, got into therapy, and eventually started reconnecting with other long-term survivors. One of the silver linings of COVID was that we were forced to learn how to meet by Zoom. Suddenly, that opened all kinds of doors. I’m in two weekly writing groups with long-term survivors, which I wouldn’t have joined if I’d had to cross the Bay Bridge to attend—and I’m loving it. The writing always provides a way in to connect with more depth than we might if we were just making small talk.”
Activist, writer, and long-term survivor Harry Breaux learned he was HIV-positive in 1984. Harry had contributed blood samples to a CDC clinical study of hepatitis. The samples from 1979 were negative for HIV, but samples he gave in 1981 were positive for HIV. Thus, he deduces that he contracted the virus in 1980, at age thirty-five; he celebrated his seventy-seventh birthday in March 2022.
“Initially, I was not surprised when I was called in and given the results of the HIV antibody test,” he told me. “After having so actively participated in the sexual freedoms of the 1970s, I knew that I probably had been exposed and probably had contracted the virus. As a slow progressor, my physical life changed very little, but my mental and emotional life was devastated. As long as I felt ‘healthy,’ I continued to live a ‘normal’ life on the outside, but mentally and emotionally, I lived with the knowledge that every little change in my physical condition, every sniffle, every pimple, every cough prophesied the beginning of my march toward death. It just never came for 15 years. Then when I did approach death in 1996 [diagnosed with AIDS], the ‘cocktail’ came along to save me.”
Harry Breaux (Photo: SFAF)
Like the majority of us long-term survivors, Harry faced barriers to thriving. “Finding supportive and stable housing and sufficient financial assistance to care for myself. Finding social support from others who understand my situation or the situation of those in similar circumstances. Finding medical services sensitive to my unique physical condition of being HIV-positive and aging.” He credits San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Openhouse, PRC, the Shanti Project, and other organizations with providing rent and food subsidies as well as opportunities to connect with other HIV-positive survivors. “When I first noticed that I was driven by a different sexual impulse and believed I was the only one, that I was flawed, I felt alone and lonely. Being HIV-positive and surviving so many friends left me feeling old, alone, and lonely. But finding the HIV Community and its strength has allowed me to look at my life as one of thriving through the experience of surviving. No longer alone and lonely as a person with HIV, I now recognize thriving as a viable present and future.”
I asked all three of these survivors what “thriving” means to them as opposed to “surviving.” The three of them gave me similar, almost identical definitions. Here’s Harry’s definition:
“Thriving to me means being able to function as a ‘normal’ human being; being able to experience joy and sadness and peace along with love and compassion; being able to take care of my own personal needs. being mentally alert and creative; being able to contribute to the society around me; being able to maintain my independence; being able to experience the ‘normal’ ageing of my body appropriate to my age; being able to assist others.
“Surviving to me means just being able to breathe, move, eat, and shit.”
As members of the AIDS Generation, we long-term survivors have a deep well of knowledge and experience to share with the newly diagnosed. Unsurprisingly, when asked for advice to the newly diagnosed, all three stressed the same things: know that HIV is no longer fatal if you stick to your medications and take care of your health; educate yourself about the virus, its effects, and how to combat them; learn the history of the pandemic; know that you are not alone, flawed or damaged by this virus, but you are challenged to maintain your hope and tenacity in its unyielding face; know the science, listen to the professionals, and seek to find your own way through; release any sense of shame you may have for being positive; maintain your social life by connecting with other HIV-positive people; volunteer in your community; never hesitate to ask for emotional or financial support from the resources that are available; remain hopeful.
Rebecca offered the most eloquent advice I can think of:
“Pursue your passions. People who feel happy take joy in the happiness of others. People who feel loved want others to feel loved. People who are inquisitive and curious inspire curiosity in others. If you can find a way to lend your time and talent to making the world a better place, all the better. I have seen how having a sense of purpose helps people who are struggling get out of bed in the morning. There’s no ‘right’ way to do this. You do you. Make your art. Write your poetry. Draft awesome legislation. March in the streets. Teach a child to read. Feed someone who’s hungry. Save a redwood tree. Rescue puppies. Grow tomatoes. Smile at the bus driver. Be kind to the checker at the grocery store. Whatever experiences you’ve had up until this point make you a truly unique individual with skills and insights and interests unlike anyone else’s on the planet. If you have a degree, great. But if you don’t, you’re still an expert in lots of things. Don’t overlook the fact that everyone has value and has something to contribute.”
I’ll give Harley the last word: “Trust in your future. Keep Hope Alive.”
The 32-year-old was sentenced in August to nine years in a Russian penal colony after pleading guilty to drug charges. She was reportedly found at an airport with vape cartridges containing cannabis oil.
At her sentencing, Griner told the court she had made “an honest mistake” and she “never meant to break any laws”.
In early November, Griner was moved from a detention centre to the IK-2 penal colony in Yavas, Mordovia – some 480 kilometres southeast of Moscow.
University of Helsinki sociologist Olga Zeveleva told The Guardian prisons in the area “are notoriously terrible, even by Russian standards”.
“It is a place any prisoner wants to avoid”.
University of Oxford professor Judith Pallot, who specialises in the human geography of Russia and has visited IK-2, also told The Guardian it is “very sterile and sad”.
“The Russian prison system isn’t interested in rehabilitation, it is based on retribution and punishment. It is a system underpinned by violence.”
According to The Nation, IK-2 is a penal colony notorious for racism and homophobia, with locals expressing shock someone as famous as Brittney Griner would be held there.
Nadya Tolokonnikova, a member of Russian activist band Pussy Riot, spent two years in a Mordovia prison.
She told MSNBC Reports she was terrified for Griner, with IK-2 is “literally the harshest colony in the whole Russian prison system”.
People could be left working up to 17 hours a day and punished – “that includes torture” – if they don’t meet quotas, Tolokonnikova said.
Similarly, the head of Rus Sidyashchaya (Russia Behind Bars), an organisation defending the rights of inmates in Russia, Olga Romanova, told The Moscow Times some detainees at IK-2 have reported labour conditions being “not far from slavery”.
Romanova said Brittney Griner being “lesbian, American, and Black” could make her a prime target for harassment.
“It’s a good thing she doesn’t speak Russian, she won’t be able to understand what people say to her.”
Romanova thought “that could solve some of her problems”.
However, she said Griner “will be in danger” if negotiations for a possible prisoner swap between the United States and Russia ended.
On Monday (28 November), Reuters published the US chargée d’affaires in Moscow, Elizabeth Rood, as telling Russia’s state-owned RIA news agency that the US “has not received a serious response” to “a significant proposal”.
Ten days prior, Russian deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov said he was hopeful of a prisoner swap.
Throughout his campaign for Virginia governor, Glenn Youngkin embraced the rhetoric of “parental rights,” allowing it to guide his campaign’s position on key issues, including mask mandates and diversity efforts in our K-12 system.
To be clear, there is a dire need to ensure that parents have a voice in our education. The disregarded mental health concerns, failure to appropriately implement accommodations for disabled students, and lackluster equity responses during the COVID-19 pandemic made clear the school systems were largely ill-equipped to handle community concerns. As students, we are acutely aware of the difficulty in engaging with education leaders: We constantly raise concerns that fall onto deaf ears. We can only imagine the similar frustrations of parents and teachers.
Nonetheless, the failure of education leaders to address the needs of community members is not partisan but institutional. It is abundantly clear that the convoluted processes of school boards are not suited for widespread stakeholder engagement. But Gov. Youngkin’s embrace of parental rights is not centered on improving community relationships. Instead, he exploits the language of parental rights to attack marginalized students, with the goal of advancing his political prospects.
Before he even assumed office, Youngkin supported efforts to censor books, attackingBeloved, the acclaimed Toni Morrison novel. Ignoring that Beloved can be a powerful tool for students to confront difficult truths around racism, Youngkin instead sought to allow some to censor the book in our classrooms. More recently, the governor has championed Senate Bill 656, which would allow parents to opt students out of classroom instruction deemed “sexually explicit.” SB 656 includes “homosexuality” in its definition of sexually explicit and mandates an onerousapproval process for any instruction that meets this standards, chilling the already limited queer representation in our classroom. After all, why would teachers, already overworked, go through the process of getting approval for texts that include LGBTQIA+ people when they can simply opt for content without us?
More recently, Youngkin’s Department of Education released draft changes to Virginia’s model transgender policies. The original guidelines required school districts to implement evidence-based protections for queer students, including prohibitions against the forced disclosure of a student’s LGBTQIA+ identity and upholding the right of queer students to be addressed by their correct pronouns and name.
As students, we experienced the power of the original guidelines. The fear of outing, for example, hangs over the head of every queer student from an unsupportive household. We once worked with a student who was denied water after their parents found out they were gay, and we’ve worked with other students whose parents have threatened them with conversion therapy. The original affirming guidelines, while not perfect, removed some of this fear.
WIthout the constant worry that teachers would out our friends to hostile parents, we were finally able to be ourselves. We saw our transgender classmates finally walk through the halls without having to justify their existence at every moment. We saw our friends sit up taller in class, knowing that their identities were protected.
But the revised guidelines revoke that progress. With forced outing provisions, a refusal to acknowledge a student’s transition without both parental consent and legal documentation, and a bathroom ban, the new draft revisions to the model transgender policies erase our community’s existence. They effectively take away the one place where we could be ourselves and will only heighten abuse, harassment, depression, and suicide.
The draft guidelines have already seen massive opposition. We helped organize walkouts of more than 12,000 students at schools across Virginia, and well over 50,000 comments, most opposed, have been left on the DOE’s public comments website. But Glenn Youngkin seems to be ignoring Virginian voices, instead using these policies as a change to address national conservative audiences as he gears up for a potential 2024 presidential run.
Lost in all the governor’s politicking is the real harm done to students. We have had to talk friends out of taking their lives, and we rarely meet a queer student who isn’t struggling with their mental health. Our experiences aren’t unique: Research consistently suggests that the majority of LGBTQIA+ students are vulnerable to depression and suicide. Yet our governor is hell-bent on removing the solace and affirmation found in inclusive books, classroom instruction, and school regulations for his own political future, rather than address the real crises in our schools.
Our schools are in crisis. We hope our leaders stop focusing so much on polling boosts and fundraising hauls and instead, address the depression, abuse, and harassment that ravages our schools.
Natasha Sanghvi, Ranger Balleisen, Casey Calabia, Juno Teller, and Rivka Vizcardo-Lichter are students in Virginia who helped organize a massive school walkout this month in protest of Youngkin’s reversal of protections for trans students in schools.
Views expressed in The Advocate’s opinion articles are those of the writers and do not necessarily represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, Equal Pride.
Because I’ve been writing this column for several years, and get to talk to lots of amazing people, my friends, mostly the straight ones, like to quiz me about who’s gay, who’s not, and who’s in the closet.
This fishing expedition is mostly generational, since it’s mostly my contemporaries who inquire about the sexuality of celebrities and politicians. Those of us who are LGBTQ+ and over 50, still look on with low-level shock when someone we know announces they are queer.
For straight people in this demographic, being gay, or being in the closet is still something that they sensationalize. The current generation just shrugs. They might debate Harry Styles, for example, and that’s because he’s thrown up the question for debate. He’s often accused of gay- baiting, but if he were to come out tomorrow and say he was in a relationship with a man, most young people would simply congratulate him.
I always confess to the fact that I really don’t have any inside knowledge on anyone, and I hear the rumors just like everyone else. Rumors are just rumors, until someone comes forward and confirms or denies them. Meanwhile innuendo, and jokes about the person’s sexuality abound.
For politicians, particularly in Congress, it’s a bit different. Capitol Hill is a very small community. When I worked there, I, like many, knew who was in the closet mainly because we’d see them in a gay bar or knew someone that had a relationship with them. There really were no secrets on the Hill.
For example, most of us knew former Wisconsin congressman Steve Gunderson was gay before he was outed on the House floor. I spoke to Gunderson on the 25th anniversary of that moment and wrote a column about it.
Gunderson was publicly thrown out of his closet, after right-wing Rep. Bob Dornan joked about Gunderson on the floor of the House of Representatives during a debate on a bill that would have discouraged school districts from adopting gay-friendly curricula. “My fellow Republican has a revolving door in his closet,” said Dornan. “He’s out. He’s in. He’s out. He’s in.”
It was all a way to poke and joke about Gunderson’s sexuality.
“Clearly, we were living in different and difficult times regarding public officials being openly gay,” Gunderson told me. “At that time, there was no process for coming out as gay, nor were there any predetermined examples and parameters about how to come out.”
Today, there are 11 openly LGBTQ+ members of Congress. And, this year, for the first time ever, two gay men, one a Republican and one a Democrat, are running for Congress in New York’s Third Congressional District.
To be sure, not everyone is out. Whether they choose to remain in the closet might be for several reasons, because they’re fearful of the reactions of their constituents, that they still think being gay is a scarlet letter, or out of some deep seeded self-loathing which sometimes can backfire.
Case in point, former Illinois Republican congressman Aaron Schock. He was on a trajectory to be a rising star in the party, when he began to unravel, all the while denying rumors that he was gay. He eventually came out after a federal investigation into his campaign funds ended.
Everyone who I knew who still worked on or around the Hill knew he was gay, so when he came out, that wasn’t a surprise. It also proves that there are some U.S. legislators who are most definitely hiding. There are 535 members of Congress. The most recent Gallup poll estimated that 5.6 percent of the U.S. population is LGBT. Translating that to Congress, that would allow for at least 30 queer members, which means that in a very theoretical hypothesis, 19 are hiding in the closet.
Now, that brings us to what you’ve all been waiting for, ever since the title of this column drew you in — is Senator Lindsey Graham gay? First, I have no idea. I do know that, again, my friends who work on or around the Hill have their own opinions. In fact, one of them texted me on Saturday a story that appeared on Mediaite. “Did you see this????” She said with all those question marks.
The story was about a wild discussion the night before on MSNBC’s The 11th Hour, hosted by Stephanie Ruhle. She just replaced long-time network anchor Brian Williams.
Ruhle’s show has proven to be a bit more animated than Williams’s version. On Friday’s show, during one of the last segments, Ruhle hosted a panel that included Nancy Giles of CBS Sunday Morning‘s Nancy Giles, Ron Insana of CNBC, columnist Liz Plank, and lesbian comic and podcaster Judy Gold.
The group began to discuss Senator Graham’s ill-timed, ill-thought out, and cruel national abortion bill — which would ban the procedure nationally — and then sequed into a poke and joke about his sexuality.
“Why do this? Republicans don’t even support it across the board. He’s dividing Republicans,” Ruhle said. Which brought protest from Giles that Graham was telling women what to do with their bodies.
Giles’s statement was seconded by Gold, who was goaded on to continue by Giles, “He’s never seen a vagina! He’s never seen a naked woman!” Gold blurted, as the whole panel laughed it up, including Ruhle. “And he is telling me?”
Of course, we all know what Gold was suggesting. She said it in a way that made it appear to be a joke, which is why everyone was laughing.
“We don’t know that for sure. We do not know that for sure,” Ruhle said. “It’s probably true, it’s probably true,” Plank replied. “Judy we would refer to that as an unconfirmed report,” CNBC’s Insana interjected. “Someone needs to find out!” Plank corrected. “I’m going to speculate…” Gold said. (See below, at the 35 minute mark.)
Speculate, speculation, speculating, speculative. Those words have appeared in the past when others have…well, speculated, about Senator Graham. Just this week, The View host Whoppi Goldberg had to walk back another poke and joke that hinted at Graham’s sexuality, and when she did backtrack, one viewer on Twitter wasn’t happy with her, “I have no idea why she had to scale back on a suggestive, subtle joke that half the country has already been speculating about anyway concerning Ms. Graham lol. You’re fine Whoopi.”
This week it would appear that Graham’s sexuality has gone from “speculative” to a national open secret. Is it right for “half the country” to be speculating about Graham? Is it ok to use his sexuality as punchline material? Is there a need for these comedians to walk back their jabs? Or are their jokes more a poke at a sensitive subject for Graham? If they are just innocent teasing, then why walk them back?
For as long as I can remember, and I’ve been following politics obsessively even before Graham was elected to the House in 1995, I’ve heard rumors about Graham. I’ve poked and joked about those rumors — not here — but during private conservations. In fact, to me this whole dance around Graham’s sexuality seems more like a sophmoric joke, especially with that uncomfortable “Lady G” nickname that trends on Twitter every other month.
The fact that he may or may not be gay, to me, seems far less important than the inherent danger he creates in his job as a bachelor senator. His flip flop about Trump from calling him a “jackass,” a “kook,” “a race-baiting bigot,” to last month saying there would be “riots in the streets” if Trump was prosecuted is an affront to the decorum of a United States senator.
His phone call to Georgia election officials was most likely illegal and completely outside his role as a representative of South Carolina.
His whiplash from condemning Trump for January 6 to condemning the January 6 committee is beyond unacceptable for someone who swore an oath to the constitution.
And, his absurd legislation of creating a national abortion law flies in the face of his repeated comments that abortion should be left to the states. His reversal, and his audacity to author a bill on behalf of women, when he is a loutish, 67-year-old white man who has never been married, never fathered a child, dealt with a pregnancy, dealt with a wife whose life was in jeopardy because of a pregnancy, or a daughter whose future was in danger…well, a real man wouldn’t be this sanctimonious.
Graham’s sexuality might be private, and the jokes about it juvenile and tinged with homophobia, but his efforts at tearing the fabric of American democracy is far more offensive. It’s hard to get more angry at Judy Gold and Stephanie Ruhle than the man who’s working overtime to take away their rights — and those of all American women.
Views expressed in The Advocate’s opinion articles are those of the writers and do not necessarily represent the views of The Advocate or our parent company, EqualPride.
We who live with HIV live in a country where many of our fellow citizens seem adamantly determined to negate our very lives. Thirty-seven states continue to criminalize being HIV-positive, despite our knowing that people living with undetectable viral loads cannot pass the virus on to others via sex. Twelve of those states refused to expand Medicaid, cutting many PWAs off from the medications they need to live. During the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, many of the services available to people living with HIV were curtailed: as funds and personnel were diverted from HIV to COVID-19, clinics closed; testing for HIV declined; PrEP use withered; sheltering-in-place and quarantining forced many long-term survivors back into the kind of isolation and loneliness that we had just begun to address. With many of us long-term survivors living at or below the poverty level, worldwide inflation has made it increasingly difficult to afford the basics of life like food and shelter. The last two years have been abnormally grim for us.
The HIV-negative members of the LGBTQ+ community have not been spared the back-sliding in the efforts to secure our civil rights. Anti-LGBTQ forces in Florida have criminalized even speaking about LGBTQ people in school classrooms, with many states poised to pass copy-cat laws like Florida’s. The activist, uber-conservative Supreme Court that overturned Roe V. Wade, leading to the criminalization of those who seek or perform abortions, signaled quite clearly that their next targets are the right to use contraception and the right to same-sex marriage. With the Court’s conclusion that there is no Constitutional right to privacy, the right to engage in homosexual sex acts may well be on their chopping block, despite the guarantees in Lawrence v. Texas.
Our transgender sisters and brothers, regardless of their serostatus, are under constant threat in Republican-controlled states. South Dakota, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, South Carolina, and Texas have all enacted laws that inhibit the availability of gender affirming care — with some states actually criminalizing doctors who offer gender affirming care. Conservative politicians and church leaders routinely mock transgender folks and the use of appropriate pronouns. The transgender community has weathered the bulk of attacks in recent years.
But we have all been vulnerable. For every step forward toward true equality we have taken, we seem to have taken two steps back in recent years. None of the advances we have made is immune to the forces that seek to erase those advances. There are citizens and politicians in our country who seem hell-bent on making our lives as miserable as possible.
In the face of all this hatred and bigotry, I ask again, “Thanks for what?”
The only answer I can give is a very personal one, a list of things that I strive to be grateful for.
I’m grateful for the medications that have kept me alive since 1996 (even despite the ones that caused my advanced osteoporosis). I am grateful for the many long-term survivors whom I’ve gotten to know through SFAF’s Elizabeth Taylor 50-Plus Network and through Shanti’s Honoring Our Experience — friends with whom I share much more than just serostatus, friends whose love and support have sustained me through more than my share of setbacks. I am thankful that after five years of being confined to a wheelchair, I am finally walking again! I am thankful that despite the ravages of living with HIV for thirty-three years, despite facing a handful of death sentences, I will celebrate my seventieth birthday next month. I am thankful that despite my advanced ageing (70 is the new 85!), my brain still functions well enough for me to be able to string words together in coherent sentences… sometimes!
The one, the only thing that I never struggle to be grateful for is the enduring love and support of a great, generous, loving man. My husband Rick Greathouse has been a true godsend, not only for the last two years, but for the twenty-one years we’ve been together. He has wholeheartedly supported my writing — every time I write something, he is my first and best reader; in fact, his love and support are the sole reason I was able to break a 33-year trauma-induced writer’s block, and he has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with me whenever I’ve taken my writing public. He has taught me patience in dealing with things I cannot control and courage in changing those things that I can control. He has weathered my every illness alongside me, and during those long years that I spent in a wheelchair, he never once complained about having to push me around this hilly city. He has dried my many tears and brought more joy and laughter into my life than any one man deserves. They say a good man is hard to find. I am forever deeply grateful that I found one of the best.
And so, despite this hateful world that seems to wish harm and grief on all of us, it is still possible to feel gratitude every day. It’s difficult sometimes to maintain that sense of gratitude, for all of us. But we must. We all must find and nurture those things that make us grateful for each new day in a world that seems to conspire against our joy.
For this Thanksgiving and throughout the coming season, my wish is that you live every day filled with bountiful joy and gratitude for life. You deserve it!
