HIV Is Reported Cured in a Second Patient

One of the things one encounters as a gay male is the effort of the far right and Christian extremists to depict all gays as diseased and a health care threat.  While HIV/AIDS is no longer the virtual death sentence it was three decades ago, treatment remains expensive.  Likewise, thanks to the greed of American pharmaceutical companies, preventive medications such as PrEP outrageously expensive in the USA - in contrast to Europe and Canada - and out of the financial reach of the majority of those in need of it.  The result is that a permanent cure remains the hope of many, including in the black community where heterosexuals are increasingly at risk of the disease in part due to the lack of access to preventive health care and the continued homophobia of black churches (much of the support for the anti-gay vote in the United Methodist Church came from African delegations).  Now, the New York Times is reporting on a second time where HIV seemingly has been cured. While the treatment regime is not of a nature making it easily replicated on a wide scale basis, it may give rise to future treatments.   Here are article highlights: 

For just the second time since the global epidemic began, a patient appears to have been cured of infection with H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS.

The news comes nearly 12 years to the day after the first patient known to be cured, a feat that researchers have long tried, and failed, to duplicate. The surprise success now confirms that a cure for H.I.V. infection is possible, if difficult, researchers said.

Publicly, the scientists are describing the case as a long-term remission. In interviews, most experts are calling it a cure, with the caveat that it is hard to know how to define the word when there are only two known instances.

Both milestones resulted from bone-marrow transplants given to infected patients. But the transplants were intended to treat cancer in the patients, not H.I.V.

Bone-marrow transplantation is unlikely to be a realistic treatment option in the near future. Powerful drugs are now available to control H.I.V. infection, while the transplants are risky, with harsh side effects that can last for years.

But rearming the body with immune cells similarly modified to resist H.I.V. might well succeed as a practical treatment, experts said.

“This will inspire people that cure is not a dream,” said Dr. Annemarie Wensing, a virologist at the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands. “It’s reachable.”

The new patient has chosen to remain anonymous, and the scientists referred to him only as the “London patient.”  “I feel a sense of responsibility to help the doctors understand how it happened so they can develop the science,” he told The New York Times in an email. Learning that he could be cured of both cancer and H.I.V. infection was “surreal” and “overwhelming,” he added. “I never thought that there would be a cure during my lifetime.”

The London patient has answered that question: A near-death experience is not required for the procedure to work. He had Hodgkin’s lymphoma and received a bone-marrow transplant from a donor with the CCR5 mutation in May 2016. He, too, received immunosuppressive drugs, but the treatment was much less intense, in line with current standards for transplant patients.

He quit taking anti-H.I.V. drugs in September 2017, making him the first patient since Mr. Brown known to remain virus-free for more than a year after stopping.

Although the London patient was not as ill as Mr. Brown had been after the transplant, the procedure worked about as well: The transplant destroyed the cancer without harmful side effects. The transplanted immune cells, now resistant to H.I.V., seem to have fully replaced his vulnerable cells.

Most people with the H.I.V.-resistant mutation, called delta 32, are of Northern European descent. IciStem maintains a database of about 22,000 such donors.

Several companies are pursuing gene therapies but have not yet been successful. The modification must target the right number of cells, in the right place — only the bone marrow, for example, and not the brain — and tweak only the genes directing production of CCR5. Several teams are working on all of these obstacles, Dr. McCune said. Eventually, they may be able to develop a viral delivery system that, when injected into the body, seeks out all CCR5 receptors and deletes them, or even a donor stem cell that is resistant to H.I.V. but could be given to any patient. Mr. Brown says he is hopeful that the London patient’s cure proves as durable as his own. “If something has happened once in medical science, it can happen again,” Mr. Brown said. “I’ve been waiting for company for a long time.”

If one looks to Africa, HIV/AIDS is not a gay disease.  It impacts millions of heterosexuals contrary to the propaganda of the far right and Christofascist.  Let's hope for a successful cure available for widespread use in the near term. 

Pulse Massacre Gunman’s Wife Knew of Plot

As USA Today is reporting, the tragic massacre at the Pulse night club could have been prevented had the wife of the gunman, Omar Mateen, had warned authorities of what her husband was planning to do.  Sometimes sins of omission are nearly as bad as sins of commission.  49 lives lost and dozens of other lives forever damaged all because she failed to do the right and moral thing.  Hopefully, her defense attorneys are not successful in alleging that she is innocent and she pays a severe penalty for what she knowingly allowed to happen.  Here are article highlights:

A handwritten statement given to the FBI by the wife of Pulse nightclub gunman Omar Mateen says she saw him prepare for the deadly attack for months and knew that the LGBT nightclub was his target. 

The 12-page statement, quietly released by federal authorities at the end of December in a batch of records in the case, was taken hours after the June 12, 2016 shooting. The attack left 49 dead and dozens of others injured. Noor Salman was questioned for hours, without a lawyer, after authorities learned her husband was the gunman behind the attack. 

She was arrested last year on federal charges of providing material support to a terrorist and tampering with evidence but has pleaded not guilty, claiming she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. She said Mateen abused her and claims she did not know of his plot.

But her defense conflicts with the signed statement she gave to the FBI, which details her knowledge of Mateen's planning and his path to carry out an attack on behalf of the Islamic State.

She told agents multiple times she knew his plans and that he was going to attack the Orlando club when he left their home.

She told agents she knew "my fears had come true and he did what he said he was going to do. I was in denial and I could not believe that the father of my child was going to hurt other people."

The statement includes that during a two-year span before the attack. Mateen would browse jihad websites almost everyday and frequently watch beheading videos. He was angry and frustrated about treatment of Muslims in the Middle East and talked about retaliating against Americans.

"He said if he did jihad everybody would know who he is," Salman wrote in the statement.

Salman's attorneys have been fighting against the use of the statement in court, claiming that she was in custody and had not been read her Miranda rights, according to the Orlando Sentinel. 

Prosecutors have said she was not under arrest and that all of her statements were voluntary, though she told agents several stories before writing the statement, which included an apology for lying to the FBI. 

Two days before the shooting, Salman saw Mateen looking at the website for the club. When she saw what he was doing, he said, "this is my target," the statement reads. 

Salman told FBI agents, "I knew that the time to attack the club was close."  The night before the attack, he left the house and looked "pumped up," she wrote in the statement, adding he told her, "This is the one day."

"I knew when he left the house he was going to Orlando to attack the Pulse nightclub," she wrote.

The larger issue, of course, is that pastors and mullahs are allowed to spew hatred towards others under the guise of "deeply held religious beliefs."  Worse yet, the organizations they represent typically enjoy tax exempt status, so every taxpayer is indirectly underwriting their messages of hate.   Personally, I believe that is time for churches and mosques to lose all tax exempt status. 

Will There Be A New Post-Homophobic Christianity?

Photo Illustration by Dair Massey/The Daily Beast

As this blog and countless other Internet and media outlets have noted, the Christofascists' reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court same sex marriage ruling has been beyond hysterical.  None of the dire consequences and a smiting of America by God that have been predicted amidst spittle flecked rants  will ever come to pass, but that will not stop the parasitic professional Christian class from trying to shake loose every last dime that they can from the ignorant and gullible.  Meanwhile, some denominations like the Episcopal Church USA have moved closer to full church weddings for same sex couples.  Some have even speculated that in time, there will be a post-homophobic version of Christianity that will come to predominate.  One such piece is in The Daily Beast.  Here are highlights:

Since the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized marriage equality in America, some conservative Christians have been downright apoplectic.

Meanwhile,  Rod Dreher of the American Conservative has, in his own words, a more sober analysis of the decision on Time’s website:“

[W]e have to accept that we really are living in a culturally post-Christian nation. The fundamental norms Christians have long been able to depend on no longer exist. To be frank, the court majority may impose on the rest of the nation a view widely shared by elites, but it is also a view shared by a majority of Americans. There will be no widespread popular resistance to Obergefell. This is the new normal.”

To which the vast majority of Americans say, “Hallelujah!” Dreher is correct—the idea of equal treatment for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans (if not its full realization yet) is indeed the new normal in America. Even before the court’s decision, 6 in 10 Americans supported the right of same-sex couples to marry—and over half of Americans said they would be less likely to support any 2016 presidential candidate who opposed marriage equality. 

[S]ome conservatives have tried to paint this cultural evolution—or even revolution—as fundamentally at odds with Christianity. That’s where they’re wrong.

The Episcopalian Church embraced gay marriage last week. Earlier this year, the Presbyterian Church (USA) affirmed its support for marriage equality, joining many other major Christian denominations that officially endorse LGBT rights. And according to an April 2015 poll, majorities of congregants within many Christian faith traditions support marriage equality—including 60 percent of all Catholics, 52 percent of all orthodox Christians and 62 percent of white mainline Protestants. They’re joined by 94 percent of Unitarian Universalists and 77 percent of all Jews.

Perhaps most strikingly, 64 percent of self-identified Millennial evangelicals support same-sex marriage. . . . . they are a portrait of that future—not of a post-Christian America, but a post-homophobic Christianity. That is the “new normal” that Obergefall does not singularly usher in but merely reflects.
Will anti-gay Christians be politically and socially ostracized? I sure hope so. Just as those orthodox Christians who still believe in strict, traditional gender roles have been increasingly mocked as absurd.

There are, of course, still congregations that haven’t caught up with the times. But churches have always been able to use their discretion to decide whom to marry or turn away, and the Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell specifically noted such First Amendment protections for religious institutions.

As for everyone else, including florists and county clerks, yes, you will now have to provide the same services to straight couples that you provide to gay couples. Don’t like it? Find a new job. . . . that doesn’t mean the law is trouncing on religion. It means the law is prioritizing equal treatment for all, as it should.

Liberty, freedom and the ever-bending arc toward equality have won. Intolerance and hate have lost. But this was not a war of liberty versus religion; the war itself took place within religion, including within Christianity itself. And Christianity is ultimately taking the side of equality and liberty, too.

To those who remain in the fringe minority stubbornly mired in hatred and the dark rationalizations of the past, please try to lose gracefully. You are not being exiled. The world is simply moving on without you.

If we are lucky, in time the Christofascists - like the angry aging far right whites of the GOP base - will literally die off.  When that happens, the world will be a better place.

Empire Creator and Star Receive Death Threats

From my years of writing this blog one thing I have learned is that it is ALWAYS the godly Christian crowd that write the foulest comments - hence why I moderate comments and delete those that do not deserve to be given a platform - and make death threats.  Most are just nasty hot air, although once my former law office was singled out for vandalization most likely by one of these "godly Christian" types.  These ignorance embracing individuals are simply outraged by anything that might challenge the myths and fairy tales that they, in their mentally imbalanced state, cling to so desperately.  Thus, it is no surprise to me that Empire creator Lee Daniels and Jussie Smollett (pictured above), who plays a gay character on the show, have been receiving death threats. Bet.com looks at the situation.  Here are excerpts:

Empire has millions of fans, but there are a few that show creator Lee Daniels can live without.

The filmmaker recently revealed that he and Jussie Smollett, who plays Terrence Howard's gay son Jamal Lyon, have received hate mail and even death threats from some who take issue with the show's gay plot lines.

“Homophobia is real. It exists… Jussie and I both get death threats. But we will continue to do our thing,” Daniels said. He added that, while a tiny minority insist on spewing hate towards the show, which has seen the kind of success few network primetime shows experience these days, he is proud of the film's diverse cast and willingness to take on real issues.

“I have to relate to these people honestly,” he said. “That trash can scene? It happened,” Daniels added, referring to a flashback scene in which a young Jamal is put into a trash can by his father — something which Daniels has said actually happened to him when his father discovered he was gay.

Empire returns to continue it pushing envelopes on September 23.

I have no use for religious fundamentalist be they Christian or Muslim.  Hate and the deliberate embrace of ignorance have no place in the modern world.  These people need to become utter social and political outcasts with whom decent people do not give any deference or respect.

Support the Hampton Roads LGBT Center Against Arbitrary Harassment by City of Norfolk

NOTE: the views expressed in this post are mine alone and should not be attributed to any other organization or individuals. As to why I believe churches should be checked for compliance, (i) the ordinance quoted below provides them with no exemption and (ii) I have a strong suspicion that it was some of the "godly folk" who want gays and the LGBT Center to disappear who complained to the City of Norfolk.

The City of Norfolk, Virginia is requiring that the Hampton Roads LGBT secure a "Special Exception" permit under Chapter 25 of the Norfolk Zoning Ordinance because the so-called "Bar Task Force" and city bureaucrats have determined that the center is an "Entertainment Establishment." For those who have not seen the "Bar Task Force" at work, they swoop down on establishments like Nazi storm troopers and presume anyone and everyone to be guilty until proven otherwise. Here's how Section 2-3 of the Norfolk Zoning Ordinance defines an "entertainment" and "entertainment establishment":

Entertainment. "Entertainment" means live performances and includes, but is not limited to, music performances involving amplified music or more than one instrument, a disc jockey, any form of dancing, comedians, and stage performances.

Entertainment establishment. An establishment where entertainment is provided or having a dance floor. Alcoholic beverages may be provided to patrons of the establishment unless specifically prohibited by the terms of a special exception or other applicable provision of law. For the purposes of zoning, "entertainment establishment" shall not include commercial recreation restaurants or commercial indoor recreation centers.

As readers who saw my post yesterday will recall, the LGBT Center provides individual and family counseling, community meeting space, resource center, adult and youth services, social and educational events, and free HIV testing. In addition, it provides meeting space for community groups who - gasp, the horror - might have music from a boom box or allow teens and LGBT youth to have some dancing. And some groups with adult members like HRBOR might have alcohol at the functions. These events are few and far between in terms of the LGBT Center's day to day operations yet the LGBT Center - unlike countless religious facilities, including one that recent hosted a large fundraiser that included dancing and a live band - is being forced to secure a special exception which will feature public hearings that provide a forum for anti-LGBT hate merchants.

I'm sorry, but in my opinion, this is nothing less than harassment aimed at the LGBT community. The LGBT Center is no more an "entertainment establishment" than churches, synagogues and other religious facilities that hold wedding and other receptions, church dinners with music and/or dancing and other events that involve any dancing and/or amplified music.

I hope local readers will join me and come out to the support the LGBT Center on March 22, 2012 at Norfolk City Hall in downtown Norfolk at 2:30 PM. Your presence is important. For those who cannot attend, please send your messages of support to the Norfolk City Counsel at: City.Council@norfolk.gov.

The second thing that I ask local readers to do is this: send me the names of every Norfolk church, synagogues and religious facilities that occasionally hold receptions, church dinners and other events that involve any dancing and/or amplified music. Catholic Churches in particular likely fall in this category. Under the City of Norfolk interpretation these organizations also need to secure special exception permits. The City does not get to selectively apply this zoning ordinance requirement to the LGBT Center while giving other a free pass to other facilities doing the same types of social functions. Please e-mail the names of these churches, synagogues and like organizations so that proper complaints can be filed against them.

What's good for the LGBT Center is good for these organizations as well. We need to create a firestorm for Norfolk City Council - especially since elections are on May 1, 2012.

Supreme Court of Virginia to Hear Episcopal Church Dispute

Litigation has been raging for several years now as homophobic break away Episcopal parishes have sought to abscond with church properties utilizing an 1860's vintage statute that was enacted to permit pro-slavery Baptist churches to seize properties from the anti-slavery national church. It is a sad commentary that one would use a statute conceived by racists and those who supported continuing to own other humans as chattel, but that is the reality in the far right break away Episcopal parishes seeking to align themselves with reactionary bishops in Africa, at least one (Archbishop Peter Akinola) of who has been potentially implicated in the massacre of 600 Muslim women and children. In my view, it takes perversion of the Gospel message to a whole new obscene level. WTVR-TV in Richmond has coverage on the issue which will place the Supreme Court in a position of determining whether or not Virginia will appear as a reactionary backward state or not. Here are some highlights:
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Today the Virginia Supreme Court will hear arguments in what amounts to a civil war in the Episcopal Church, the oldest church in the nation. The property custody battle between the Episcopal Church Diocese and numerous churches that have split over moral issues isn't a battle between the north and the south, but between the left and the right. The split began several years ago, when the democratic church body voted to ordain on openly gay bishop.

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Bishop Johnston said with most of the retreating churches, the property was paid for or renovated by the Episcopal Church. Bishop Binns agreed that was case with some of the churches, but others had their own deeds or had paid for much of the improvements to the buildings and properties. Negotiations over those custody questions failed, and the case wound up in Fairfax Circuit Court last year.
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The rebelling churches successfully argued that the Virginia Division Statute - http://leg1.state.va.us/000/cod/57-9.HTM - gave the state the right arbitrate this kind of church property dispute. That statute came about at the end of the Civil War. But the Episcopal Church Diocese argues that antiquated law has no current Constitutional basis. What's more, they believe, the Constitution says the state has no right to interfere in church business. Both sides will argue that the right to religious freedom means they should win. "This is a watershed moment," Bishop Johnston said.

An Understanding Straight Spouse - Jemma Thomas

Many times on this blog I have discussed to turmoil of coming out in mid-life after living in self-denial for years and years. But the turmoil extends not just to the gay spouse, but also to the straight spouse and other family members. As the gay spouse, it is difficult to ever adequately relate to the straight spouse that they did nothing wrong and that they were in fact loved. Indeed, in my view neither spouse did wrong. Rather, both found themselves caught as victims of differing degrees of the same societal and religious prejudice that forces the gay spouse to deny their true sexuality typically even to themselves. It is near impossible to describe how one knows in some sense that they are gay, yet they will not accept it and come up with all kinds of mental exercises to convince themselves that the - in their view - horrible truth is not in fact true. Reading the accounts of Gareth Thomas' decision to come out later in life after marriage, I could truly identify with the inner Hell he likely experienced. I can likewise understand the devastation his wife, Jemma Thomas (pictured above) felt. Like myself, I suspect Gareth Thomas married with the best of intentions. Unlike in my situation, his wife seems more able to forgive and understand than has been the case with my own divorce. Here are some highlights from a Daily Mail interview with Jemma Thomas and Gareth Thomas:

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Jemma Thomas cries when she remembers her wedding. It was, she says, the proudest, happiest, most perfect day of her life. Everything was magical about that sunny August afternoon in 2001 in the pretty South Wales town of St Brides Major; her first day as the wife of Wales rugby star and sporting legend Gareth Thomas. 'I absolutely adored Gareth with every bone in my body,' says Jemma, 33. 'As I said my vows, all I could think was: "He's mine, this wonderful, amazing man is all mine."' Or so Jemma believed at the time. For the truth was Gareth Thomas could never entirely be hers, no matter how much he loved her or desperately wanted to be.
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Gareth took his marriage vows keeping one devastating secret to himself; that he was gay - something he had, since the age of 17, tried to suppress and push into a dark corner, hoping the feelings would go away. In an exclusive interview in Saturday's Daily Mail, the former Wales and British Lions captain revealed publicly for the first time how he struggled for almost 20 years to come to terms with his true sexuality.
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'I was like a ticking bomb. I thought I could suppress it, keep it locked away in some dark corner of myself, but I couldn't. It was who I was and I just couldn't ignore it any more. It was like a tight knot in my stomach, always threatening to seep out,' said Gareth, who knew he was gay at the age of 17, but refused to accept it, convincing himself his love for Jemma would rid him of these feelings. 'I've been through all sorts of emotions, tears, anger and absolute despair. I used to hope that I would wake up one morning and all these feelings could be gone. I would pray to God: "I have Jemma, I love her, please take away these feelings."
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Jemma Thomas could be forgiven for hating her ex-husband for his deception. No one would blame her for feeling angry, bitter and humiliated by his betrayal. Least of all Gareth. Remarkably, she does not. Jemma was heartbroken when Gareth told her the truth in 2006, and three years later her heart remains broken. But she forgave him long ago. 'I still love Gareth and I will never stop loving him,' says Jemma, in her first interview since he publicly announced he was gay. 'What happened to us is just so terribly sad. He really was the perfect husband in every other way.
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'I'm incredibly proud of him for coming out and if anyone thinks any less of him because of it, then they are stupid. I know it was a massive relief when he told me, his family and close friends three years ago, and it will be even more of a relief now that everyone knows. 'It would be easy to wallow in self-pity and dwell on the negatives, but I am a positive person and I'm grateful that he loved me so much he had to tell me the truth because he felt I deserved better. 'He released me and in doing so he released himself.
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'And the saddest thing is we really did have the perfect marriage - apart from this grey corner which was secretly eating away at him. We never argued about anything, we just spent the whole time laughing and having fun. We had a great circle of friends.
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'If it had been another woman, I think I would have thrown myself off a cliff, because it would have destroyed every ounce of my selfesteem. But the fact he'd been with men, strangely almost didn't feel like cheating to me. 'This was who he was, something I could never have changed, something that was nothing to do with his feelings for me as a woman. 'I knew that whatever he had done had not been done with malice towards me and I could see how much he was suffering and how sorry he was for hurting me.
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'With Gareth coming out publicly and our divorce being finalised in the New Year, I feel a chapter is closing and, although I feel sad and wish it could be different, it's for the best. 'This is who Gareth is and it is something which cannot be changed, but it has been so hard coming to terms with that. It would be easy for me to think that if I hadn't married Gareth, I might have met and married someone else, but I don't regret a single day I spent as his wife.
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I send my best wishes to both Gareth and Jemma Thomas. I hope that her interview may help other straight spouses to come to terms with the loss of a spouse who never sought to hurt them in a malicious manner. I treasure my children more than they will ever know, but I wish I could have had them without hurting their mother or myself so much in the process.

Homophobia is Killing Our Kids

The Fort Wayne Frost Illustrated, a weekly paper aimed at the black community, is carrying a timely opinion piece that looks at homophobia in the black community and the dire consequences it has on black LGBT youth. The problem, of course, is not unique to the Fort Wayne area. In the Hampton Roads area, some of the most vocally homophobic churches are black churches which are frequently cynically manipulated by the former segregationists within lily white "family values" organizations to attack any effort for gay-supportive legislation. Even though these family values groups in the final analysis are not only anti-gay but also anti-black and anti-immigrant as well. Meanwhile, there is a HIV/AIDS epidemic in the local black community which these same black churches often pretend does not exist. Here are some highlights from the opinion piece entitled "Homophobia is Killing Our Kids":

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Last week I watched in horror as ministers, church officials, and parishioners of a black Connecticut church, Manifested Glory Ministries, invoked the name of Jesus to release the "gay demons" supposedly possessing the soul of a 16-year-old boy. What I was watching was not a horror movie but a YouTube video clip that had been sent to me by a friend. The clip opens with the young man lying on the floor as a woman stands over him shouting, "Get on up out of here you homosexual demon! I command you by the blood of Jesus! You are a spirit that is not of God!"

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While those outside of fundamentalist religious traditions are shocked when they see or hear about such things, scenes like this are not uncommon to those of us who were raised inside of that tradition. We grew up seeing well meaning men and women of God performing rituals like this on people who church officials and parishioners believed were possessed by demons and evil spirits. So I am not surprised to know that this practice still goes on. I am, however, deeply saddened and outraged to know that the bigotry and ignorance that acts like this expose still hold such powerful sway over those who should know better. Perhaps most frightening is that these are good people who thought they were doing the right thing and were utterly sincere in their belief that this bizarre ceremony could actually turn a young gay man into a straight one.

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The incident at Manifested Glory Ministries is only one of hundreds of similarly destructive incidents that happen every single day in churches, homes, and schools all across the country. GLBT youth are in crisis; not because they are homosexual but because far too many people foster a mindset of homophobia and fear. Even the perception of being gay is enough to cause young people to be terrorized and harassed. . . . In February of this year, three middle school students in Illinois all killed themselves in response to prolonged anti-gay harassment and bullying. Just this past April, only days before his 12th birthday, a young black boy, Carl Joseph Walker- Hoover, hanged himself because he could no longer endure the taunts, bullying, and anti-gay slurs hurled at him on a daily basis by his peers. And just 10 days after Walker- Hoover's death, another young boy of color, Jaheem Herrera, also hanged himself because of an unrelenting barrage of threats, bullying, and anti-gay slurs.

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We in the black community have a long tradition of treating others with generosity, kindness, love, and compassion. Surely we can find better ways to deal with issues of sexuality than attempting to "exorcise" someone of his or her identity. Homophobia is killing our youth, and the high level of religious conservatism, ignorance, and misunderstanding surrounding gender and sexual identity issues in communities of color puts our youth at even greater risk for death. In many cases, the deaths of GLBT teens have been literal, but more often than not GLBT youth suffer an emotional, psychological, and spiritual death.

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As an African-American I cannot help but wonder: how many more young black men and women have to be called out of their names, bullied, harassed, and exorcised of their "gay demons" before we open our eyes and see the damage we are doing? Can we learn to love and accept them just as they are and teach them how to love and accept themselves in return? I say yes, we can.

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The author of this timely and very relevant piece is E.N Jackson, a freelance writer and Fort Wayne resident. I commend her for speaking out as she has. Comments can be sent to her at treeofwysdm@gmail.com. Visit her blog at thebeehive09.blogspot.com.