LGBTQ Breaking News Service

An HIV-infected T-cell – Photo: NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), via Wikimedia.

It was an article by Larry Kramer, published in the New York Native in 1983, that awoke Paul Kawata to the threat of HIV.

While Kawata was already aware of a mysterious disease that was largely claiming the lives of gay men, Kramer’s opening words resonated with him: “If this article doesn’t scare the shit out of you, we’re in real trouble. If this article doesn’t rouse you to anger, fury, rage, and action, gay men may have no future on this earth.”

“With that opening line, Larry awoke my activism and the need for the community to fight,” says Kawata, now the executive director of NMAC, the organization dedicated to combating HIV among vulnerable communities, particularly communities of color, by fighting for health equity and racial justice in health care.

“In those early days, it was absolutely frightening,” Kawata recalls. “While we thought we knew how HIV was transmitted, there were no definite scientific studies yet. And so there were rumors about poppers and there were rumors about all these different ways that you could or could not catch HIV. And the only thing that we saw back then was the fact that our friends were getting sick and dying, and they were dying so fast.

“It was kind of unbelievable. When I look back and think about how you could see some person one day, and, a month later, they were dead. I was a young gay man then. I knew nothing about death. I knew nothing about sickness. All I knew was that somebody I loved was in trouble,” Kawata adds, referring to his former partner, who died from the disease before modern-day treatments were ready.

For Daniel Bruner, the awakening came much earlier, when he read a story in The New York Times about the emergence of mysterious illnesses affecting gay men in Los Angeles and New York. 

“I remember having just moved to the D.C. area with my partner at that time, and reading that story, and looking at each other and saying, ‘Oh my God, we don’t even want to think about what this might be,’” says the senior director of policy at the Whitman-Walker Institute, the federally-qualified health center that specializes in HIV- and LGBTQ-specific care.

“In the very early days, just from the perspective of the general population, as well as gay men in the circles I was win, people were completely terrified. I remember people going through phases where everyone stopped hugging and everyone stopped kissing each other hello, and people were very careful about sharing a water glass or sharing a beer or sharing a glass of wine or anything,” Bruner adds. “There was just a lot of fear and a lot of physical separation…. There was no cure, certainly, and there was no really effective treatment at all. So it was a time of a lot of uncertainty and a lot of fear.”

Joanne Sincero primarily learned about HIV and AIDS through her activism in a group called OUT, which advocated for fast-tracking HIV treatments through the FDA. But even though much of the coverage of the virus focused on gay men in the early days of the epidemic, Sincero knew from her personal interactions with various communities that HIV was spreading beyond the LGBTQ community to other vulnerable groups.

Sincero, now the wellness coordinator at Whitman-Walker Health, recalls how, after joining Whitman-Walker’s team in 1994, she would have to figure out contingencies in case some of the people with HIV in her day treatment program passed away.

“We had the constant challenge of caring for, honoring people’s lives, their stories. Yet while you were losing people right before your eyes — someone died every week — we tried to figure out how we could manage to provide care without making people feel like they were going to be next,” she recalls. “At the time, there were very few treatments, and some of them were really toxic for people. We had a nap room as part of our program because people couldn’t even make it through a day without having to rest and lie down.

“And yet there was also a sense that people wanted to live the last bit of their lives. I remember taking someone to the Air and Space Museum, to the planetarium, where you can lie back and look up at the stars, and this person was so ill that I would listen for every breath as he breathed, like, ‘Oh, my God, this is going to be the last breath?’

“The only way you could bear it was that you knew that the work was still there and you had to keep going because there were people who were depending on us, depending on each other to carry on. So having a supportive community kind of normalized things for people and gave them a sense that they could still go on and do stuff and still get something out of life, even though they didn’t know how much time they had left,” she adds.

For those suffering from the disease, true relief didn’t come until the mid-1990s, after Dr. David Ho released his seminal study of protease inhibitors and health care professionals realized that they had found a treatment that would keep people with HIV alive.

“I look back on those years between 1996 and 2000 and it was a complete shift in everything that we were doing. Up until then, almost all of our work was just about helping people die with dignity. And all of a sudden, around ’96, ’97, in ’98, we got to learn how to have people live with dignity,” says Kawata.

“Around 2008 is when we got the studies that showed that if you had an undetectable viral load, you couldn’t pass the virus to someone,” he adds. “And that became the next revolution, because all of a sudden we realized that not only could we save an individual’s life, but we could also save the community’s life if they could become undetectable. And so we had a clear pathway for how to end the epidemic.”

As a result of those advances in treatment and prevention, HIV has become less of a terminal disease and more of a long-term manageable health condition.

“The changes in particular, around 1995 and 1996, were stunning for those of us who were helping people and living with the disease in the community at the time,” notes Bruner. “I was doing a lot of volunteer legal work for a couple of Whitman-Walker clients with the Legal Services Department. And I had a client whose insurance plan would not cover her medications and we were negotiating with the carrier and the employer and, you know, looking into legal action. 

“I talked to my client’s doctor at the time and the doctor told me, ‘If you’re going to do something for this individual, you need to do it quickly, because she is declining and she likely will not be alive a year from now.’ And we got the insurance company to reverse course and cover her meds. So she got on meds right away. And about a year or so after that, I got a notice of her impending marriage. So that’s kind of how transformative it was at that particular time.”

The HIV epidemic took an enormous toll, not only on the LGBTQ community, but on society as a whole and the District of Columbia in particular. It’s something that Kawata particularly thinks of when he reflects on his life, given the designation he bears as the last remaining member, out of 33 original co-founders, of the National Association of People Living with AIDS.

“I will be very honest and say that HIV fucked me up,” Kawata says. “I am a part of a generation of people whose lives were completely turned around and lived through a trauma that is almost unspeakable because there was so much stigma and silence around it. And so, while I am proud of the work that I’ve accomplished, I know that it came at a cost. I’m growing old as a gay man, and all the people that I came up with are dead, and I am alone with my memories of these amazing people. There are moments in my life when I know that those angels are with me every step of the way. And there are moments in my life when I know that it feels too much of a burden to carry on the legacy and their dreams.”

Kawata also thinks of the artists, creative professionals, and changemakers who might have had a positive impact on society had they not passed away too early from AIDS-related causes.

“I look back at some of these extraordinary figures: Rudolph Nureyev, Halston, and I wonder ‘What would have happened to Nureyev’s career and how would he have been in the world if he had survived? How would Halston have changed the world?’” he says.

“There are so many voices that are gone too soon and had so much more to give to this world,” says Kawata. “And so beyond the personal loss, the epidemic marks a huge loss to society of talent and the vision and ability that I don’t think we fully understand yet, because there is this generation that could have, should have, would have changed the world. I just look at the loss of creativity and love and political power, and it makes me profoundly sad.”

Sincero and Bruner note one of the effects of the HIV epidemic has been that it’s made many more people more aware of the social determinants of health and of the importance of racial equity in fighting the epidemic, which disproportionately impacts some communities over others.

Looking toward the future, advocates hope that the rapid manner in which researchers were able to develop a vaccine for COVID-19 will inform efforts to develop an HIV vaccine.

“I’d never heard of an RNA vaccine until this last year. And I will be honest, I had the same kind of cynical sense of what was possible. It seemed like we had been fighting for an HIV vaccine forever and not making much progress. And yet I would be foolish to not acknowledge what has been extraordinary around the COVID vaccine,” notes Kawata. 

“I had an opportunity to talk to some of the scientists who work on the COVID vaccine. And they’ve all said to me, ‘You’re next.’ And so I don’t know if it’s pollyannaish or not. What I know is that people who are doing work on this RNA vaccine have said that there is a great possibility that this mechanism can be used for many other diseases that we are facing. And so my hope is that we will [eventually] have an HIV vaccine.”

Sincero, too, marvels at how quickly a vaccine for COVID was developed and the implications that might hold for HIV.

“Obviously, it’s a different virus, but considering the long hunt for an HIV vaccine, in one sense, it made me feel hopeful, where maybe they’ve learned some other things that could be applicable to HIV,” she says. “And in another sense, I thought, ‘Wow, it just shows how entrenched and how wily this virus is.’”

On the other hand, Sincero says what is currently known about HIV, including the use of treatment as prevention (TasP), offers its own hope for the future. 

“A vaccine would obviously be a great prevention tool. But we already have some fantastic ones like PrEP, which is 99% effective,” she notes. 

She also has concerns about the need for support services for people who are already infected if a vaccine is developed. 

“I’ve worked with a lot of people who I’ve known for 20 years who are living with this virus. And in some sense, it’s been a struggle for them because they feel like it’s gotten lost a bit, that they’ve kind of taken a back seat — necessarily so — as AIDS service organizations evolved into community health centers,” Sincero says. “And so I think we have to remember that social connection is one of the most important parts of health care. It’s obviously not just maintaining your medical regimen and taking your pills. So in that sense, I hope there continue to be places for people to connect, to keep those social ties.”

Kawata says that, despite the HIV epidemic’s tremendous toll in terms of lives lost, it also had some effects that were ultimately positive and beneficial to the larger LGBTQ community.

“So I’m about to say something that some people may consider heresy: I think the HIV movement woke up the LGBTQ movement in a way that we will never fully understand,” he says. “All of a sudden, all of these folks who were living in their closets, in a world that hated them, had to stand up and say, ‘I need your help.’ And I think what it did is it humanized gay men to a larger world in a way that we hadn’t been humanized. It woke up a community to say ‘We deserve the same rights as anybody else.’

“And so in the larger context, I think what the epidemic did was it became the political touchstone for the LGBTQ movement to then go on to look at marriage, to look at lived equality, to look at all these other fights,” Kawata adds.

“I think the second thing that the epidemic did was it helped us to understand that we were everywhere, because HIV was everywhere. It wasn’t just in New York and San Francisco or L.A., it was Omaha. I did a meeting with the ‘Ladies who Lunch’ in Omaha. And it was extraordinary to me to watch them try to grapple with the fact that all of a sudden the people that they loved, with whom they really never talked about their sexuality, were getting sick and they wanted to do something. And so I think that it created a sense of: who are your friends? And the people who stood with us are the people that we owe the world to.”

Kawata notes that the parameters of the fight against HIV have shifted to a question of health care access.

“HIV now is looking for racial equity in health, it is asking the question of ‘Can we as a society address the racism that is perpetuating an epidemic?’ When you look at Black Lives Matter and look at the injustices that are happening, we are recognizing that HIV/AIDS is part of that struggle, that the epidemic continues to disproportionately impact black and brown communities. And we have to look at what racial justice means if we’re ever going to end HIV.”

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June 4, 2021

Dr. Tyler TerMeer, the chief executive officer of Cascade AIDS Project, began his remarks to the Board of County Commissioners Thursday with a brief history lesson.

“On a summer night in 1969, a small bar in Greenwich Village was packed wall to wall with drag queens, gay men, lesbians, bisexual, transgender, and queer people of all colors. They were having the time of their lives when police came into the bar, announced a raid, and began checking IDs and making arrests.”

For five nights, brave individuals rose up at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, solidifying a turning-point moment for LGBT rights in the United States. 

“Now, five decades later we are continuing their fight,” he said.

In addition to recounting the events at Stonewall, Dr. TerMeer spoke about his own experience as a Black queer man. Though the path toward equality has been difficult and dangerous for those in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, Asexual and Two-spirit (LGBTQIA2S+) community, Dr. TerMeer’s final message was one of hope.

“If I’ve learned anything in my 17 years living with HIV and working in the field of LGBTQIA2S+ rights, it is that we are a resilient people,” he said. “Even in our darkest days, we find ways to move forward, to understand the landscape before us, set new priorities, stand strong and ground ourselves as we continue to build resilience in the world in front of us.” 

Co-sponsored by Commissioners Jessica Vega Pederson and Sharon Meieran, the Board’s proclamation recognized June as Pride Month in Multnomah County and reaffirmed the County’s commitment to serving the LGBTQIA2S+ community and addressing the multiple types of oppression and harm that members of this community face. 

“Multnomah County acknowledges and affirms a commitment to address disproportionate economic and health outcomes and barriers to essential resources and services this community experiences,” the proclamation reads.

“We recognize that BIPOC and transgender members of this community experience bias and discrimination in our system at higher rates due to the intersections of racism, misogyny, transphobia, and homophobia. Multnomah County remains committed to deconstructing systemic racism, transphobia, and homophobia by supporting culturally specific and community led organizations, programs, initiatives, and services.”

This year’s Pride Month marks the 51st march on Christopher Street, a day of liberation one year after the riots at the Stonewall Inn, to commemorate community members standing up against state-sanctioned oppression against the LGBTQIA2S+ community. Multnomah County has supported Pride Month celebrations since 1992, led by employees who are members of the community. 

Commissioner Meieran said that the community has been particularly impacted this year because many social and cultural hubs that serve LGBTQIA2S+ people have been closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and explained why the work is so crucial to her personally.

“This work matters to me in so many ways: as a community member, as a physician, as a commissioner, and most importantly, as the mother of two awesome, amazing, queer trans children who have taught me so much about gender identity and love,” she said.

Several others joined the board members and Dr. TerMeer at the proclamation reading, including Multnomah County’s Chief Diversity and Equity Officer Ben Duncan and Debra Porta, the executive director of Pride Northwest. Virginia Luka, a senior program specialist for the County’s Public Health Division, also spoke.

In his statement before the proclamation, Duncan underscored the work done by LGBTQIA2S+ members in the County, acknowledging that many “have to do so much of their work so fully in their identity.”

“We know we have a long way to go. We all also recognize that rainbow flags and proclamations don’t equal justice,” Duncan said. “As we do our work to implement steps and practices of inclusively leading with race, it’s important that we continue to invest both internally in our workforce equity efforts and externally in intersectional work.”

Porta thanked the County for continuing to uphold their commitment to the LGBTQIA2S+ community.

“We have the potential benefit here of being able to take [LGBTQIA2S+ rights] for granted in Multnomah County, and we do so to our own detriment,” she said.

“To know that Multnomah County did not choose to minimize and end their recognition this year, when there is so much other stuff that needs to be done, is important. It’s an important part of moving the work forward.” 

Luka drew upon her personal life to highlight the intersection of race and gender while sharing about the unique experiences of queer, transgender Pacific Islanders (QTPI) like herself.

“Queer and trans spaces tend to center around the white queer and trans experience, while Pacific Islander communities can come from homophobic and transphobic backgrounds because of conservative religious practices,” she said. “So while these intersecting experiences of oppression have been challenging to navigate, QTPIs still carry our love for our families by organizing community, affirming our entire, whole identities.”

Luka encouraged greater investment in institutions that preserve Pacific Islander histories and teach about the roles queer and trans Pacific Islanders played in their communities before colonization so that the QTPI community can “understand who we are and where we’re going from here, and help us in healing.” She also called for the County and the State to adopt the Race, Ethnicity, Language and Disability (REALD) and Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) classifications as standard when collecting data to best observe community needs. 

“If we don’t know who is here and their authentic experiences, we’ll never be able to fully help with their challenges,” she said. “We would never be able to fully recognize their strength and resiliency. 

Before reading the proclamation, Commissioner Vega Pederson thanked those who shared, stating that it has been her honor to sponsor the Board’s annual Pride Month proclamation for four years. Vega Pederson also extended her appreciation to all of the LGBTQIA2+ employees of Multnomah County who work to serve and improve the lives of the community.

“Your presence and your whole self makes our organization and our community a stronger home for us all,” she said. “Pride itself is a symbol of resiliency. It was born in a riot against police brutality and state-sanctioned oppression. Through the decades the LGBTQ+ community has demonstrated its resiliency and strength by supporting one another even when no one else would.”

Chair Deborah Kafoury added her thanks to all the presenters and for all that they do to serve Multnomah County. She also recognized that the resilience of the LGBTQIA2S+ community developed out of necessity in the face of profound injustices and harm. 

“The LGBTQIA2S+ community has always been one of resilience. But even during a celebratory season like this, I do think it’s important for all of us to remember that that resilience was forged in and born out of both systemic and interpersonal oppression, harm and pain,” she said.

“But the ways in which that resilience showed up — particularly in mutual networks of love, acceptance, support and joy — has saved countless lives over the years, and I know it was especially critical over this last year as members of this community faced numerous challenges. I am proud to be a part of today’s proclamation and the work the County is doing and is committed to continuing.”

While two bills regarding health care for transgender and intersex individuals were tabled this year in light of limited support, a bevy of LGBTQ legislation is advancing in the California Legislature. The package of 11 bills survived the legislative process in their house of origin and is now being taken up by the other chamber.

Gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) opted to make his Equitable and Inclusive UC Healthcare Act into a two-year bill in late May when it became clear it could not be passed this year. His Senate Bill 379 seeks to ensure that the University of California only contracts with facilities that allow the UC staff in those facilities to provide gender-affirming and reproductive health care.

In early April Wiener had also put on the back burner this legislative cycle his SB 225, known as the Bodily Autonomy, Dignity and Choice Act, that aims to postpone elective surgery on intersex children until they are 12 years of age and can take part in making such a medical decision. Wiener and intersex advocates have attempted to get such a law passed since 2019 and will now see if it makes sense to try to revive SB 225 in the legislative session that begins next January.

For this legislative session lawmakers had until June 4 to see their legislation survive floor votes in either the Assembly or Senate. The bills must now be passed by the other chamber and sent to the governor’s desk for signage by September 10.

Moving forward this year are a number of trans-focused bills, such as Assembly Bill 439 that would allow for the option of nonbinary as the gender identity on death certificates. Authored by Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer-Kahan (D-Orinda), the bill is scheduled for a vote Wednesday, June 9, before the Senate Health Committee.

A bill aimed at protecting the privacy rights of people receiving sensitive health care services, such as gender-affirming care, AB 1184, is to be taken up by the Senate’s judiciary and health committees. It is one of two trans rights bills Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco) is carrying this year.

His AB 245, which would prohibit public universities from deadnaming trans and nonbinary students on their diplomas and academic records, is awaiting votes before the Senate education and judiciary committees.

“Making sure college records reflect a student’s name is a no-brainer,” stated Chiu. “Transgender and nonbinary students face many challenges, and this simple policy will ensure they have one less barrier to overcome.”

AB 218, which is aimed at allowing Californians to update their marriage certificates and the birth certificates of their children to accurately reflect their legal name and gender, made it out of the Assembly and was sent to the Senate June 1. Gay freshman Assemblyman Chris Ward (D-San Diego) revived the legislation after Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed similar legislation last fall due to concerns it would inadvertently out transgender and nonbinary individuals.

As the B.A.R. reported at the time, it was only once the previous bill, authored by lesbian former state Senator Cathleen Galgiani (D-Stockton), had reached Newsom’s desk that state health officials flagged a problem with its implementation they said could result in individuals who sought to update certain records publicly revealing they had transitioned their gender.

With his AB 218, Ward is aiming to allow transgender people to request that their old marriage certificates and the birth certificates of their children with inaccurate information about their gender identity be sealed and have new documents issued. It would be similar to current state law that allows such a person’s old birth certificate to be sealed and a new one issued as an original to both protect the person’s privacy and respect their identity, as noted in the legislative analysis of the bill.

Another bill having to do with gender identity is SB 272 authored by gay state Senator John Laird (D- Santa Cruz), which is now being heard in the Assembly. It will update “archaic gender-specific pronouns” used in the state’s vehicle code to refer to the California Highway Patrol commissioner, now led by a woman, as well as throughout the state’s insurance code.

Also making it out of the Assembly at the start of Pride Month was gay Assemblyman Evan Low’s (D-Campbell) AB 1084, which would require retailers with 500 or more employees to remove signs for gender in toy and childcare sections, or require the retailers to provide a gender-neutral retail section for the items. In a compromise to move the bill forward, Low and co-author Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia (D-Bell Gardens) agreed to remove language referring to children’s clothing sections in the bill when it is taken up by the state Senate.

“We are limiting their ability to express themselves, we are limiting their ability to learn, and, really, we are limiting their ability to become the leaders that we need them to be down the road in STEM and engineering,” stated Garcia, who during the Assembly floor debate on the bill disclosed she was discouraged from playing with Lincoln Logs as a girl because they were considered a “boys’ toy.”

SB 357, the Safer Streets for All Act co-authored by Wiener and Assemblyman Ash Kalra (D-San Jose), passed out of the Senate June 1 and is now to be taken up by the Assembly. It would repeal California Penal Code Section 653.22, the law that criminalizes loitering for the intent to engage in sex work.

It would also allow those convicted of loitering with the intent to commit prostitution, particularly the Black women and transgender individuals often targeted under the law, to seal their records. A similar bill became law in the state of New York this year.

“Sex workers are workers, and they deserve respect and safety,” stated Wiener. “We must work toward a future where people — especially the most marginalized — aren’t criminalized because of who they are and what they look like. Anti-sex workers loitering laws are deeply pernicious, and they need to be repealed. I’m so grateful to my colleagues for understanding why this SB 357 is so necessary.”

Senator Lena A. Gonzalez’s (D-Long Beach) SB 283, aimed at strengthening the Equal Insurance HIV Act of 2020, is now before the Assembly. It would impose a prohibition as of January 1, 2023 on a life or disability insurance insurer from considering an applicant’s occupation in determining whether to require an HIV test and clarifies that limiting benefits payable for a loss caused or contributed to by HIV is allowed if it was part of the original underwriting risk. It also clarifies that the misdemeanor for willful, negligent, or malicious disclosure of HIV test results to a third party is punishable by imprisonment for a period not to exceed 364 days.

Two other bills concern older LGBTQ adults, such as Laird’s SB 258, which aims to include older people with HIV as part of the population of “greatest social need” when it comes to programs and services administered by the California Department of Aging. It is awaiting a vote before the Assembly Aging and Long-Term Care Committee.

The other bill is AB 465 by Assemblyman Adrin Nazarian (D-Van Nuys), which would require that professional fiduciaries receive LGBTQ+ cultural competency and sensitivity training during their education and licensing process. Private professional fiduciaries provide critical services to older adults and people with disabilities, from managing their clients’ daily care, housing, and medical needs to ensuring their bills are paid and managing their investments. It is to be taken up Monday, June 7, by the Senate Committee on Business, Professions and Economic Development.

Also waiting to be taken up by state Senators is AB 1041, authored by Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), that would expand the definition of “family member” for purposes of family and sick leave to allow covered workers to take time off to care for someone designated by the employee at the time of the request. It takes into account LGBTQ people’s chosen family members who aren’t biologically or legally related and other household units that don’t abide by a “nuclear family” model so that such individuals can get time off to provide health care and other assistance to their loved ones.

Equality California Executive Director-designate Tony Hoang praised lawmakers in both the Assembly and Senate for helping to advance most of the legislation that the LGBTQ statewide advocacy organization is co-sponsoring this year.

“Each and every one of these bills represents a giant leap of progress for our LGBTQ+ community — specifically trans and nonbinary folks, chosen families, people struggling with addiction and sex workers,” stated Hoang.

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