We sat down with several local authors and took a tour of a local bookbinder. And coming up sunday, well be live for in depth. Bing west joins us for three hours to answer your questions. Mr. West will talk about the many books hes written on the vietnam, iraq and afghanistan wars as well as his experience during the vietnam war and his time as assistant secretary of defense for International Security affairs during the reagan administration. Visit us at booktv. Org. Sean strub talks his about life and aids diagnosis in the 1980s. He became the first openly gay hiv positive person to run for congress. This is about an hour. [applause] very lovely, thank you so much. Thank you. I, you know, i tell people about this tour that im going on, we have 40 some events, they say, oh, my god, youre going to be so exhausted. But i love it. I really enjoy getting out and talking to people, having the kind of conversations that have been arising at some of these events already. So im going to read just for a few minutes, for five or six minutes, the prologue from the book with, and then we can go into questions and answers. Am i okay on the microphone . Okay. Youre tall. [laughter] there we go. There are so many people in this room i could go around thanking literally. Steve and carol are right here, and rink photography ive enjoyed years and years. And angus and thomas and mark and tess, and i can go over here and jean and lauren who is our managing editor at paz. The reason we never missed a deadline in terms of delivering the magazine despite our sometimes dysfunctional is Lauren Hoffman right here. My cousin who worked at pas who dropped out of college i always thought to come work for paz, basically. And all sorts of other people. And my pal, naomi, whos just an amazing pal. So a lot of what i have said at some of these other events i dont think i need to say here because i think people understand the epidemic, people in this room in a way different from some of the other places ive spoken. So i think im just going to do the proroll, read that, and prologue, read that, and then we can get into a discussion. Requires glasses. December, 1989, new york city. I am nervously sitting in a pew near the front of st. Patricks cathedral in new york. It has been years since i attended a catholic has and even longer since i took communion, but that is why im here. Looking up at the cathedrals knave, i remember the awe i felt at st. Marys in iowa city and later the anger when the church betrayed me. It is bitterly cold. Many parishioners hold hymnals in gloved hands. Theres a puddle under my pew. The hood in the church is tense, nothing at all like the droning boredom of the masses of my youth. As the minutes pass be, i think of the jesuits who taught me as a child that a good catholic acts upon the churchs social teachings, even if that means con fronting the church. My hands are trembling with the cold, my apprehension and other feelings too deep to name. Outside 4500 angry men and women have assembled packing fifth avenue chanting and waving placards that read condoms, not coffins. Fists pump the air, bull horns blare. Act up, the its coalition to up leash the aids coalition to unleash power, has an almost carnival like spirit with affinity groups such as Church Ladies for choice, the hail marys and speaking in tongues performing their protests. In act up, high camp and high seriousness are uniquely compatible. An artist named ray navarro is dressed as jesus christ, swathed in a white shroud carrying a large wooden cross over his nearskeletal shoulder. He wears a crown of thorns over his long, thinning hair. Ray will be dead in less than a year. Keith herring is there, too, in a knitted cap with a long handknitted scarf wrapped around his slender neck. He has two months left. Inside the cathedral, oconnors mass is interrupted again and again by act up protesters, they stand up and yell out their statements. My friend michael climbs on a pew and shouts, to oconnor be, aye killing us youre killing us. Another friend offers up a prayer in protest. Two boyfriends in black lengther motorcycle jackets handcuff themselves to one pew. Right after oconnor begins his homily, 30 protesters stage a diein, going lump in the center aisle. The cops, two long lines of blue onre side of the cathedral, have their moment binding wrists with plastic handcuffs and carrying the protesters away on stretchers as if theyre taking them to a hospital rather than to paddy wagons. With his homily in tatters, do oconnor sits with his held if his hands, melodramaticically trying to convey spiritual pain. Photographs of the cardinal looking tragically besieged will elicit sympathy when they appear on the front page of mondays newspapers. Act up protesters line up. When it is their turn, they make loud political pronouncements. Safe sex is moral sex. I support a womans right to choose. Condoms save lives. Soon it is my turn to receive the body and blood of christ. A small, darkskinned priest is serving my pew. His white, gold and green vestments are oversized. He hesitates briefly, his eyes fixed on the pink try angle visible on the triangle visible on the tshirt under my coat. Then he holds out the wafer and says, the body of christ. This is my moment to confront the church when instead of repeating as expected, i am to make my political statement. But i have not prepared one. When i rehearsed this moment in my mind, i imagined i when i rehearsed this moment in my mind, i imagine ifed i might break into tears or erupt in rage because no slogan, in fact, no words seemed adequate. May the lord bless the man i love who died a year ago in this week, i hear myself say. My voice begins as a tremble, but it ends strong. Police watch to see how the priest reacts. His hand jerks slightly, but e looks he in the eye and gives me the wafer. With my heart pounding, i walk back to my pew. My mind is fixed on bodies but not the body of christ. Be i think of michaels body andthe agonizing brain infection that a turned his last days into a kind of crucifixion. I think of the bodiesed of the protesters carried out on stretchers and the bodies of those chanting outside, many struggling to survive. I think of by own body, wondering how much longer it will last. Parishioners are staring at me, their faces disgusted or sympathetic or just plain stunned. Some have their heads bowed, hands press tightly in prayer like the devout at st. Marys, their faith unshakable and unwilling to brook any criticism of the church. They might be praying for us. After mass i pass through the cathedrals heavy doors into the bright sunlight, and it seems to me into the arms of my true community. I am exalted, or in a state that feels like grace. Certain that if the i am to die of aids, i will die as a fighter, not a victim. [applause] id like to i like to read that part of the book partly because it was of by far the most controversial action act up everyone undertook ever undertook. It was wildly controversial even within the organization with very spence debates all intense debates all summer long. At times it looked like it might tear the group apart. And by 10 00 monday morning, the gay mens health crisis, everybody had their press releases out condemning us, distancing themselves from what we were doing. We were very much alone. But there are a couple things id like to point out now with the perspective of almost a quarter century. Itll be a 25th anniversary this december of that action. The first is there were 110 people arrested that day. Roughly half inside the church and half were outside the church. And of those arrested inside the church, if you look at the roster of names, something becomes immediately evident because those names are a prepond be answer of names that are clearly culturally catholic. They are irish, eye l italian, polish names because those of us who grew up within the tradition of that church, even if we had left the church or church had left us, still felt some sense of a right to take our redress directly to the church. Be i never had any qualms about it. I was one of the advocates for this action from the very beginning. The names on the list outside the church are not quite so culturally catholic. So i think when people understand that the disruption of the mass be inside the church was overwhelmingly done by people who had grown up in the church i attended more than a thousand catholic masses in my life. My first Three Sisters first names are all mary because of my fathers devogues to devotion to the virgin. [laughter] an occasion for all sorts of jokes for me. I briefly thought i was going to be a priest. So i felt the church owed me the opportunity to express my anger and rage and disappointment in them. The second thing i like to point out is that that period, end of 1980s, early 1990s, marked a point of sort of peak influence of the Catholic Church in american politics. It has been on the decline ever since. Not just because of that action. I think that action was parking lot of it part of it. Part of pointing out the hypocrisy of the church, the danger of the churchs dogma particularly when theyre interfering with the Public School system and safer Sex Education. And in the way that, you know, in 19 69 the stonewall riots in new york which was the first time the Gay Community in new yorked had pushed back against the civil cold and said we werent going to take it anymore, 20 years later at st. Patricks that was the first time that we similarly pushed back against the religious cold that oppressed us cold that oppress code that oppressed us. I think historically people will see that action as amore and more important milestone. And the last thing ill say is just a little anecdote, because that is the action that ultimately got keith herring to finally start coming to act up meetings. Keith and i were born within a few weeks of each other. We moved to new york the same month. And a lot of us in act up knew keith and had been trying to get him to come to the meetings because his career was just exploding at that time, he was as hot as he could. You know, the incredible up and coming young pop artist. A number of us also knew that keith had hiv, and he was very concerned with keeping it secret because he was concerned about what would happen to his market and his collectors. He saw the speculation after andy warhol died and was really disgusted by be it, and he didnt want to create that opportunity with him. So the act up meetings on monday night, there was an older member who was on my fund raising committee, his name was sven swenson is. He was in little me, and he sang ive got your number. He used to claim that he performed the first strip tease by a male on a legitimate stage in the u. S. [laughter] in his bathroom, he had a framed thing that said swen swenson, is single sexiest performance by a man on stage she had ever seen in her experience. But swen was older than most of us, he was probably about my age today. And every night after the act up meetings on monday, he would gather all the literature, the posters, flyers, the personal testimonials u the brochures and take them to keith herring at his studio, and he sat with keith all night as keith painted. He had been working on trying to get keith to come to the act up meetings. And a few months before the st. Patricks demonstration, victor and richard designed a poster, a really wonderful poster this, you know, an effort that was pretty well known for some great posters. This one was in red and black and white, it was about this big, and it had two big images on it. The image on the left was of Cardinal Oconnor wearing the the miter, the hat that he wears. The image on the right was roughly the same shape, and it was a flattenedout, used condom. Across the top of the poster it said know your scum bags. Of. [laughter] and underneath the condom it said this one prevents aids. And so when swen took that poster and gave it to keith that night, okay, ive got to go. So thats when he started coming to the act up meetings. The power of art to mobilize advocacy. So the book starts out with me arriving in washington as a 17yearold at the dawn of biwith centennial which was a hopeful time in washington. It was right past the vietnam war, right past the watergate scandals. There was a sense of relief. Jimmy carter was running for president promising i will never lie to you. There was a whole freshman class in congress focused on reform and transparency, and it seemed like a very hopeful time where the country had narrowly averted a constitutional crisis and was going in a more progressive direction. The it wasnt until years later that we realized that was really kind of a last window closing on liberalism before the country went in a very different direction for a generation. But i came to washington to, well, my parents thought it was go to go to school at georgetown, which was true, but i got a patronage job running an elevator in the capitol. All day long i ferried congressmen and vips up and down my elevator. So i talk about that as sort of being thrust into this intimate insider view of american politics, and at that time the elevator operators and the pages were kind of like mascots. We could crawl all over the capitol. I tell going up into the dome of the capitol one night and smoking a joint and seeing all of washington laid out you know, when the senate was in session very, very late at night sometimes and the elevator operators had to stay late and we would get annoyed, like when are they going to get done, weve got something to do, wed crank up the heat in the Senate Chamber to [laughter] very effective. But at the same time, i was also dealing with my Sexual Orientation and and terrified. If theres one thing i think young people really dont understand was how terrifying the closet was back then. I think on an individual basis it it can be just as terrifying today, but the context back then was different, and the risk of coming out was, you know, everything id ever known in my life i basically had to put at risk to come out. To i described that process, and so i described that process, and then as i started to become politicized and i met all these people in washington with, powerful insiders and members of congress, and my growing discontent between my consciousness and sense of connection to a community that i didnt really find in washington. I read about it in the washington blade, and i started to find it in new york. And the people around me. You know, i remember particularly in the fall of 78 when harvey milk was assassinate ed, and reading it i remember picking up the washington star in a newspaper box and being so appalled at how the first coverage focused only on mayor moscone. It was presented as kind of an only in San Francisco kind of way. And that disturbed me. And then even when i talked with the other young politicos that id gotten to know in washington, to them it felt like it had nothing to do with their lives. This was a local municipal official at the other end of the country. It had nothing to do with the political milieu in which they were trying to build their careers. And it was just a few months later that i moved to new york. We talk about the epidemic in its earliest years, you know, were in a period when theres a lot of reflection in the early days. Were starting to see a cultural production around the early years of the epidemic, exhibits and books and films. And all of which i welcome and some of which is really wonderful. But a lot of it, and i find that a lot of people think that a aids activism began with act up. And it wasnt so. You know, Randy Schultz wrote and the band played on before act up even started. There was an incredible and vibrant aids Advocacy Movement prior to that that in some ways was more radical than act up, more radical in its ideals and what it was trying to do whereas act up was perhaps more theatrical and media friendly. So i try and convey in the book, you know, what it meant when dan turner and bob by campbell and Michael Callen and richard and phil and others met in denver in june of 1983 and hammered out this manifesto, the denver principles. And that not only was incredibly important for people with aids and how it sort of defined the selfhelp movement in creating a peertopeer Service Delivery system, but it also was the very first time in the mystery of humanity, the very first time this the history of humanity where people who shared a disease organized and asserted their right to a political voice in the Decision Making that would so profoundly affect their lives. And that is important. And it is now an ideal that has been replicated in other diseases, in other parking lots of the world. Parts of the world. What we created, you know, sometimes i hear people talk about the 80s as awful as depth and dying was, there was also something quite beautiful about it. And what was beautiful with about it was the way we were so cohesive as a community, and we were caring for each other. When someone tested positive, after the test came out their diagnosis was accepted as a collect i have responsibility. Collective responsibility. The Gay Community wrapped their arms around them and said we will get through this together. We created organizations that were very peer to peer. The boards of directors never had a meeting where they talked about them as the clients, because the clients were creating the organizations and were on the boards of directors of the organizations. And over time we have fallen away from that ideal that was so pioneering and so important. And by the way, the denver principle sort of codified this in a document. The ideals were not original, they were, essentially, that which was articulate inside Womens Health movement in the 1960s and 1970s. And a lot of those guys who wrote the depp very principles were very congressly, their political world view was shaped by feminism. That was very conscious. And they saw, they recognized, you know, how the personal, how health care was political. So we created this whole movement. We created organizations to conduct research, to deliver services, to access treatments, to support each other. And yet over time weve kind of fallen away from that, and a lot of the Service Delivery organizations have moved more towards the traditional benefactor victim model of Service Delivery. And so then when act up started and my involvement with act up is very important and, i think, was central to saving my life, but act ups activism was a little different. It wasnt about selfhelp. It wasnt about creating this for ourselves. It was about exerting pressure externally. How do we get the fda, the nih, the drug companies, the government to do what they werent doing, what they should have been doing . And that was a very different sort of activism. And ultimately, it became much more focused on the treatment activism because the treatments were starting to trickle out, you know . They were in the pipeline, we were just desperate to expedite them, you know, and waiting for the next one and trying to get it. And that was very important. But in the process, the human rights based approach to the epidemic with concerns about privacy and confidentiality, but also about patient awe topmy and about stigma autonomy and about stigma kind of got put to the side. And that is where aids activism began, was fighting that stigma. And so were kind of in a catchup phase right now where there is a renewed effort on addressing the stigma and where that has led us like the criminalization that cleeve referred to. So the book has lots of fun, juicy stuff of me, you know, peeing out a window with gore vidal and getting Tennessee Williams to sign a letter for the campaign fund, but i also hope it will sort of acquaint a lot of people with those early years of the epidemic, and there were some awfully good ideas that we could revisit and that we need today. So happy to take any questions. [applause] yes. Thinking about writing a book for quite a long time, or something that was in your thought process for a number of years before you actually put it on paper . I had been, and i had been resistant to writing about the epidemic. I very, i didnt want to write about the epidemic, you know . When my health came back and i lived out to millford where your brother was and was living in the woods, my life was different. For those of you who dont know, i at one time weighed more than 40 pounds less, my cd4 count was one, and my viral load was 3. 3 million. And you dont go through that experience without it changing your life and your values and your perspective. And i actually, when i decided i wanted to write a book, i was looking at some other issues, and i did some research and spent several years sort of working on one other topic in particular, and then it nagged at me, and i was talking to someone for a story in the new york times, a guy named mike winerip. And i was trying to convey to him what it was like in those days with somebody who doesnt know and it just becomes frustrating. And i started talking about, oh, but hes dead, hes gone, hes gone. And i kind of blurted out somebody has to be the memory, and literally as i was saying it, i was thinking, oh, my god, im one of those people. So i started to feel a sense of obligation. As time passes, there are fewer and fewer of us who were there on the front lines and are around who are able to speak firsthand. You know . In a city like San Francisco, there are more of those people, but ill tell ya, overall collectively around the country, there arent so many, and theyre fewer and fewer. And, you know, if you look at the books and films and so on about the holocaust that came out, they didnt come out in the 1940s, they didnt come out in the 1950s. It wasnt actually until the 1960s that that started to kick in. Then it geared up and sort of plateaued in the 80s and has sort of remained at a steady level. I am always sort of, you know, been very reluctant to make holocaust analogies for all sorts of reasons, but i can tell you i have an understanding of the never again cry that weve heard so much like i never thought i would. Because of what people forget and how quickly they forget it including within our own community is astonishing and terrifying to me. So i, you know, i encourage everybody to write your recollections, to make your films, to contribute to these exhibits and in time a clearer and clearer picture will emerge of what that was like and, hopefully, people will learn from it. I have noticed one thing. Cleeve and i were talking about this at dinner and just speaking specifically with gay men, with really young gay men, this is like interesting, its history. Its like the movie milk, right . Its history. With gay men of my generation, they lived it. They want to read it, theyre interested in it. But if between theres a big in between theres a big gap. Gay men in their 30s and 40ss, a lot of them have distanced themselves from the epidemic. Thats not me, thats not my life. And creating lives that dont intersect with the epidemic in n any way. And im not saying that in a blame sort of way with. I mean, its understandable in all sorts of ways, i but i think we need to recognize that because thats one of bobss in dealing with the prevention challenges we have today. Yeah. I think its great that, you know, Dallas Buyers Club is out, and, you know, for those of us that are longterm survivors, its hard to sit through, but it is an important history. And im glad that, you know, mainstream america is seeing it. And im really glad Matthew Mcconaugheys getting all the awards and jared leto. You know, the flip side is hbo just spent all this money and publicity on this new show looking, and the first two episodes, okay, two gay men filmed in San Francisco having photographic sex. Theres no mention of safe sex or condoms or anything. I was waiting for just the socalled honest, upfront conversations. It doesnt come up. Its like the point of that generation, its like something. Well, to a certain extent, thats probably reflective of reality, too, certainly for a large number of people out there which is part of the problem. Dallas buyers club, i tell everybody to support it, tell everybody to go to it. We want it to be successful, because if its successful, we know hollywood, therellmore films. It is not reflective of the movement overall, as we all know i do like to point out that i and a number of my friends are mentioned in that movie. Its the line where Matthew Mcconaughey is asked where he got the idea for it, oh, a bunch of faggots in new york did it. [laughter] yeah. [inaudible] when it comes to the questions in different locales . Youve done your presentation . The well, for the book ive just done half a dozen of them so far, but i do a fair amount of speaking op these topics on these topics anyway, and on campuses it just is astonishing. I mean, i can go to College Campuses and have the best and the brightest, and what they dont know no ones ever told them is just astonishing. Even in, you know, some really scary things. I mean, i was speaking at a school, it actually, in fact, was a catholic school, and there was one guy who was really like was all enthusiastic, and so on. We were talking and he said, well, hes negative. Good for you. He said something else, and we were talking, i said he thought because he tested negative, he would always be thing. This was a college student. Midwest of us, you know, in our 50s probably got better Sex Education in Junior High School and high school than most kids graduating from high school today. Because of the abstinenceonly education, because how School Districts are so gun shy around things that are politically contentious. Young people of color are far more likely to get abstinenceonly education which now leads to a greater rate of unwanted pregnancies and stds. But its also not very effective. You know, the fear that motivated so many of us, right, when your friends are dying all around you, that is not an effective tool for young people today. You know, the reality is the consequences of hiv infection are very different today for people who have access to health care than they were years ago. So you have to deal with the epidemic today. The shamebased and fearbased prevention messaging, i think, is actually contributing to furthering the epidemic. I dont think its helping it. You know, new York City Department of health spent threequarters of a Million Dollars creating a video called its never just hiv, and you can find it on line. It shows these young guys, all very beautiful, looking like characters out of lost or something, kind of woeful, and the message of film is if you get hiv, its not just hiv. Its hiv, its brain fog be, its anal cancer. And, yes, it can be all of those things, you know . Be i have incredibly brittle bones and am full of hardware in various parts i wasnt with born with. But a young person today, they know not everybody gets that. They know people with hiv who look just fine. And that kind of cower tactic like that, you know, its like telling somebody dont smoke a joint because two weeks later youre going to be slamming heroin, you know . They know better. And just like just say no to drugs is sort of white noise, withdraws use a condom every time is sort of white noise. Theres such a disconnect between the reality of practice and the reality of the risk and what we are telling people. And that, you know, that only leads to further infection. It doesnt slow the epidemic down at all. But these fearbased things, the new York City Department of health, we focus grouped them, and gay men loved them. Well, all right, gay men of our generation who have the sort of angst that you meet these young kids, slap em upside the head and now youre out here having all this sex and not worrying about it at all. A part that likes it for that. So the people already engaging in the desired behavior, safer behavior, they tend to respond well to that advertising because its an endorsement of what theyre doing. Yeah, youre pretty smart. The people whose behavior youre trying to change, it pushes them further and further and further away because they know its not like that. They know that youre exaggerating, youre trying to scare them. So i think theres a real problem in Sex Education in general in the messaging that is so common around the prevention programs. And then, of course, how were targeting prevention money. Twothirds of the new cases are with gay men, msm, and of the cdc funding spent on prevention, only about 3 or 2. 8 is targeted to men who have sex with men. Of the overall funds that are targeted to any community, somewhat higher. Its like 30 of those funds. But were not spending the money where the transmission, the hiv transmissions are happening. Cleeve and then this fellow here. [inaudible] aidsfree generation by 2015 . No, we cant. The end is near, we can end the epidemic. The aids conference we were talking about in 2012 where the messaging was its within our grasp. That is garbage, and presenting that lie doesnt do anything to making that happen. Could you repeat the projections you told me about at dinner . Sure. Talk about your work on the [inaudible] sure. I promised this guy a question. Get that in and then [inaudible] i just wanted to know what you feel the biggest blind spot is right now in aids activism. Because now everybodys kind of jumping on, even though they should have years ago, the stigma train. And everyone is hearing about all these rogue infebruary to haves that are out there and everyones heard the nudes stories. But what do you think is the major blind spot were just not paying attention to as activists . Okay. Let me get to that through cleeves question. A senior cdc researcher presented some data a few months ago saying at the present race of collegeage gay men today, half of them, 50 of them will have hiv by the time theyre 50. Of collegeage gay men of color, half of them will have hiv by the time they are 35. For young gay men today, it is like 1981. And its hidden, because the epidemic overall is static. About the same number of new infections every year. But the heterosexual transmission has dropped so dramatically, and the maletomale transition is increasing. And yet for the most part the Lgbt Community has abandoned the epidemic and is on to other opportunities, shall we say. And in terms of the question you were asking about the biggest gap, so the criminalization stuff, i think, comes out of a couple of things. And criminalization is broadly the inappropriate use of someones hiv status in a criminal prosecution. Right . Sometimes thats for nondisclosure before having successes, sometimes it is somebodys charged with a prostitution charge, and its made more severe, the penaltys more severe because they also have hiv, or theyre charged with an assault charge. Theres a guy in texas serving 35 years for spitting at someone. Theres a guy in new york state after serving six and a half years for spitting at someone. Now, new york state and texas dont have hivspecific statutes. Ats just an enhancement onto their assault statutes. About twothirds of the states do have these specific statutes. So some of that came out of our taking our eye off the ball in terms of the stigma and the human rights approach to the epidemic. When a lot of our own communitys leadership sort of rolled over on mandatory or fames reporting in the mid 90s, it really set the stage for this. I wrote a column about it in february of 1998, and i goback and read it and, you know, it was about mandatory name reporting leading to criminalization. So one of the biggest things that i think we are missing around stigma, first of all, i think almost all of the money spent on billboards and bus ads and Public Education campaigns in some cases that is useful in educating the public about the epidemic. It is not useful in reducing stigma. And in many cases, i believe it is making stigma worse. The, what reduces stigma is empowering the stigmatized. There is no other way to reduce stigma without empowering the staying matized. You know, when the Civil Rights Movement made such gains in the 60s, it wasnt because the white men woke up and decided they werent going to be racist. So in the early days of the epidemic when you tested positive, you were hooked up with a support group or with body positive or being alive or whatever that group. A network of other people with hiv. Thats where you learned to disclose. And, in fact, for years many praises told someone places told someone when they tested positive dont disclose until you have that network around you because disclosure can be dangerous. It is more dangerous today than it was back then, which ill get to in a second. But those networks, those organizations that provided that support were where people learned to deal with the stigma, they found support. Today got information, we got information from each other and from places like paz and other places, you know . Increasingly, someones diagnosed today, they dont think they need to get any information, you know . Theyre going to get all their information from what their doctor gives them which is generally given to them by gilead or abbott or one of the companies that makes the antiretrovirals. So i think our failure to support these and, of course, the reason the networks are gone is because the funding is gone. You know, there was a time when these things were funded, and that money is all gone. So i think its very important to restore those networks. We actually have a little bit of an effort happening around that. A few years ago the national, so of people with aids finally shut down because it had long ago stopped really being a network of people with hiv. It was principally funded by the industry and by the cdc. And that created an opportunity. So theres a new organization, its not incorporated. Its a collaborateive effort between the positive womens network, the Global Network of People Living with hiv and aids and the [inaudible] project which robert and i and lawrl and tammy and a few others founded. And so were actually, theres a level of collaboration right now that is, that i havent seen in many years. And our idea is that only that will lead ore storing funding to support these networks at a local level. I kind of got off on the networks, but thats one of my things. So the criminalization stuff, Say Something about criminalization, then well go to some more questions. If you ask someone do you think it should be or if you ask yours do you think it should be a criminal offense for someone with hiv not to disclose that fact prior to having sex with someone, right . Just honestly ask yourself that question. About twothirds of gay men respond to that question that they believe it should with a criminal offense. Now, the question i think people are answering is and by the way, the younger they are, yes, im looking at you younger people back there, the younger person is the more likely they are to think that. I think it was a university of minnesota survey, 79 of gay men believe that should be a criminal offense. The problem with that, there are all sorts of problems with that. The question people are answering is do you think a person should ever knowingly put another person at risk of harm and, no, no one should ever knowingly put another person at harm. Thats not what these statutes are about. They are generally about whether or not the person with hiv can prove they disclosed prior to having sex independent of whether theres risk, independent of whether there was any harm inflicted. So this is resulting in weve documented more than a thousand instances of when charges have been filed under hivspecific statutes. So youre seeing things like, you know, nick rhodes in iowa met a guy on line. Everybody agrees he used a condom, everybody agrees he was undetectable. He got 25 years in prison and lifetime sex offender registration. Fortunately, he was released after a year, but he still has lifetime sex offender registration. We have someone on the board in idaho, carey thomas, who used a condom. He got 30 years. Hes three years into a 30year sentence this a prison in idaho. Robert subtle, my partner in starting the project was from. Shreveport, louisiana. He was in a difficult relationship, and his partner threatened to turn him in they broke up for not having initially disclosed to him. Thats exactly what he did. Robert has to be a registered sex offender for 5015 years. His drivers license has in big red capital letters sex offender on it. And these cases are happening at a faster and faster and faster rate. So the injustice on people with hiv, its also horrific Public Health policy because you cant be prosecuted if you dont know youre positive. So its become take the test and risk arrest. These laws create an illusion of safety for people who are negative or dont know their hiv status, says its somebody elses job to protect you. Its really an arrogance thinking that its the rest of the worlds job to protect your hiv negative status. The hivspecific statutes are, in my view, the most extreme manifestation of stigma. What is more stigmatizing than the government creating a different law for some part of the society based on immutable characteristics . If it was based on race, wed call it apartheid. But whether its race or gender or Sexual Orientation or physical ability or disability or genetic makeup, it is wrong to create different laws for people based on things they cannot change. So were creating a viral underclass in the law. And encompassing all sorts of people who are born with hiv. Theres a young man, eddie castro from spokane, washington, and when he testified before the president ial Advisory Council on hiv aids, it was not long out of prison. He was 22 or 23 years old to, he served a year and a half or two years for not disclosing to his girlfriend, not because she wanted him prosecuted, used a condom. He said a couple of years ago i was reading the declaration of independence that says were all born equal. What about me . I have the this extralegal obligation attached to my birth that before engaging in the more intimate thing a person can do, i have to get some sort of legal obligation out of the way. We dont have similar laws or prosecutions for people with hpv. More women died from hpv last year, sexuallytransmitted than died of aids from hiv. But hpv isnt uniquely stigmatized the way hiv is. Hiv is associated with an outlaw sexuality, associated with people of color, associated with people who use drugs, its associated with gay men. So it is treated so differently under the law. The prosecutions around these cases, there are several in the news just this week, are invariably wrong in terms of the facts of the cases and are often hysterical. You know, talking about the aids monsters and aids predators and have you seen this man and, oh, 300 potential victims. There was one case in missouri that we havent been able to do much help with, but weve been trying to give a little support, and its all over the national news, may have infected 300 people. 300 people. Do you know where that number came from . Its when he was charged, and the guy charged he had been tested positive, the prosecutor said, the enyears ten years before, and they asked him how far often he had sex. He said maybe twice a month, different people. So they extrapolated twice a month be over ten years and came up with National Headlines may have infected 300 people. Theres only one person who claims, and now that person as taken it back, hes not sure he did get it from that person. So the Media Coverage is highly stigmatizing in these cases. Theres now, the research coming out showing how it is discouraging people from getting tested, whether these criminalization statutes, there is a greater level of mistrust of Public Health authorities and traditional Public Health measures like partner notification and treatment adherence programs and things like that. So i actually believe these criminalization prosecutions are not an incidental thing, and its not just, oh, isnt it awful to these people who get prosecuted. I think they are a major factor in the ongoing epidemic. You know, so often Public Health measures, what happened after 1996 when combination therapy came out, and ive been talking about this all day, so if im repeating myself be, i apologize. People with aids started to be seen differently. Before that, there was, you know, regardless of whatever judgment people put on it, there was an assumption we were going to die probably an awful, horrible death. But after combination therapy came out and as the broader public began to understand that we werent going to die as quickly as we once were, we started being seen as inherently dangerous, as viral vectors, potential infebruary to haves. We were living longer, so wed be around to infect people longer. And especially through the Public Health system and through the criminal Justice System that we are a dangerous population that needs to be, you know, sought out, identified, tested, reported, tagged, tracked. You know, in a lot of the country, you know, if you choose to go off your meds, you have a hard time Getting Health Care services. Or youve got somebody from your county health d. Knocking on your door or posting something on your door that you need to come see the county health department. In some cases theyre tracking cd4 tests. In mississippi until recently you had to sign a form agreeing not to become pregnant or to impregnate anybody. More jurisdictions are using these forms when someone tests positive. So think back, those of you who have hiv, to when you found out you were positive and what that moment was like. For most people even if youre expecting it or whatever, you still have some degree of mild shock. Its a, you know, period of great distress. So now people are testing positive. A little form is slipped across the table. I punked a Testing Center in louisiana not very long ago. [laughter] and youre told you have to sign this form. You dont have to sign it. You not told that you dont have to sign it generally. And that form be acknowledges that you were given your positive test result, and it cites the statute in that state. And that you cant do this and whatever and whatever and whatever. First of all, those forms then come back in prosecutions. But more importantly, you are giving people a legal document to sign, and youre raising the prospect of legal retribution at a point of sort of peak distress and fragility. You didnt tell me i could have him arrested. And a lot of these prosecutions start right there, you know, before that person adjusts their diagnosis, accepts any responsibility of their own in that diagnosis or understands how theyre ultimately contributing to making the stigma worse for themselves. So thats the project which is the work with ive been focused on the last few years. With the, you know, the pennies that we do it and a lot of volunteers. We have a little short film about it on the web site. And maybe i see weve got the time, maybe just two more questions. Yes. Be. [inaudible] thank you. Last night, very good. Could you explain and sort of, i dont know, describe the background to the picture on the cover, please . [laughter] sure. First of all, last night after a lovely event at politics prose in washington, there was a woman who i signed her book for her, she said i just love this picture, if you look at it real close, it almost looks like it could be you. [laughter] okay. Thats a real so scrivener has been a terrific publisher and been incredibly supportive asked me to bring if some photographs, and i thought they wanted to do a signature of pictures in the middle of the book, and i had a big, thick envelope, sort of poured them out onto the table, and paul whit latch said, oh, there it is, thats it. In like two seconds he wanted it for the cover. I just, like, didnt get it, you know . And that is me kissing michael who i write about in the book, and it was just about a month before he died. He got meningitis right after thanksgiving in 1988 and died or very quickly. And i think that why they thought that picture would work so well is, first of all, its sweet. It conveys more about love and affection than about sex. The title of the book, it can be a little daunting, you know, aids, politics. So this helps, the same with the hand writing font convey that its a personal story and maybe make it a little more accessible as a story rather than homework or something. [laughter] so, and you had a question. Sean, we met right after the sex and justice conference in michigan. Right. A year and a little bit ago. And when you were talking about the criminalization issue just now, it was making me riff on at first id like to ask you to say a little bit more about sex offender registration. But it was making me riff on how i heard about sex offender registration which was when i was a young queer activist, and it was guys who were just getting busted for having sex with other men in places before there was any hiv that we know of and in places where there budget yet a sodomy law change. Wasnt yet a sodomy law change. And i think a lot of people even now in our community dont understand. When we hear sex offender registration, we think creepy pedophiles down the street and things like that. We dont think its living within our community in the way that it has for many years and i wonder if you would be able to riff on that a little bit. Sure. And sort of necessarily through the criminalization work, ive become much more familiar with how horrific the sex offender registry laws are, and, you know, there are now more people in the u. S. As registered sex offenders than there are residents of alaska. And it makes it virtually impossible to get jobs, you cant live places. In louisiana where roberts from, its on a registry even where you work. But the only Jobs Available are minimum wage jobs often in restaurants. You know, what mcdonalds is going to hire the person whos on the sex offender registry working at mcdonalds . When robert subtle moved from shreveport to millford, pennsylvania, to live with me and my partner for a while, he had to register in pennsylvania. And he was postally delighted that it didnt charge big fees because in louisiana there are big fees. And some of the municipalities raised the fees dramatically, 600 a year, to force sex offenders to go somewhere else. But because in louisiana his sex to fedder registry offender registry, registration, their statute requires a level of public notification. He had to buy ads in the local newspaper, he had to send postcard to people if his immediate area and if he transfers into pennsylvania, regardless of the offense, if you have to do public notification where you were previously registered, they require it in pennsylvania. So i took him out to the State Police Barracks in blooming grove, and they were quite respectful and we were very, you know, it was a pretty easy process. A week later, and millford is a town of about 1100 people. I live in the middle of the little village. Knock be, knock, knock on a thursday morning, and our local police chief was there in uniform with his gun with a clipboard warning megans law sex offender registry with a picture of robert, and he said by law he has to do this. And he went to every home within whatever distance, and i think he had to go to all schools and Daycare Centers within a mile or something. And, you know, robert said at least in shreveport it was a city and he had his family and friends. Now hes an africanamerican man in a small, rural northeast pennsylvania town where he already stood out, and now the sex offender thing. And i was certain our newspaper was going to write about it, you know . Because it was that level of notification in pennsylvania if youd been convicted in pennsylvania would have only been for people who were predators or used a weapon or so on. So robert and i each wrote a piece about this for our local newspaper which was very brave of robert, believe me. And it was interesting. I mean, there were people in the community, i saw people when robert and i were having line up. One day having runs of. One draw having lunch one day. There is sort of a nays sent Movement Among people who are on sex to fender registrations to try and create an effort to combat this. And theyre being helped by the economy because a lot of the legislatures are starting to look at this. These are people, cop senting adult behavior consenting adult behavior. Theres no children involved, no coercion, no weapon involved, why are we spending this incredible amount of money on that . On the other hand, what candidate for office wants to be the candidate who loosens the sex offender laws, you know . Thats the problem with it. Thank you. [applause]. [inaudible conversations]