About Gary Carnivele

Posts by Gary Carnivele:

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HIV myths busted: Everything you need to know about your prevention options

Want to be part of ending new HIV transmissions this decade? Here’s what you need to know. Over the last decade, the fight against HIV has been transformed by medical breakthroughs. England is on track to end new transmissions by 2030, with the HIV prevention medication PrEP, alongside more traditional methods of prevention (HIV testing, condoms, and U=U), proving to “accelerate the downtrend in new HIV infections in recent years”, according to Robbie Currie, lead commissioner of London’s HIV prevention program branded: Do It London. Jo, 27, from Hackney, has been taking the once-daily pill for two years. It works by […]

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A tribute to our LGBTQ bars

The world watched in horror this week as the proudly resilient LGBT community here coped with unthinkable tragedy. Sadly, our community has a lot of experience with such things. From the AIDS crisis in which we fought an indifferent government and hostile neighbors. To an untold number of previous attacks on our bars and clubs, including the 1973 firebombing of the UpStairs Lounge in New Orleans that killed 32 gay men. To enduring the playground taunts and everyday slurs that go along with being “different” in this country. We were horrified, too, about what happened at Pulse, though not as […]

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South Korea’s LGBTQ community confronts crushing headwinds in fight for equality

 Lesvos rolls out of bed each morning before the sunrise, heads to work, then punches her time card at exactly 6 a.m. By day, she’s a chef at a traditional Korean restaurant in downtown Seoul, but by night, she runs South Korea’s first lesbian bar. The venue, Lesvos Bar, is located in a section of the Itaewon neighborhood known as “Homo Hill,” one of this country’s few queer-friendly areas.  Lesvos, who said she legally changed her given name more than two decades ago and is only known by her mononym, said her bar provides LGBTQ Koreans the type of identity-affirming […]

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Poland: Veto Bill Targeting Sex Ed

President Andrzej Duda of Poland should veto a regressive and discriminatory bill that threatens sex education, including about sexual orientation and gender identity, Human Rights Watch said today. The proposed legislation is a revised version of a bill including similar provisions that Duda vetoed earlier this year, calling for unity at a time of crisis due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Duda should swiftly veto this harmful new bill,” said Kyle Knight, senior LGBT rights researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Accurate and inclusive age-appropriate sex education is a crucial element of the rights to health and education and is critical to promoting healthy relationships and reducing […]

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Same-sex couples have less stressful marriages, according to science

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Same-sex married couples handle stress better than different-sex spouses do, according to a new study. The study, published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships by researchers at the University of Texas Austin, found that while stress is common in all kinds of marriages, same-sex couples are able to deal with it better together. By analysing survey responses of 419 couples on dyadic coping – coping as a couple – in both same-sex and different-sex marriages, researchers revealed that same-sex spouses were able to be more positive and collaborative in handling stress compared to their counterparts. Same-sex married couples handle stress […]

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Keeping hope alive as a long-term survivor

If you were diagnosed with HIV in the first fifteen years of the AIDS pandemic, your doctor might as well have handed you the diagnosis with one hand and with the other a death certificate, just waiting for the appropriate date to be filled in. Having HIV was an almost certain death sentence. Those of us who were diagnosed as HIV-positive in those years were told to “get your affairs in order,” meaning, “prepare to die.” Many of us did exactly that: we quit work, lived on SSDI payments, settled debts if we could, alerted our friends, and learned to […]

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LGBTQ+ Liberal Democrats quitting over party’s controversial definition of transphobia

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LGBTQ+ Liberal Democrats are quitting the party after senior officials revised a transphobia statement to protect “gender critical” views. There was outcry among LGBTQ+ Liberal Democrats and allies when the party’s revised “formal definition” of transphobia leaked online. Days later, the party formally published its new statement during Trans Awareness Week. On their website, the Liberal Democrats say the definition was revised in light of “recent legal cases” which have brought “greater clarity to the interpretation of the law in this area”. The new definition says the party rejects “all prejudice and discrimination based upon race, ethnicity, caste, heritage, class, religion or belief, age, […]

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The infuriating experience of PrEP discrimination

Did you know that you could be discriminated against by insurance companies for taking PrEP?  I didn’t.  Recently, I have been searching for long-term disability insurance options while living in California. Long-term disability insurance could offer some peace of mind if some tragic, unforeseeable event left me unable to work. I chatted with an insurance broker, who scanned providers nationwide, and reported back to me that because I took PrEP daily, most insurers wouldn’t allow me to participate in their program. Drugs prescribed for PrEP such as Truvada, Descovy, and Apretude are on a list of “unaccepted” medications. I received what […]

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Can Meditation Help Heal Queer Communities of Color?

Many of us have been cut from our usual networks of care, affection, pleasure and exchange during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the context of queer life, this seems especially palpable: So much of how we engage with each other centers around community, contact, and proximity, conditions which now might evoke potential danger and anxiety, risk even. One of the many transformations undergone in the pandemic, then, relates to the amount of time we’ve been forced to spend in isolation, barred from care and kin. I, like others, found myself yearning anxiously for the outside world. And yet, in those same […]

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Lesbian refugee on fleeing Zimbabwe, brave way she found acceptance and joy of finally being out

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Developing your first crush as a teenager should be an exciting experience, but for Beverly, it was terrifying. The problem was that the person she harboured feelings for was a girl. Growing up in Zimbabwe, Beverly knew same-sex relationships were not accepted. Like so many before her, Beverly tried to convince herself that it was just a phase, but a couple of relationships with men between the ages of 19 and 21 left her with no doubt that she was a lesbian. That realisation was a painful one for Beverly. Homosexuality is criminalised in Zimbabwe, and public attitudes to queer people are unkind. She […]

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