(Tom Moulton, left, and Brendan Fay, right, visiting the Polish parliament in the spring to advocate for gay love and marriage.)

Brendan Fay, Global Gay Activist, is Ailing

My beautiful trouble-making friend is in pain, and that causes me much grief. I couldn't get through reading this message last night from Brendan's wonderful partner Tom Moulton without shedding a few tears of empathy for my queer brothers. Since Tom is asking friends to share this note, I'm doing my part to keep Brendan's colleagues around the world informed about our dear friend's condition.

Hey, Brendan, my prayers are going out for you, good buddy. Take care of yourself.

This is Tom's update:

Hello everyone,

Just got home from visiting Brendan. He was in much better spirits tonight and not a whole lot of pain getting back to bed from the chair. He had some visitors tonight as well. Someone mentioned that I forgot to tell everyone that he did not need to have the partial hip replacement at this time. He has a rod and several pins in. He
had a rough night last night and was tired today.

Although he likes to have your calls, he did unplug his phone so he could get some rest today. So, for those of you who tried to get a hold of him but were unable, that's probably the reason. It looks like he'll have a better night tonight, so calling in the afternoon tomorrow should be OK.

We are still looking for him to go to a rehab hospital on Wed. or Thurs. So far we are looking into Rusk, in Manhattan (to make it easier for people to visit if they want) or Burke, which is very good, but up in Westchester. It will all depend on bed availability.

Thanks for all you prayers and support. Brendan has some flowers already and he thanks those that send, but would prefer if any further wishes for flowers would go for a charity of your choice. A card would be nice.

I have not been able to email everyone - his address book is just too huge and I've been too tired to go through it all, so please pass the word along.

Tom

SF AIDS Fdtn: Gay Marriage = HIV Prevention

This comes as a shock to me, that marriage, or specifically gay marriage, may be an effective method of stopping HIV. I didn't know the foundation was touting gay marriage this way, till I read their release on queer nuptials:

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation applauds the recent California Supreme Court decision to overturn the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, an important step towards equality for all Californians. The Foundation strongly supports marriage equality both because it is an important civil rights issue, and because there is emerging evidence that suggests gay marriage may be an effective HIV prevention strategy.

To their discredit, the foundation's brain-trust didn't see fit to link to any actual scientific proof to back up their startling claim, but it is certainly in keeping with AIDS Inc in San Francisco making pretty unbelievable predictions related to HIV, and offering little to nil proof.

I do give the foundation executives a tip o' the hat for how craftily they worded their statement with qualifiers. Data is "emerging" and it "suggests" there "may be" a link between averting new infections among gay men, and a piece of paper.

Hey all you brainiacs at the foundation, do me a huge favor, please. Link to the emerging evidence and defend your statement with hard proof. There are plenty of specious arguments being made by the rightwing about gay marriage, we don't need AIDS service organizations making bogus claims.

And if SF AIDS Foundation leaders endorse gay marriage as HIV prevention, will they next champion abstinence until marriage?

Cologne, SF Recall Iran's Gay Hangings

The Islamic Republic of Iran on July 19, 2005, hanged two gay teenagers, Ayaz Marhoni and Mahmoud Asgari, in broad daylight in the central public square in the holy city of Mashad, and to commemorate the executions, gay and Iranian activists in Cologne and San Francisco staged vigils recently and spoke out about Iran's mistreatment of LGBT people. Click here for background info and photos of the hangings.

Below are photos from the remembrance in Ross Mirkarimi's office in SF's City Hall on July 18. And after the SF photos, you find a report from the vigil in Cologne.

Ross Mirkarimi, who is Iranian-American and a member of the Board of Supervisors, spoke about the hangings, democracy and human rights for all Iranians. He reminded us that gay activists in San Francisco have staged a vigil every year for the hanged teenagers, including organizing a speak out in 2005, one week after the world learned of the barbaric executions.

Almost 20 people, of assorted ethnic heritage, gathered in Mirkarimi's office to light candles of remembrance and hold signs demanding an end to Iranian executions.

Gay American Bevan Dufty, another member of the Board of Supervisors, holding his daughter Sidney, delivered remarks about the need to support LGBT people in Iran and living in exile.

Mirkarimi thanked everyone for turning out for the vigil and promised to help LGBT Iranians in their difficult struggle for freedom and equality.

This is the report from the organizers of the July 19 action in Cologne:

The Gay Homeland Foundation, an organization dedicated to furtherance of a Gay national movement and cultural progress of the Gay-Lesbian community, and baraka, an international self-organization group of Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual immigrants in Cologne, have for the second time organized a political demonstration commemorating all Gay and Lesbian victims of the Ayatollah regime in Iran in Cologne on 19 July 2008.

The action started at 17:30 with a talk on the human rights situation of Gays and Lesbians in Iran, presented by Dr. Viktor Zimmermann, and continued with a vigil at the Memorial for Lesbian and Gay victims of National Socialism in Cologne at 19:30. Jacek Marjanski from baraka, and Ensi, an Iranian Lesbian refugee from Iran, read the common statement in German and Farsi.

RUBICON, Cologne's counseling center for Gays and Lesbians, also supported the event.

19 July 2008 is the anniversary of the 2005 execution of two homosexual teenagers, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, who were believed to be lovers and were denounced to the police by a family member.

Authorities later distributed official information suggesting that the two teenagers were executed because of a rape of a 13-year old boy. In Iran, such accusations are routinely applied against homosexuals to justify a death sentence, since the regular proof by four witnesses (as prescribed by Sharia) can not be realistically supplied.

Gay Homeland Foundation greatly appreciates the accurate research performed by Simon Forbes from the British group Outrage!.

The two executed teenagers will always remind us of the fate of many of our brothers and sisters in Iran who were tortured and murdered by the Ayatollah regime and its death squads.

In today's Iran, Gays and Lesbians still suffer the worst oppression and live in daily fear of denunciation. The country's harsh Islamic regime has declared a downright war against homosexuals, reminiscent of ethnic cleansing in its perfidy: Specially trained agents routinely entrap Gay men in internet forums. In this atmosphere of constant fear, many commit suicide or undergo unnecessary sex-change operations.

The Gay Homeland Foundation (GHF) appeals to the international community to cease deporting Gay and Lesbian asylum-seekers to persecuting countries, and to consider instead the establishment of a self-administered territory for the Gay and Lesbian people.

Many thanks to all those in San Francisco and Cologne for participating in this year's vigils for the hanged gay Iranian teenagers and for working on behalf of acceptance for LGBT Iranian people everywhere.

New Yorker: Obama = Terrorist Cover,
Maureen Dowd & Petrelis?

Hendrik Hertzberg, staff writer for the New Yorker, on his blog today looks at the past week's controversy over his magazine's satirical cover with Michele and Barack Obama in terrorist drag. He writes:

That cover of ours seems to have kicked off a bit of a fuss. I haven’t read all the comments. Life is short, and when I Google the blogs for “obama ‘new yorker’ cover” I get twenty thousand hits, on top of the 1.75 million I get from a regular search. But I’ve read a sampling.

Oh, like who, for example? Anyone in the mainstream corporate media write something to catch your eye, Mr. Hertzberg?

Nevertheless, our cover seems to have launched a less toxic but still unfortunate meme: the idea that Obama can’t take a joke—that “he’s so tightly wrapped, overcalculated and circumspect that he can’t even allow anyone to make jokes about him,” in Maureen Dowd’s words.

And did any blogs interest you enough to the point that you simply had to link to their writing?

A few commenters on this or that blog have charged that for this or that crazy reason—to get revenge for Hillary’s defeat, to serve our shadowy corporate masters, to help the Republicans, whatever—The New Yorker was bent on damaging Obama and keep him from getting elected President. An extremely marginal view, to be sure. But it may be worth repeating that it’s horseshit. If proof is needed, take a look at this [entry at Petrelis Files]. (Note: At the magazine, Françoise Mouly’s primary responsibility is—wait for it—cover selection.)

Out of millions of hit for this subject, Mr. Hertzberg, you chose only one -- mine. Thanks for linking to and acknowledging the information I uncovered and wrote about. I'm just trying to keep you media folks honest and bring transparency to bear in my media advocacy work.

Of course, what I'd ultimately like from the New Yorker is a dedicated web page listing all of the staff members' donations to politicians; and at the federal, state and local levels, over the past twenty years.

Linking to me is certainly nice and very appreciated, but news and opinion column consumers need full disclosure from the New Yorker, and all mainstream media, on their sites, disclosing donations by executives and editorial staffs.

HRC v PFAW: Census Bureau Battle Over
Gay Couples' Stats

Thanks to the mainstream corporate media, I learned this week of the Census Bureau, a branch of the Department of Commerce, decision to not count gay and lesbian married couples from California and Massachusetts in the 2010 census for the nation. Legally hitched same-sex couples from those states will instead be classified as "unmarried, same-sex partners."

From the AP wire story:

The agency's director, Steven Murdock, said in an interview Thursday that the 1996 federal law "has that effect, in terms of being a federal agency. We are restricted by it."

The Census Bureau does not ask people about their sexual orientation, but it does ask about their relationships to the head of the household. Many gay couples are listed in census figures as unmarried, same-sex partners, though it is an imperfect tally of all gay couples.

Murdock said the bureau will strive to count same-sex couples in the 2010 census, just as it has in the past. But those people who say they are married will be reclassified as unmarried, same-sex partners.

Same-sex couples with no children will not be classified as families, according the bureau's policy. Those with children who are related to the head of the household will be classified as families.

Since this is without question a federal issue, I figured America's largest Democratic gay political organization, the Human Rights Campaign, would, in response to the outrageous statistical manipulation by a federal agency, at the very least, express some anger in a statement from the group's leader, Joe Solmonese. Maybe even tell us how HRC's has worked with the census bureau leaders over the decades HRC has been in business, and what they've done lately to persuade the federal effort responsible for honestly counting lots of things to do with gay Americans.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Googling the terms Solmonese, census bureau, gays, returned zero number of hits. And the HRC blog wrote nothing this week on the misguided census bureau leader's decision, and certainly no news about HRC's attempt to mobilize the community and our allies to reverse the census bureau's plans. Other than blandly noting what the press was reporting in the Equally Speaking podcast, did HRC actually do anything of substance on this matter?

However, another advocacy outfit in Washington, People For the American Way, at the end of the week, put out a take-charge "we're not gonna take this" release, and also announced launching a petition drive targeting the bureau:

The Census Bureau reported this week that in completing the 2010 Census, it will ‘edit’ the data from same-sex couples who accurately report that they are legally married, and that it will instead re-classify them as “unmarried partners,” the same procedure used by the Bureau during the 2000 census, when no states yet recognized same-sex couples as legally married. That kind of “editing” undermines the Bureau’s mission to provide accurate and high quality data about the U.S. population, and according to a paper on the Bureau’s own website, creates a distorted picture of same-sex households . . .

The paper, “Unbinding the Ties: Edit Effects of Marital Status on Same Gender Couples,” was written in 1999 by two members of the Census Bureau’s Fertility and Family Statistics Branch, Population Division. The authors looked at data from the 2000 Census “dress rehearsal,” and drew the following conclusions about the effects of “editing” the responses of same-sex couples from “married” to “unmarried partners”:

“it is clear from the examination of [the] unedited data that households which are identified as ‘married couple’ same gender households are a distinct group from households which are identified as unmarried partner same gender households. By combining these households . . . we [that is, the Census Bureau] are distorting the picture for both of these groups of households.”

And that was before there were same-sex couples recognized in any states as legally married — continuing to “edit” out married gay and lesbian couples in the next Census would create an even greater distortion.

People For the American Way has launched a petition urging the Census Bureau to reverse its policy.

So many words on our behalf from PFAW, in comparison to this from Solmonese and HRC:
"_________________, said Solmonese on behalf of HRC's members.

I'm not a big backer of online petitions and rarely sign them, but in this instance, I broke my standard policy of resisting putting my name on petitions. All because I want to show support for PFAW and how it took action, while the HRC remained silent and organized no effort to change census bureau policies for the benefit of gay Americans.

Maybe HRC didn't receive any marching orders this week from Howard Deans and other Democratic Party bosses on all this, and that's their excuse for inaction.

Regardless of HRC sitting on its hands, if you're interested in signing the PFAW petition, go here.

(Nuttier than peanut butter: David Benkof, formerly David Bianco. Photo credit: Rex Wockner.)

Gays Defend Marriage: Whitest Web Site Ever?

Earlier this week, Pam Spaulding reported on her web site that David Benkof was shutting down his Gays Defend Marriage web site.

Benkof, the genuinely nutty and confused gay man devoted to single-handedly stopping gay marriage by pathologizing and misrepresenting the morals and sexuality of his brethren, through inaccurate opinion columns in daily papers such as the SF Chronicle and NY Post, was also taken to task for his lie by Wayne Besen and his Truth Wins Out site.

About the closure of Benkof's site, Spaulding said:

I'm not quite sure what to make of this development, because David Benkof, advocate of "LGBT folks who support marriage as the union of husband and wife," has announced that he's shutting his blog down and seems to reject the push for Prop 8 in California (but still isn't sure whether he'd vote for it?!).

I'm not sure whether to laugh or feel sorry for the man, but I'm glad he's not tossing his support to the California marriage amendment effort.

And it appears Benkof has kept his promise to shutter his misguided site, while also going one step further in erasing his hatred of his gay brothers and sisters.

The Gays Defending Marriage opening page, and all the other pages there that I had bookmarked, are indeed gone from the web, but what strikes me as most curious is that instead of getting a dead-link and message saying "Server Not Found," you open totally white pages.

Wanna see his last post? It's gone, but check out the polar bear in a blizzard whiteness that remains.

How about glancing at one of his June blog entries on the gay marriage developments in California? He's made it disappear, and now only white nothingness shows up at the link.

Knowing how much Benkof absolutely adores the limelight, don't expect to remain silent or absent from the media or web for very long. And count your blessings we have bloggers Spaulding and Besen, and other fine LGBT bloggers, keeping track of Benkof and challenging his obnoxious nonsense.

Gay Scholar Researching HIV Ads;
Requests My Help?

Okay, so I spaced off the original message from Thomas Strong because it seems so far-fetched for a guy like him to be looking for a critic like me to help with scholarly research.

He's contacted me again and will be at tonight's forum on social marketing targeting gays in San Francisco, and he wants to chat in-depth after the meeting. I'm growing more interested in what he has to say about the ads and their impact on gay live, than in trying to persuade him my criticism, and suggestions for better campaigns, should be part of his research.

It's just so heartening to know a real smarty-pants, who as far as I know, is not or has not been employed by or deeply connected to the AIDS industry in San Francisco, is going to be looking at and evaluating the social marketing campaigns.

I sure hope Thomas Strong speaks during public comment tonight. Here's his email to me today:

Hi Again,

Thanks for your message. I append below my original inquiry. I'm a US scholar currently based at the University of Helsinki, but I will be moving to Dublin in August to take up a position at NUI Maynooth beginning this fall. I will be sure to introduce myself to you this evening.

Dear Michael Petrelis,

I am a US cultural anthropologist currently based at the University of Helsinki (in Finland). I am also an avid reader of your blog. While my principle research has been in Papua New Guinea, I am currently starting up new long-term work on HIV in gay male communities in the US (and potentially, in gay communities elsewhere). One aspect of this research concerns ‘social marketing’ campaigns targeting gay men, and more generally, the way in which the gay male community is represented in relation to HIV today in gay and mainstream media, and in the ‘official’ discourse of public health.

I have found your criticisms of many of these campaigns, from their ‘messaging’ to the way in which they are funded and administered, to be both trenchant and unique and I thank you for your on-going writing about this and other subjects.

Right now I am at the very early stages of what I anticipate will be a long-term commitment and research project. I am calling the project ‘Positive Publics.’ I am committed to imagining a social future with HIV in it: as a vaccine or a cure continues to elude us, even as medications prolong life, this has become a more vital problem than ever. Positive Publics aims to uncover ways in which people in diverse settings are imagining and creating such a future.
An aspect of this will be to critique ‘official’ discourse about HIV -- discourse that I think is sometimes troubling for reasons you have been assiduously tracking.

I hope to describe and analyze histories of specific campaigns and debates about them, such as the ‘serosorting’ campaign, ‘HIV stops with me,’ and so on.
I lived for 10 years in San Francisco, from 1996 to 2006, and I vividly remember many of these discussions. I will be in San Francisco from July 8 to August 4 this year to begin sketching out this research, to make some contacts and to conduct some initial interviews. I would very much like to meet with you to hear more about your activism and writing and to learn more about your criticisms of some of the ways in which gay men are represented (and spoken to) today.

Would you be willing to meet with me and perhaps to be interviewed? I hasten to add that like all professional anthropologists, I am bound by certain guidelines with respect to research. Among these is the proviso that if you would like to speak confidentially or anonymously, I am happy to abide by that wish.

My contact information is provided here. I am also an avid user of Skype under the screen-name “Thomas Strong,” please feel free to contact me that way. I might add a personal note. My fiancee, Andrew Leavitt, fondly remembers your inspiring example of street activism in Portland, Oregon, the night that Measure 8 passed. I hope to hear from you soon.

Sincerely yours,
Thomas Strong, Ph.D.

Staley: Sullivan, Petrelis Not Outraged
Over CDC Gay HIV stats

My queer activist HIV poz brother Peter Staley has started a blog over at the Poz.com site, and one of his entries concerns new HIV figures from the CDC in June, that didn't spark outrage. Let's look at some of his points, which I'll respond to:

I kept looking for a response, from anyone. How about an editorial in a major newspaper? How about an editorial in the gay press? How about the blogosphere?

Never mind a major newspaper or a gay publication getting outraged, both of which have seen their reach and influence diminish in recent years, or a response from the blogosphere. Peter should be asking the billion-dollar plus HIV prevention mafia members to make a response. But even outrage from AIDS Inc may not mobilize gay men in the way Peter wants. I don't know why he wants or thinks an outraged response will do anything to avert new HIV infections.

Andrew Sullivan and Michael Petrelis, two of my favorite gay bloggers, didn’t say a thing about the new stats. They usually post long entries whenever they find a one year “trend” pointing to possible good news on HIV infections in gay men. I guess the latest news has them so stunned they don’t know what to say about it. Michael actually wrote an entry about the CDC’s press release, but didn’t list a single statistic from it. Instead, he thought it was much more important to know if the epidemiologist announcing the news was gay or not.

Peter contradicts himself by first saying I have not weighed in on the stats, but later mentions I did write something, but didn't delve into the CDC stats. That contradiction aside, he should give me some credit for at least being one activist who still does pay attention to such numbers.

I'm not stunned by the CDC latest lame effort to capture the attention of the general American population and the parTying gay community in the days before massive pride parades. The feds have lousy timing to blame for the lack of outraged, or coordinated response from AIDS groups.

As dependable as a Philip Glass composition, the CDC keeps claiming higher rates of new HIV infections, which may be true, but putting out the stats at the worst time of the gay calendar, guarantees a yawn.

Peter might be better off lobbying the CDC to release their annual scary gay HIV stats in January or February, when the community's attention is more sober and receptive to bad news.

Oh wait, I found something on Towleroad.com – an eighteen word bullet in a long list of Andy Towle’s daily dish. It was ten bullets below the lead about “American Gladiators' first-ever gay contestant.” (To be fair, all these bloggers write extensively about AIDS issues – I’m just trying to push them a little to tackle the “gays behaving badly” headlines as well).

Good for Peter for pushing bloggers who confront AIDS issues, but he's missing the much bigger targets who should be outraged -- AIDS service organizations and the CDC, the biggest funder of prevention campaigns and ads in the country, not to mention gay political organizations.

I looked at the sites for AmFAR, SF AIDS Foundation, Stop AIDS Project, SF DPH, and didn't see any statements of outrage from the HIV nonprofit world, except in the newspaper.

I guess the executives of the groups were also out having a good time during pride week. We wouldn't want the six-figure salaried folks breaking into a sweat over the new stats, right? Heck, even if they did say something of substance, it would probably entail asking for more federal money for their failing programs.

So what’s the big news? On June 27th, the CDC released stats showing that the number of young gay men being newly diagnosed with HIV infection is rising by 12 percent a year. The news was big enough for front section articles in both the Washington Post and New York Times. But I guess most readers, including many gay men, just read it and turned the page.

I've lived through too many surges, second-waves, third second-waves, spikes of HIV stats, etc., to get upset over just another alarmist CDC report about supposed rising infections amongst gays.

What did Peter want gay WaPo and NYT readers to do after reading the articles? Plan a march on the CDC in Atlanta? Demand their HIV prevention groups finally mount and maintain a long-term social marketing campaign promoting the anal condom for male-on-male butt sex, a campaign that also respects the rectum? Write a letter to the editor or a member of congress?

Ever since the early years of the AIDS crisis, our government has basically told the gay community “sorry, you’re on your own.” Homophobes in power, like Reagan and Helms and a complicit Congress, made sure that the CDC could never fund effective HIV prevention campaigns targeting gay men (a version of Helms’ “No Promo Homo” amendment is still ensconced in the CDC’s HIV Content Guidelines).

Bravo for Peter for reminding me about that awful amendment, but the fact that it's still dictating CDC' s HIV programs brings me back to a central point. What have the well-funded AIDS and gay rights groups done, with their Democratic Party and moderate GOP political allies, to undo that Helms amendment's lingering stench?

I'm not unpacking anymore of Peter's blog entry, because I think I've made my basic points and I want to move on to something that will hopefully outrage him, and other AIDS advocates.

I propose we accept that HIV prevention is continuing to be a huge failure, despite millions and millions of public dollars thrown at the problem, and instead of wasting those funds on prevention that ain't working, move the dollars into treatment for HIV poz people.

It may be more prudent and effective at stopping new HIV infections, if we put more poz people on AIDS cocktails and into continuous health care, with lots of monitoring blood tests, bring their HIV viral loads down to undetectable, and very unlikely to transmit the virus to uninfected sexual partners. And let's not overlook the HIV poz community on its own, without any funding or assistance from AIDS Inc or the CDC, brought down HIV infections in San Francisco through sero-sorting.

HIV is here to stay and I'm not joining Peter's chorus demanding outrage and a steady crisis mentality deciding HIV prevention issues, when annual CDC stats come out. Treatment will probably so much more to control and prevent new infections in the USA than any loud outrage from gay bloggers.

But in the end, I'm grateful Peter has raised the issues he did on his new Poz.com blog.

(Craig Shniderman preparing food for clients of Food and Friends. Photo credit: Henry Linser, Washington Blade.)

WPost: AIDS Exec Gets 4% Pay Raise;
Cuts Food and Supplements to Patients

The story about Craig Shniderman, the very nicely compensated executive director of Food and Friends, which began in June with a few entries on this blog and excellent stories in the Washington Blade, has picked up steam today thanks to a terrific article on the front-page of the metro section of the Washington Post.

From Philip Rucker's story in the Post this morning:

The cuts come as the District-based charity is facing criticism from some donors, AIDS activists and nonprofit group watchdogs, who say the compensation awarded to the group's longtime chief is too high.

Food & Friends paid Executive Director Craig M. Shniderman $357,447 in salary and benefits last year, and Shniderman, 60, said his salary has increased 4 percent this year. "Food & Friends compensates all of the staff appropriately, and that compensation is not, shall we say, fluctuated according to the momentary circumstances," he said . . .

"[Schniderman's compensation] appears excessive in relation to other nonprofits in related fields," said Daniel Borochoff, president of the American Institute of Philanthropy . . .

"This is way out of whack, and the board really ought to have a heart-to-heart conversation with him," said Doug White, a nonprofit management adviser and author of "Charity on Trial," who reviewed the group's records at The Post's request.

So far, more than 50 comments have been left on the comments page for this story, and an overwhelming majority of the messages are critical of Shniderman's compensation.

The Post story has also generated interest from the Washington Grantmakers Daily, a blog devoted to tracking nonprofits in the DC area:

How much should a nonprofit executive be paid? I don’t know the answer, but I do know it’s not a fun day to be Food & Friends’ CEO or on the F&F board of directors (WaPo, 7/17). ”Out of line” executive compensation, and what one blogger called the ”strong CEO/weak board syndrome,” were hot topics about nine months ago, after the release of the 33 Principles for Good Governance and Ethical Practice for nonprofits, which didn’t address those issues.

Washington's alternative weekly, the City Paper, also weighed in today the Post article and Shniderman's very comfy salary. With the City Paper writing on the Food and Friends' director's greed, the compensation story has now appeared in the gay, mainstream corporate and alternative weekly press, showing that coverage of AIDS nonprofits and important accountability issues cuts across many political and news media boundaries.

Excerpted from the City Paper's blog:

Is it me? Were you shocked over the Food & Friends honcho’s salary revealed in today’s Post? Executive Director Craig M. Shniderman makes $357,447 . . .

Schniderman makes more than most if not all agency heads in the city. And he runs a non-profit. That simply feeds people . . .

Schniderman’s defense to the paper of record: His salary increased just 4 percent this year. So let me get this straight. He’s been making this huge salary for a couple years now. That’s not much of a defense.

Hey, Craig Shniderman and the board of directors at his fiefdom: The City Paper hits the nail on the head. Your defense for the $357,000 compensation is extremely weak. Do the smart thing. Reconsider cutting Craig's salary, an undoing the cuts in food to people with AIDS and other illnesses, if only because it would generate some good P.R. for your organization, and it can use some positive media coverage.

SF Homo HIV Hell Has Frozen Over

If there was one thing you could always count from AIDS Inc in San Francisco, it was that it would be a cold day in hell before I was invited to be on a panel at community forum on anything to do with HIV prevention or the clutter of social marketing campaigns assaulting homosexuals.

Well, hell has frozen over and I'm sharpening my ice skates. There will be an "Edge Talk" sponsored by member organizations of AIDS Inc on Thursday starting 6:30 PM at the community center on Market Street, and I'm on the panel.

As one can well imagine, after years of calling for dismantling offensive and incompetent HIV prevention agencies and DPH programs, firing epidemiologists caught manipulating stats, forcing the CDC to audit wasteful community-based groups, and offering much criticism, sometimes loudly, at public meetings for the gay community, I'm not the first, or twelfth, on anyone's list in this town when deciding on official speakers at forums.

The topic is social marketing and good gay health, and sure, it's shocking this leading critic of HIV prevention mafiosi has been invited to speak and be a panel member, the main perpetrator of stigmatizing and ineffectual social ad campaigns, Less Pappas of Better World Advertising agency, is not on the panel.

I hope the discussion, free of Pappas' self-serving domination of earlier forums where he refused to entertain notions that the criticism against his agency's work must be confronted and changed, is a discussion challenging the fundamental theory that social marketing is a necessary component to healthy gay wellness.

The moderator of Thursday's meeting is Michael Scarce, who used to work at the Stop AIDS Project. He's penned an op-ed about gay health in the current Bay Area Reporter. His column is well worth reading in full, and I say that even though I strongly disagree with his contention that nonprofits and local health departments are worthy partners in creating gay health policies free of hysteria, provocation and stigmatizing messages. I view those agencies more as part of the problem than any solution and think the best thing AIDS Inc could do is give us a break from their propaganda.

Here's some of Scarce's BAR piece:

This is why several organizations and community members are collaborating to produce "EdgeTalk: Queer Men's Wellness" – a series of monthly community forums on "edgy" topics related to the health of gay, bi, and trans men. I know what you're thinking: "Yawn – another workshop, another panel discussion – Zzzzzzz ..." But the EdgeTalk series, like our health movement, involves more than just a laundry list of current issues or one-shot events. These forums offer an opportunity to meet others who want to transform gay men's health by taking control of our own wellness, on our own terms.

It has become clear that a gay men's health movement can only emerge from the ground up. Government health agencies and community organizations can play a role as partners, but they cannot single-handedly accomplish what we need: a radical and sustainable shift in how we approach gay men's health. The gay men's health movement will not manifest without a visible and public expression of need from a critical mass of community members.

One clear hurdle is to go beyond addressing gay men's health primarily through a lens of HIV prevention. This approach is inherently limited and problematic: it draws on a disease model driven by crisis and fear, and it foregrounds individual deficits by blaming and shaming rather than affirming collective assets such as our resilience and innovation. The prioritizing of HIV above all other health concerns for our entire community, often in contradiction to how we live and love, itself poses a unique threat to our health.

Click here for more info on the town hall meeting on July 17. And I hope to see you there and hear your opinion on gay social marketing targeting our eyeballs.