Before AIDS, Airbnb and Grindr changed the face of gay life forever, there were limited ways of finding your people, especially if you were a lone, gay man venturing into the unfamiliar territory of the West Coast.- Advertisement –
In the 1960s, a gay man named Bob Damron starting seeing America through a different lens. Where were the places that were gay-friendly in Butte, Montana? What about in Austin, Texas? Where were the bathhouses, the sex clubs, the diners and dive bars that would welcome queer folks with open arms?
Damron was a bartender who’d explored the world of San Francisco in the 1960s before settling in L.A.
He’d paved the way for gay enclaves like Castro Street and Christopher Street. He helped young men and women find their people and avoid getting into dangerous situations in rough, small towns and conservative cities.
Today, his legacy lives on. In an article by journalist Kate Sosin for L.A. Magazine, Publisher Gina Gatta recalls the founder of Damron Company, a business she now owns.
“Like a Bible salesman, Bob would get on the road,” Gatta tells Sosin. “He would travel around, and he would find the gays, and he would find the bars and bathhouses.”
Competitor guide books developed along side of Damron’s book, but none of them survived the tumultuous period of the late ‘60s and ‘70s, when everything in American culture, from sex to movies to politics, was becoming redefined for a new audience. By the time the Internet came along, LGBTQ+ folks had their own printed travel guides and websites like Planet Out to help them find new destinations and stay safe on the road.
But Gatta has been upholding Damron’s legacy since buying the company in 1989. Damron himself died of HIV in the early nineties.
Gatta has been single-handedly keeping the book going year after year. But the problem of keeping the book in print is a problem all publishers face: how do you sell people on something they can get for free online?
Today, teens can learn about their sexuality online, by asking friends or joining forums, or even reading Wikipedia.
If they want to find the nearest gay bar, it’s not hard to do. Still, there’s something romantic about holding a physical guidebook in your hand.
For a generation that decided long ago it would have nothing more to do with the physical elements of travel, including maps and guidebooks, there’s something touching about the idea of a book that was built over the course of years.
That someone was brave enough to find every bar, every hookup spot, and every dive bar where everybody could, feasibly, someday, know your name.
A dying Tennessee man’s final wish will not be honored. A bereaved son in Sweetwater, Tennessee says his sexual orientation is standing in the way of his father’s funeral service.
Jessie Goodman is engaged to Brandon Smitty. Goodman’s father is very ill and dying. His final wish is that his services be held at the church he first attended. But when the church leadership found out the gay couple would be involved, Goodman says things got complicated.
“As long as I was going to take part in any way, he [Goodman’s father] could not have his service there,” said Goodman. We called Lee’s Chapel Baptist Church’s Pastor Jay Scruggs to see if this was true. Pastor Scruggs had no comment, but did say he would talk with us after Jessie’s father is in the grave.
Tinder unveiled a new personal security feature Wednesday aimed at protecting LGBTQ users when they visit countries where same-sex relationships are outlawed or criminalized.
Upon opening the popular dating app in one of these nearly 70 countries, users will receive a “Traveler Alert” that notifies them that they appear to “be in a place where the LGBTQ community may be penalized,” according to a press release from Tinder.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer users will also no longer automatically appear on Tinder when they open the app in these locations. Instead, users can choose whether to remain hidden on Tinder or make their profile public while they are traveling. If they choose the latter option, the app will still hide their gender identity and sexual orientation from their profile, so this information can’t be weaponized by others.
“We fundamentally believe that everyone should be able to love,” Elie Seidman, CEO of Tinder, said in a statement. “We serve all communities — no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation — and we are proud to offer features that help keep them safe.”
Tinder worked with the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), an advocacy organization that brings together more than 1,000 global LGBTQ organizations, to determine what countries should be included as part of the alert. The countries include South Sudan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and Nigeria.
Also on the list is Egypt, where in 2018 there were widespread reports of the country’s authorities and residents using dating apps to entrap and persecute gay men. In addition to being imprisoned, some were subjected to forced anal exams, according to Human Rights Watch.
In the U.S. and abroad, there have also been numerous cases of people using gay dating apps to target members of the LGBTQ community and subsequently rob and/or attack them.
Experts say Tinder’s new feature is reflective of increased momentum to ensure the safety of the LGBTQ community through digital protections.
“Tinder’s new security feature is a welcome step in safety-by-design. It utilizes design strategies — defaults, aesthetics, opt-in buttons — to protect users rather than collect data,” Ari Ezra Waldman, director of the Innovation Center for Law and Technology at New York Law School, told NBC News in an email. “By automatically hiding a user or their sexual orientation, the app defaults to safety in hostile territories. It deploys a big red warning screen to get users’ attention. And it forces users to opt-in to more publicity about who they are.”
Waldman said other apps should consider adopting similar measures. “The default should be no disclosure until the user affirmatively says it’s OK based on a clear and obvious and understanding warning,” he added.
In 2016, the Pew Research Center found that use of online dating apps among young adults had tripled over three years, and experts say this number is assuredly higher in the LGBTQ community, where stigma and discrimination can make it difficult to meet people in person. One study reported that more than a million gay and bisexual men logged into a dating app every day in 2013, while another from 2017 states that twice as many LGBTQ singles use dating apps as heterosexual users.
The relatively high number of queer people using dating apps, therefore, makes increased protections a more urgent matter, said Ian Holloway, an assistant professor of social welfare at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs.
“Tinder’s Traveler Alert is a great idea, but I wonder how it would translate to LGBTQ-specific platforms, where people know others’ sexuality by virtue of being on those apps,” Holloway said.
He pointed to Hornet as an example of an app that caters to gay men and has developed security guidelines, which includes obscuring users’ distance from others.
“I’m glad to see we’re thinking about these issues, but there are challenges that come with gay-specific apps,” Holloway added.
Last month, Tinder collaborated with GLAAD on a new feature that allows users to disclose their sexual orientation, which was not previously an option. The app also instituted a #RightToLove feature during Pride, which enabled users to send letters to their senators in support of the Equality Act.
A new petition filed before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of a Catholic adoption agency seeking to refuse placement into LGBT homes calls for a ruling that could enable anti-LGBT discrimination in the name of “religious freedom” — even if justices affirm in separate pending litigation LGBT protections are included under federal civil rights law.
The petition was filed Monday by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty — an organization that takes up religious freedom lawsuits, such as the Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor cases — and seeks to establish a First Amendment right for Catholic Foster Services in Philadelphia to refuse to place children into LGBT families.
“Here and in cities across the country, religious foster and adoption agencies have repeatedly been forced to close their doors, and many more are under threat,” the petition says. “These questions are unavoidable, they raise issues of great consequence for children and families nationwide, and the problem will only continue to grow until these questions are resolved by this court.”
The petition presents three questions:
1. Whether free exercise plaintiffs can only succeed by proving a particular type of discrimination claim — namely that the government would allow the same conduct by someone who held different religious views — as two circuits have held, or whether courts must consider other evidence that a law is not neutral and generally applicable, as six circuits have held?
2. Whether Employment Division v. Smith should be revisited?
3. Whether a government violates the First Amendment by conditioning a religious agency’s ability to participate in the foster care system on taking actions and making statements that directly contradict the agency’s religious beliefs?
The case came about after the City of Philadelphia learned in March 2018 Catholic Social Services, which the city had hired to provide foster care services to children in the child welfare, were refusing to license same-sex couples despite a contract prohibiting these agencies from engaging in anti-LGBT discrimination.
When the city said it would terminate the contract, Catholic Social Services sued on the basis it can maintain the contract and refuse placement into LGBT homes for religious reasons under the guarantee of free exercise of religion under the First Amendment.
A federal judge in Pennsylvania and the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals denied a preliminary injunction in favor of Catholic Adoption Agencies. The Third Circuit, which declined to revisit the case “en banc” before the full court, based its decision in part on the 1990 ruling in Employment Division v. Smith, which says states are aren’t required to accommodate otherwise illegal acts in the name of religious liberty under the First Amendment.
A key component of the Becket Fund petition is reconsideration of the Smith decision. Although the petition insists Smith doesn’t support the Third Circuit decision, it says “the propensity of lower courts to read Smith so narrowly is powerful evidence that Smith has confused rather than clarified the law and should be reconsidered.”
Catholic Social Services also seeks a religious right to refuse placement into LGBT homes in a broader sense under the First Amendment — which could affect not just city contracts, but federal non-discrimination law against anti-LGBT discrimination — asserting the current situation “effectively denies CSS a license if it does not speak and act as the government prefers.
A ruling from the Supreme Court on the free exercise claim presented in third question could give justices wriggle room in separate litigation to determine anti-LGBT discrimination is a form of sex discrimination under federal law. Those cases — Bostock v. Clayton County, Zarda v. Altitude Express and EEOC v. Harris Funeral Homes — call on the Supreme Court to clarify whether Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars employment discrimination on the basis of sex — also applies to cases of anti-LGBT discrimination.
A ruling from the Supreme Court in favor of the idea Title VII covers LGBT people would make Catholic institutions liable if they deem it necessary to fire a worker for being gay, much like Catholic schools have fired gay teachers for entering into same-sex marriages.
Conceivably, if this ruling gives pause to justices like U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts and U.S. Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh — who are Catholic, but could be swing justice on the Title VII — they could find Title VII applies to cases of anti-LGBT discrimination, but also give Catholic institution an out from the decision in the Fulton case by finding they have a First Amendment right to discriminate.
Meanwhile, the Becket Fund is drawing the 2015 Obergefell decision in favor of same-sex marriage nationwide as evidence of the need for the court to take up the Fulton case.
“Just as no LGBT couples are prevented from marrying because a particular church does not perform same-sex weddings, no LGBT couples are prevented from fostering because a particular church cannot provide an endorsement,” the petition says. “Yet many churches will be prevented from exercising religion by caring for at-risk children, all due to a disagreement with the government about marriage. That is not the live-and-let-live world Obergefell promised.”
The Fulton case has reached the Supreme Court before. Last year, Catholic Social Services sought injunctive relief from the Supreme Court — even before the case had been fully briefed in lower courts — to refuse placement into LGBT homes as its litigation against the City of Philadelphia moved forward. The Supreme Court rebuffed this request, although U.S. Associate Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch signaled they would have granted the injunctive relief.
Faced with the prospect of having to place children into LGBT homes — which studies are shown are just as capable of raising children as non-LGBT homes — Catholic Social Services threatens to close down services if it doesn’t get its way.
“Here, if CSS declines the contract, it will be completely excluded from Philadelphia’s foster care system,” the petition says. “It might serve families in other ways, like its residential programs or temporary care for unaccompanied minors, but it cannot support Philadelphia children through the difficult process of entering foster care, finding families who can care for them for weeks to years, and supporting those families as they care for children through the uncertainties of family reunification or adoption.”
The American Civil Liberties Union has intervened in the case and is representing the Support Center for Child Advocates and Philadelphia Family Pride.
Leslie Cooper, deputy director of the ACLU LGBT & HIV project, said adoption agencies shouldn’t be able to obtain taxpayer funds and engage in anti-LGBT discrimination under a religious litmus test at the same time.
“Catholic Social Services wants to force every state and local government to allow exactly that,” Cooper said. “With more than 400,000 children in the foster care system across the country — a quarter of whom are waiting for a family to adopt them — no family willing and able to open their hearts and home to a child should be rejected. When agencies choose to accept taxpayer dollars to provide this critically important government service to children, the needs of children must come first.”
It remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will take up the case, and if it does whether justices will a render a decision in this case in conjunction with the Title VII litigation. The Supreme Court is out of session for the summer, so this soonest justices could decide whether to take it up is during the long conference in September, which would mean decision in the case by June 2020.
Another two lawsuits were filed last week in California against the U.S. pharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences, Inc. by several dozen patients who claim the company withheld from the market for more than a decade a drug for treating HIV that it knew was safer and more effective than the drug it promoted during that period.
The two personal injury lawsuits accuse Gilead of intentionally continuing to promote the HIV medication tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF), which was known to cause serious kidney and bone damage, so it could profit from the drug before its patent on the medication was to expire in 2015.
At the same time, the lawsuits charge, Gilead withheld from the market a far safer version of the drug called tenofovir alafenamide (TAF), which it knew would more effectively treat HIV without causing any of the serious side effects caused by TDF.
The lawsuits charge that many patients taking one of five Gilead HIV drugs for which TDF was a key component needlessly suffered debilitating and sometimes fatal kidney and bone damage as well as damage to their teeth. Also adversely impacted by TDF, the lawsuits claim, were HIV-negative people taking the Gilead drug Truvada, which contained TDF, as part of the HIV prevention regimen known as PrEP.
In response to these and as many as a dozen or more similar lawsuits filed by HIV patients and PrEP users in state and federal courts in California over the past two years, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation on Monday called on Gilead to create a $10 billion fund “for victims harmed by its TDF-based drugs.”
Michael Weinstein, executive director of AHF, the nation’s largest AIDS advocacy and HIV/AIDS patient care organization, said a large compensation fund would benefit both Gilead and the more than 1,000 patients that are plaintiffs in the multiple lawsuits against Gilead over the TDF issue.
“We had two goals in putting this out,” said Weinstein. “One was to underline the significance of the liability that they are facing based on their conduct,” which could amount to billions of dollars, he said referring to Gilead.
“And second of all is simply to plant the idea in Gilead’s mind that ultimately the best resolution of this is to compensate the people who were harmed,” Weinstein said.
“For years, Gilead represented its TDF-based medications as safe and effective, misleading Plaintiffs, their doctors, and the medical community into believing that no safer alternative design existed that would have saved Plaintiffs from TDF’s dangerous effects,” says one of the two lawsuits filed July 12 in Alameda County, Calif., Superior Court.
“Indeed, it was Gilead that discovered and helped develop the safer design around the same time it developed TDF in the mid to late 1990s,” the lawsuit says. “Gilead, however, shelved TAF, the safer design, in 2004. Gilead marketed and sold only the dangerous and less effective design – TDF and TDF-based combination pills – for approximately 15 years,” the lawsuit continues.
“Then, when its monopoly on those TDF drugs was about to expire, Gilead sought and received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to sell, and market TAF-based drugs, allowing it to extend its exclusivity on tenofovir and keep its HIV drugs branded and priced high to increase its profits,” the lawsuit says.
A spokesperson for Gilead Sciences didn’t immediately respond to an email and phone message from the Blade asking the company to comment on this and other similar lawsuits filed against it during the past two years over the TDF and TAF drug allegations.
Gilead’s attorneys disputed the allegations that the company failed to adequately alert patients and doctors of the adverse side effects of TDF in a July 10 motion filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in a motion calling for the court to dismiss yet another lawsuit filed against it over the TDF-TAF issue.
That case, Adrian Holley, et al vs. Gilead Sciences, Inc., was filed in March 2018 and is one of several TDF-related cases filed against Gilead in federal court in California.
In its motion to dismiss, Gilead argues that plaintiffs have failed to provide sufficient evidence that “newly acquired information” surfaced to that would have allowed Gilead to “strengthen warnings contained in TDF medication labeling after 2008.”
Gilead has stated in the past it has included warnings about possible harmful side effects of TDF for people who have a history of kidney or bone related ailments. The lawsuits, however, have charged the company with failing to issue an alert that TDF could cause serious kidney and bone damage for people who did not have a history of kidney or bone related problems.
‘Plaintiffs still have not alleged, inter alia, facts supporting when they or their doctors were exposed to any alleged misrepresentations, what misrepresentations they or their doctors were exposed to, or if or how their or their doctors’ conduct changed based on any such misrepresentations, as required by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedures 8(a) and 99(b),” Gilead attorneys state in their motion to dismiss the federal lawsuit.
The motion to dismiss makes no mention of the other key allegation in this and the other lawsuits – that Gilead withheld the release of the safer HIV drug TAF to enable it to reap its profits from TDF until its patent on that drug expired in 2015.
The lawsuit filed on July 12 in Alameda County, entitled Gary Smith, et al vs. Gilead Sciences, Inc. includes 41 plaintiffs who are seeking financial compensation for damages of an as yet undeclared amount on grounds that Gilead violated “Strict Products Liability – Failure to Warn” requirements; engaged in “Negligence and Gross-Negligence—Design Defect and Failure-to-Warn” related to the harmful effects of TDF; Fraud; and “Breach of Express and Implied Warranty.”
The Smith v. Gilead lawsuit was filed five days after a separate lawsuit accusing Gilead of the same allegations of failing to adequately alert patients to the harmful side effects of TDF and withholding the release of the safer drug TAF was filed in San Diego County Superior Court under the case name Timothy Williams, et al vs. Gilead Sciences, Inc., et al.
“This case is a shocking example of corporate greed,” said Elizabeth Graham, one of the lead attorneys with Grant & Eisenhofer, an Oakland, Calif.-based law firm that filed the San Diego case on behalf of the plaintiffs it is representing.
“Gilead owed its consumer patients the safest possible drug, but opted to withhold that drug from the market in the name of profit,” Graham said in a statement.
Liza Brereton, an attorney with HIV Litigation Attorneys, a law firm created to focus on personal injury and class action lawsuits filed against Gilead related to TDF, said judges with the multiple California state courts in which the pending lawsuits against Gilead have been filed have scheduled a hearing in Los Angles for July 30 in which the cases were expected to be consolidated into one large case.
“So it’s taken a while but pretty soon we’ll be all in front of one judge in one court and things will be moving pretty quickly,” Brereton said.
She said the cases in federal courts will continue as separate cases.
On Wednesday (10 July), a group of 30 LGBTI advocates sent a letter to dozens of tech companies, urging them to stop donating to anti-LGBTI politicians.
These companies include Google, Microsoft, AT&T, Dell, T-Mobile, and Amazon.
Tell me more
According to Buzzfeed News, the group Zeros for Zeros analyzed the contribution data between 2010 and 2019 of the top-scoring companies on the Human Rights Campaign’s (HRC) Corporate Equality Index.
It found that 49 corporate PACs gave a combined $5,837,331 [€5,171,495.84] to members of Congress who received a rating of zero on the HRC’s legislative scorecard. This includes Texas Rep. Ted Cruz. Last year, Cruz introduced legislation that would make it legal for businesses and nonprofits to discriminate against same-sex couples.
‘These corporations create welcoming and safe environments for their LGBTQ employees and market to LGBTQ customers,’ Lane Hudson, campaign manager for Zero for Zeros, told Buzzfeed. ‘But they’re still giving to members of Congress who will make an America that is unsafe for all of us. And we want them to reconcile their values with their corporate giving.’
Companies like Google gave a combined $178,500 [€158,139.40] through their corporate PAC to anti-LGBTI politicians as well. Google has faced scrutiny for refusing to crack down on hate speech, and donated $10,000 [€8,859.35] to Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee. In 2014, Lee made statements in defense of religious liberty at the expense of LGBTI rights.
Brian Babin
PACs associated with Amazon, AT&T, Microsoft, and Dell gave about $15,000 [€13,289.02] total to Texas Rep. Brian Babin. Republican Babin previously called Obama’s policy on gender-neutral bathrooms ‘wrong’ and ‘misguided.’
‘The federal government should not be in the business of throwing common sense and decency out the window and forcing local schools to permit a teenage boy who “identifies” as a girl to use changing rooms, locker rooms, and bathrooms with five year-old girls,’ Babin said in a statement.
‘For over four decades we’ve been committed to the LGBTQ+ community and have led the way in adopting workplace policies that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity,’ an AT&T representative told Buzzfeed. ‘We support candidates on both sides of the aisle who are addressing the issues that impact our business, our employees, and our customers. That doesn’t mean we support their views on every issue.’
Steve King
Microsoft, Google, AT&T, and T-Mobile are among the companies that, via their PACs, have donated thousands to Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King. King ran a successful campaign to oust three of the state’s Supreme Court judges after they ruled that the state’s ban on same-sex marriage violated the Constitution.
Amazon, Dell, Google, Microsoft, and T-Mobile did not reply to Buzzfeed’s request for comment.
‘We’re not asking for the moon,’ Hudson said. ‘We’re just asking them to not give money to the most anti-gay members of Congress. These companies are giving money to politicians who would undo all the progress they supported. It doesn’t make sense.’
Anything else?
This revelation comes after many responded skeptically to corporations participating in this year’s Pride. This phenomenon is known as Rainbow Capitalism. This is where, for the month of June, companies will pay lip service to the LGBTI community (for example, changing their logos to include the Pride flag) in a way to pander to LGBTI consumers.
The global fight against AIDS is stalling due to lower investment, marginalized communities missing vital health services, and new HIV infections rising in some parts, the United Nations warned on Tuesday.
More than half of all new HIV infections in 2018 were among sex workers, drug users, men who have sex with men, transgender people, prisoners and the sexual partners of these groups, according to a report by UNAIDS. Many of those populations did not get access to infection prevention services, it said.
Progress in some countries has been “impressive,” the U.N. body’s report said, but others are seeing rising numbers of HIV infections and AIDS-related deaths.
It noted “worrying increases” in new infections in eastern Europe and central Asia, where HIV cases rose by 29 percent, as well as in the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America.
“Ending AIDS is possible if we focus on people not diseases,” said UNAIDS Executive Director Gunilla Carlsson.
She said now was the time to “create road maps for the people and locations being left behind (and) take a human rights-based approach to reaching people most affected by HIV.”
This would need greater political leadership, she said, starting with adequate and well-targeted investment.
Global funding for the AIDS fight dropped off significantly in 2018 – by nearly $1 billion – as international donors gave less and domestic investments did not grow fast enough to plug the gap. Around $19 billion was available for the AIDS response in 2018, UNAIDS said – falling $7.2 billion short of the total $26.2 billion it says is needed by 2020.
Globally in 2018, some 770,000 people died of AIDS and almost 38 million people were living with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes it.
HIV cannot be cured but the infection can be kept in check by AIDS drugs known as antiretrovial treatment.
Around 23.3 million of the 37.9 million people with HIV worldwide currently get the AIDS drugs they need.
Around 1.7 million people were newly infected, the UNAIDS report said, a 16% decline since 2010, driven mostly by steady progress in parts of eastern and southern Africa.
South Africa, for example, has cut new HIV infections by more than 40% and AIDS-related deaths by around 40% since 2010.
But the report warned there is still a long way to go in many parts of eastern and southern Africa – the regions most affected by HIV.
Violence against transgender people continues to be a daunting issue within the LGBTQ+ community. Los Angeles, alone, recorded a nearly 13 percent increase in hate crimes toward LGBTQ+ people and black community members last year, as reported by The Los Angeles Times.
Yet, there are many transgender people who come face-to-face with assailants and live to tell their story. Jessica-Jean de la Vega, a youth education advocate for a Los Angeles-based trans health clinic, is one of them.
De la Vega had downloaded the notorious LGBTQ+ dating/sex app, Grindr. She, like so many other LGBTQ+ people who frequent the app, was looking forward to simply meeting someone for a casual connection. However, she never expected to invite an assailant over — one with the intention to rob as much as he could.
Before inviting the man over, De la Vega did not pick up on any red flags during their exchange on Grindr.
“It was a totally normal conversation,” De la Vega said. “We had a full-blown conversation — pictures were sent, we talked to each other, there wasn’t anything assuming. He had mentioned he was on the DL — I said that’s fine. He sent me his actual photos. Everything matched when he got here.”
After the man made his way into De la Vega’s home, he violently pushes her down and pulls out a gun. “Value your life,” the assailant said while pointing his gun toward her.
“There’s like a sense of security you expect from being on this app that’s targeted toward queer people,” De la Vega said. “You don’t expect that to happen.”
The assailant stole De la Vega’s phone, wallet and even went as far as taking the flat-screen television in the living room, which belonged to her roommate.
Yet, De la Vega feels fortunate that the altercation didn’t escalate to violent heights. If she hadn’t complied with his requests, she fears she might have become a part of a statistic already growing at an alarming rate.
In 2018, 26 transgender people lost their lives by means of brutal violence. So far, in 2019, there have been more than 10 transgender people who have been murdered — many such as Dana Martin, a 31-year-old black transgender women, were fatally shot. Martin was found dead in her car — having lived her final moments in a roadside ditch somewhere in Alabama, according to Human Rights Campaign.
“I’m really fortunate,” De la Vega said. “Someone else, two weeks later, was robbed by the same person. She got physically hurt, I did not.”
The person that De la Vega is referring to is Luna Lovebad, a 28-year-old transgender Latinx women with a career in music. Lovebad performed a musical set at LA Pride, the day after she was robbed by two men at gunpoint. According to Lovebad, after re-downloading the app in the weeks following the assault, she was messaged by an anonymous profile. The message read: “You was broke anyways bitch. Should’ve shot yo dumb ass,” as reported on her Instagram account.
“I think we face a lot more violence, just in general,” De la Vega said. “I mean we constantly see how many trans women have already died this year. And then, on top of all of the trans violence, they just have funeral services for trans woman in our community — it’s like we constantly face this.”
De la Verga remained off of Grindr immediately following the incident. However, she recently re-downloaded the application. Her reasoning: she deserves to live her life. Moreover, she believes it’s, oftentimes, difficult for LGBTQ+ people to date, or connect for casual fun, without the help of queer apps such as Grindr.
However, she does admit that she is much more cautious about who she meets over the app.
“There are so many different things that can lead to violence [for transgender people],” De la Vega said. “Whether it be from Grindr, whether it be from anywhere else. You have to look at the disparities that transpeople face versus cis-folk. Because it’s not just trans women, it’s every person that falls outside of the gender binary that this happens to.”
De la Vega recently installed a security camera inside of her apartment — it directly faces the front door and is linked in real-time to her cell-phone. She says it makes her feel safer following such a traumatic incident.
As pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) gains acceptance, medical experts and policymakers are finding new ways to make this effective HIV prevention tool accessible to more people who could benefit.
Last month the California Senate passed a bill that will allow pharmacists to provide PrEP and post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) without a prescription. And in June, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommended that health care providers offer PrEP to people at risk of acquiring HIV, paving the way for broader insurance coverage.
PrEP at the Pharmacy
SB 159, co-authored by Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) and Assemblymember Todd Gloria (D-San Diego), authorizes pharmacists to offer a month’s worth of PrEP or a course of PEP without prescription from a physician. It also prohibits insurance companies from requiring prior authorization for PrEP coverage.
On May 21, the Senate approved the bill by a wide 34-to-1 margin, sending it on to the Assembly.
“By allowing pharmacists to furnish these revolutionary medications, we will help reduce HIV infection rates and create a stronger path toward ending new HIV infections entirely,” Wiener said. “We have the tools to end new HIV infections, and we can get there in our lifetime.”
San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF) co-sponsored the bill and was involved in the process of moving it forward, said Courtney Mulhern-Pearson, senior director of policy and strategy.
“The goal of the bill is to make PrEP accessible at a point when people are willing and able to start,” she said. “We’re looking at PrEP uptake and realizing we need to do more to increase access across the state. This is an innovative way to increase access to and awareness of PrEP and to make sure it’s available to all who need it.”
The bill’s current language allows pharmacists to provide a 30-day supply of Truvada (tenofovir disoproxil fumarate/emtricitabine) PrEP to individuals who have had a negative HIV test within the previous seven days. The client would then be referred to a medical provider for the recommended monitoring, including screening for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and kidney function tests. Pharmacists would also be able to offer a month-long course of PEP, which can prevent HIV infection if started within 72 hours after exposure to HIV.
Some have raised concerns about providing PrEP without testing kidney function in advance, because the tenofovir in Truvada could potentially cause kidney impairment in susceptible individuals. But studies have shown that kidney problems are uncommon among people using Truvada for HIV prevention.
“One month is not going to be a problem,” according to Robert Grant, MD, of the University of California at San Francisco, who led a major study showing that PrEP is highly effective for gay and bisexual men. “We’re not seeing kidney problems very much at all in people seeking PrEP. These typically occur four to five months after starting and they’re rare.”
“We’re only providing PrEP to a small proportion of people who could benefit, and making it more accessible and more convenient at pharmacies will be a step toward stopping HIV transmission,” Grant added.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that less than 10% of the more than 1.1 million people at high risk for acquiring HIV were using PrEP as of 2015. The numbers were even lower for African Americans (1%) and Latinx people (3%), who have high rates of new HIV infections. In California, the state Office of AIDS estimates that as many as 240,000 Californians could be eligible for PrEP, but only around 9,000 people were using it as of late 2016.
“The low rates of PrEP and PEP use across California signal the need to offer these effective prevention tools in additional ways,” said SFAF CEO Joe Hollendoner. “This bill removes unnecessary barriers and streamlines access to PrEP and PEP, so anyone who needs preventative measures can get them.”
USPSTF Recommendation
The new USPSTF recommendation for PrEP carries an “A” grade, meaning it is well-supported by scientific evidence. The Affordable Care Act requires insurers to cover preventive recommended services with an “A” or “B” rating.
“The new recommendation for PrEP is enormously important news for the struggle against HIV,” said Grant. “This grade A recommendation reflects the available evidence, which strongly supports the use of PrEP as a safe, effective method of HIV prevention.”
As described in a June 11 statement in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the recommendation says that clinicians should offer PrEP to sexually active men who have sex with men (MSM) and heterosexual women and men who have an HIV-positive sex partner, do not use condoms consistently, or have had an STI within the past six months. PrEP is also recommended for people who injection drugs who share needles or other injection equipment.
Although few transgender people have been included in trials, PrEP has been shown to reduce the risk of acquiring HIV through receptive or insertive anal or vaginal sex, so it can be considered for cisgender and transgender people alike, according to the authors.
The task force experts recommend once-daily Truvada—currently the only PrEP regimen approved by the Food and Drug Administration—for all at-risk groups. But it also says that tenofovir disiproxil fumarate alone, which is available as an inexpensive generic, is an option for heterosexual men and women and people who inject drugs, based on studies showing that it lowers HIV risk in these groups. No equivalent studies with MSM have been done.
The new recommendation has the potential to substantially expand access to PrEP. Many private insurers already cover Truvada for HIV prevention—which is priced at around $1,600 per month—but cost sharing is common. Gilead Sciences offers a co-pay card that people with private insurance can use to cover out-of-pocket costs, but some claim this benefit is inadequate. Many state Medicaid programs, including California’s, cover PrEP, but this represents a substantial public financial burden given competing funding needs.
Expanding PrEP use among people who need it most will also require raising awareness and combatting stigma.
“PrEP has been proven to be a highly effective intervention in preventing new cases of HIV, and receiving an A grade is an important step towards increased access,” Hollendoner said. “We know, however, that access alone does not result in utilization, so we call on healthcare providers to educate their patients who are at risk for HIV acquisition—especially those who are people of color—about PrEP and how it can protect their sexual health.”
McBride will run for Delaware’s 1st Senate District, where incumbent Harris McDowell, a fellow Democrat, announced July 1 that he would retire in 2020. The district covers Bellefonte, Claymont and parts of Wilmington, the state’s largest and most populous city.
“I’ve spent my life fighting for people to have dignity, peace of mind, and a fair shot at staying afloat and getting ahead,” McBride said in a statement shared with NBC News. “Sen. McDowell’s retirement at the end of this term is a well-deserved cap on a remarkable career of public service, and now our neighbors need someone who will continue to fight for them.”
McBride, currently a spokesperson for LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, first made national headlines in 2012 while still a college student. A day after stepping down as American University’s student body president, McBride came out as trans in the school’s student-run newspaper. During her time in college, McBride also interned in the Obama White House, becoming “the first openly transgender woman to work in the White House in any capacity,” according to her campaign announcement.
Should McBride be elected next year, she would be America’s first openly transgender state senator. According to the Victory Institute, there are currently 715 openly LGBTQ elected officials nationwide.