Hampton Roads' Youth in Crisis: Contracting HIV

In the November issue of VEER Magazine I wrote about World AIDS Day (December 1, 2011) and the fact that HIV/AIDS is not just a gay issue despite the efforts of Christianists to dupe their sheep like followers and the larger public to the contrary. Over the weekend a friend via political circles, John Chittick, executive director of the Norfolk-based nonprofit TeenAIDS-PeerCorps, wrote an op-ed in the Virginian Pilot that further underscores. He also correctly looks at the pathetic state of sex-education in Virginia's public schools which is aimed more at keeping the Bible beaters happy than educating and protecting our youth. Here are some highlights from the column:

"I didn't know nothin' about AIDS. He was my first real boyfriend and was going into the Navy. I was thinking only about love.... Now my life's over, and I'm only 17!"

"Carly" - who agreed to tell her story only if I didn't reveal her real name - is a junior at a high school in Hampton Roads. Blond hair falls across her face, wet with tears of regret and the realization that a horrible mistake has occurred. She whispers, "It's not fair." Like many teens, it is hard for her to accept the consequences of her actions.

Carly had no idea that Hampton Roads is now the epicenter of HIV/AIDS in Virginia, and Norfolk is No. 1. "I wish someone had told me about this stuff." Yet her ignorance was not really her fault.

Yes, she made the decision to have unprotected sex with her boyfriend. But her school has not provided any meaningful AIDS education for years since the story fell off the public's radar.

When the head of her school was offered the free services of this AIDS expert, his answer was disheartening: "You have to understand that it's not really a problem for us like it might be at other schools because our students are not into things like that... and we can't make the time with our focus on SOLs and sports."

Dec. 1 is World AIDS Day, the 30th anniversary of the public's first awareness of a mysterious disease in Africa and a few American cities. In the U.S., gay men were among the early victims, but in Africa HIV/AIDS was spread through heterosexual contact.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that 25 percent of all new cases of HIV in the U.S. occur among teens. Unfortunately, AIDS has become passe, a sleeper issue - but not for vulnerable teens.

We are facing a global pandemic of heterosexually transmitted youth HIV. And the clock is ticking here in Hampton Roads. The key to curbing the spread of teen AIDS is empowering young volunteers to reach out to their friends so the message grows exponentially. It doesn't cost taxpayers anything. And teens make the most convincing messengers. If only Carly had heard that message.

Damaged lives - all because the Virginia General Assembly would rather kiss the asses of sanctimonious haters like Victoria Cobb and her cohorts at The Family Foundation than protect Virginia's youth. These Christianists need to find some other way to fell superior and fulfilled by their bitter, empty lives.

Auto Nostalgia - Lost Brands

Perhaps I'm dating myself, but I find it a bit sad to have seen recently the demise of several auto brands that I grew up with: Oldsmobile, Pontiac and Mercury. Especially the last brand since that is what my parents drove throughout my childhood and teens and it was in Mercury models like the 1966 Monterey "breezeway" pictured at left that I learned to drive (the other was a 1968 Colony Park wagon). Amazingly, the 1966 originally sold for about $2900. By today's standards, they were two ton land yachts, but with five children in the family and SUV's not invented, we needed those huge cars. The New York Times has a piece on Mercury's demise and here are some highlights:
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LAST month was the end of the line for yet another American automotive brand. Assembly plants produced the final vehicles to carry the Mercury nameplate, an unceremonious end for a marque that had been introduced in 1939 as an upscale companion for basic Fords — but more recently allowed to atrophy to little more than a selection of lightly modified Ford sedans and S.U.V.’s.
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Still, Mercury leaves behind a history peppered with compelling and even innovative cars that at once conveyed a clear message: based on Fords, but better. Depending on the year and the car, better could have meant any combination of bigger, more stylish, more powerful or more luxurious. Pairing Mercury with the Lincoln franchise after World War II underscored the theme of what is today called entry-level luxury.
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From the mid-1960s, full-size Mercurys adopted Lincoln-influenced designs and ran with Ford’s top engines. On TV, the top cop of the original “Hawaii Five-O” series, Steve McGarrett, cracked crimes in a black ’68 Park Lane.
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In 2003, Mercury revived the Marauder moniker for a performance-tuned Grand Marquis, but sold just 11,000 over two years. By then, the boundary between Ford and Mercury vehicles had all but vanished. That line, though, was still clear when Gary Davis he bought a new 1970 Mercury Marauder X-100, a full-size coupe with a 429 cubic-inch V-8, for $5,100. He still owns it.

Young and out on the field - An emerging generation of gay athletes in high school and college is changing the rules.

Stories like this one in the LA Times (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-sp-gay28jul28,1,7710596.story?track=rss&ctrack=2&cset=true) give me great hope for the future. Would that I and others of my generation had had the courage to defy convention and come out of the closets decades earlier. As I posted yesterday, the Advocate is doing it's poll on LGBT heroes, but these kids are perhaps the true heroes who will change the world for future generations of LGBT Americans. Here are some higlights (photos of some of the students are set out above):

Seattle — THE guys in his boat took to calling him "Badger" because of the grimace he wore during races. Part of a junior rowing club that ranked among the fastest in the nation, Lucas Goodman was relentless on the water.It was a different story on land.The teenager with the powerful build and close-set eyes had to be careful.

He hung back ever so slightly when teammates shot the breeze, talking about girls."You get tired of constantly watching what you say, constantly watching how you act," he said. "You're almost paranoid."Goodman felt so uneasy that he finally told the Green Lake Crew his secret: He is gay.The 18-year-old belongs to an emerging generation of openly gay and lesbian athletes on high school and college campuses across the country.

These young men and women are quietly venturing where no pro football or baseball star has gone, challenging the conformist, if not downright homophobic, tradition of the playing fields.Their numbers are difficult to gauge because many confide only in peers. Experts chart the trend anecdotally through athletes who join gay rights clubs at school, e-mail gay rights advocates for advice or announce their sexual orientation on websites such as Facebook and MySpace."This is an issue that's in transition even as we speak," said Jay Coakley, a noted scholar and author on sports culture. "We're looking at how the world is changing."

Not all the stories have happy endings — a high school football player in Northern California tells of being ostracized. But others, such as a Delaware runner and a Georgia hockey player, say they were welcomed by their teams.Sociologists see the openness as a generational shift. Polls suggest a growing percentage of young people have more relaxed views about sexual orientation than their parents did.

I encourage you to read the full story. These young people are remarkable.