News 2005-Older

Column: In Times Like These...

By 'Rolake Odetoyinbo

Editor's note: It is our great pleasure to introduce you to 'Rolake Odetoyinbo -- a gifted, dedicated and fierce Nigerian woman. As part of her wide-ranging activism in her home country, Odetoyinbo writes a regular column for the popular Nigerian newspaper The Punch, where she boldly talks about her life as an activist, a mother, a lover and, simply, a Black woman living with this virus. Starting this week, she will share those provocative, insightful and entertaining columns with us at BlackAIDS.org as well. We couldn't be happier!

Odetoyinbo may write from West Africa, but her personal journey is instructive to Black women everywhere. And her columns help all of us understand the universality of this epidemic. But more than that, they defiantly give the lie to the phrase "AIDS victim," instead illustrating exactly how we all, be we positive or negative, can and must live on despite -- and because of -- this epidemic's assault on Black people everywhere.

Growing up, I was a tomboy who wore trousers, climbed trees, scaled fences, rode bikes and played football with the boys. No boy my age could beat me in a fight, and my neighbor, the late Nigerian basketball player Timi Alakija, taught me to box.

In secondary school, I was a bully ever ready for a fight. I wore my hair short, walked with a bounce and always got male roles in school plays. I was a late starter -- tall and flat as a beanpole, my breasts and periods didn’t make an appearance until around age 14.

Then, overnight, everything changed. I went home for long vacation and everything grew wings and sprouted so fast I was embarrassed to return to school after the holidays.

That was then; this is now. One of the things I now love best about ‘Rolake is the fact that she’s a woman -- and I won’t trade that for the world.

As a teenager and young adult, I dreaded menstruation. Now I just love those things we call peroids. Every month, God reminds me that he has given me the honor and privilege to conceive. The joy of feeling a baby grow inside of you is heavenly as you carry this fast-growing, round stomach around for some months, during which everybody treats you like an egg.

Strangers give up their chairs for you. People invite you to the front in long queues. Fighting and cursing “area-boys” allow you drive in to buy fuel during scarcity. Molue drivers, who never stop long enough at bus stops, come to a complete halt to allow you to get off the bus as the conductor makes the special call of “o’loyun, o p’onmo,” just for you.

While pregnant, you’re allowed to be cranky. Your man and male colleagues run circles around you and allow you to have your way. After these nine months of bliss, you endure labor to bring forth this baby. And while Oga gets a handshake and a pat on the back, all envelopes and gifts come to you.

O.K. ladies, don’t skin me alive -- I agree pregnancy isn’t easy and the birthing process can be hell. But you’ll agree all those memories recede as you hold that precious child in your hands, watch the envelopes grow and look forward to the next time!

If the man is the head, then a wise woman is the neck that turns the head whichever way it desires. Don’t get me wrong, I love the brothers and I’m an unrepentant "man-liker." But I just don’t envy them.

By Kai Wright

How does a device as simple as a rubber dredge up such complicated debates? Condoms are, after all, among healthcare’s most basic tools: a simple latex sheath to unfurl over an erect penis before inserting it into someone else’s orifice. With that uncomplicated act, countless sexually transmitted diseases are slowed, if not stopped. Or, so say most folks -- and that’s the rub, so to speak.

Critics on both the left and right wing of the sexual culture wars say HIV prevention’s condom-mania dangerously oversimplifies sex. Those on the left complain that public health’s use-a-condom-every-time mantra does little to address the difficult emotions that drive decisions about risk-taking in bed (disclosure: I have made this argument in other publications). Those on the right, meanwhile, charge that public health vastly overstates how much protection condoms provide from both the physical and emotional dangers of sex.

But given the current political landscape, it’s the right-flank attack that’s causing the most headaches for HIV prevention’s condom promotion efforts today.

Throughout the early summer, Lester Crawford’s nomination as Food and Drug Administration commissioner sat captive in the Senate, pinned in by the small-scale turf battles that preoccupy both sides of the sexual and reproductive health wars. Any Senator can place a “hold” on a nominee once it hits the chamber floor, effectively blocking a vote until 60 Senators call for one. Conservative Republican Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.) placed a hold on Crawford’s nomination in June, demanding that he promise to enforce a law Coburn shepherded through Congress in 2000 that would change warning labels on condoms.

(Democratic Sens. Hillary Clinton of New York and Pat Murray of Washington State also put a hold on the nomination, asking for a prompt decision on nonprescription sales of emergency contraception, known as “morning after” pills.)

Currently, condom packages must carry a label stating, “If used properly, latex condoms will help to reduce the risk of transmission of HIV infection (AIDS) and many other sexually transmitted diseases.” Coburn’s 2000 law orders the FDA to expand this requirement to include more information about their “effectiveness or lack of the effectiveness in preventing STDs,” according to the Associated Press.

Coburn, who is a medical doctor, lifted his hold on Crawford in mid-July. A spokesperson told the Washington Post that Coburn cleared the way only after receiving a guarantee from Crawford that the FDA will act on the law, though it remains to be seen what specifically the FDA will do. The Senate overwhelmingly approved Crawford the next day, on July 19.

Coburn’s goal is to highlight abstinence promoters’ argument that condoms do not provide absolute protection against STDs. Rightwing researchers most commonly cite herpes and HPV (or human papillomavirus) as examples, because they are transmitted via skin-to-skin contact in areas a condom doesn’t cover.

“Condoms may provide moderate protection from some sexually transmitted diseases (e.g. HIV/AIDS, and Gonorrhea) but are likely to be much less effective for others (e.g. Chlamydia, Herpes, and HPV),” reads an explanation on 4parents.gov, a controversial abstinence-promotion website set up by the Bush administration’s Department of Health and Human Service. “Condom effectiveness in protecting from diseases such as Hepatitis B and Syphilis has not been well studied.”

Mainstream researchers angrily object to such statements. They argue that Coburn and his ilk have manipulated the facts to drastically overstate their case. “A federally funded Web site should present the facts as they are, not as you might with them to be,” wrote Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) in a letter to the administration after a study he commissioned found several inaccurate or misleading statements about condoms and STD prevention on 4parents.gov.

The site was not developed by a federal public health agency, but rather by the National Physicians Center for Family Resources, a group that has been closely associated with efforts to ban abortion and promote homosexuality as a disease. The Senate Appropriations Committee has added a stipulation to its funding bill for Health and Human Services that orders an internal review of the site, and the department is now accepting applications from various groups seeking to take over the site, according to a Washington Blade report.

By Kenyon Farrow

Wake up Black people! Lock your windows and doors! Lesbians are coming -- and they’re taking over the Black community!

You haven’t heard? Apparently you missed Rev. Willie Wilson’s recent sermon at Union Baptist Church in Washington, D.C.

I wish this were a joke. In fact, I wish it were even funny. But Rev. Wilson -- who is, ironically, the executive director of the Millions More Movement march -- actually said in a July 3 sermon, entitled “You’ve Got to Fight to be Free” and first reported by the Washington Blade on July 15, that “lesbianism is about to take over the community.”

Wilson took the hot mess that was his sermon and sent it further down the gutter. He went on to say “women falling down on another woman, strapping yourself up with something, it ain’t real. That thing ain’t got no feeling in it. It ain’t natural. Anytime somebody got to slap some grease on your behind and stick something in you, it’s something wrong with that. Your butt ain’t made for that. No wonder your behind is bleeding…The Bible says God made them male and female.”

Despite outcry from Black LGBT leaders and local elected officials, Wilson has refused to apologize for the outburst. Black LGBT activists planning to participate in the October Millions More march say their efforts have been ignored by march organizers for six months now.

It’s hard to know where to even begin in considering Wilson's “sermon.” But I am at the least surprised by his detailed familiarity with homosexual sex acts — I’d certainly like to see the history on his web browser.

What is more shocking than his window-view into the sex lives of gay men and lesbians, of course, is the recklessness of this speech, particularly for someone leading a high-profile community-mobilization march. Today, even the most raging homophobes use sophisticated, sound bite-friendly language like “protecting the sanctity of marriage” or the “Contract with Black America on Moral Values.” Wilson’s statements have the subtlety of government-sponsored films on the dangers of homosexuality from the 1950’s.

This isn’t the 1950’s, but the fact that Wilson’s congregation is heard shouting its approval throughout the sermon is proof that his thoughts on homosexuality still have great currency in the Black community in 2005.

While Wilson may not consider himself a part of the white-led religious right, his homophobia certainly makes him their accidental ally. In 2004, an unprecedented number of Black ministers (well-funded by religious right think-tanks) closely aligned themselves with the sorts of individuals and organizations that have long worked diligently against Black political interests, all in the name of demonizing LGBT people — I need not remind you of Chicago’s Rev. Gregory Daniels, who boldly declared, “If the KKK was opposing same-sex marriage, Rev. Daniels would ride with them.”

What do statements like Daniels’ and Wilson’s mean for the daily lives of LGBT people in the Black community? For starters, they both foster and encourage attitudes that literally put our lives at risk.

The hate speech coming from our churches has had a dangerously paralyzing influence over our community’s response to the AIDS epidemic. Pastors like Wilson exploit and amplify the same bitter divisions within Black America that have too often stood in the way of communal self-preservation. Moreover, Wilson and his ilk also drive too many Black gay and bisexual men into an unhealthy, schizophrenic existence.

“I don’t think we’re really going to get a hold of HIV until we can get real about it and not be so in denial about who folks really are,” says Washington, D.C.’s Rev. Alvin O. Jackson, in a recent conversation with BlackAIDS.org. Jackson says pulpit-driven homophobia not only slows our response to HIV, but also puts people at risk for contracting it because “people are pushed even further into the margins and into all kinds of strange ways of dealing with their sexuality. If we could let people integrate [their sexuality into their lives] and just be a part of the community and be who they are, it would work much better. So I do think we contribute to [the epidemic] in our denial of who folks are.”

Breakin' it Down: How the Supreme Court Matters to AIDS

By Kai Wright

Few of Washington’s rituals get the nation’s blood up like a Supreme Court nomination. And in times like these – with the left vs. right ideological divide as deep and raw as ever – a battle over the highest court in the land has the potential to make even the Florida recount look down right civil.

It comes as no surprise, then, that President Bush’s tapping of D.C. Circuit Court Judge John Roberts to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor has generated fevered analysis from advocates of everything from the spotted toad to states’ rights. So what about AIDS?

The experts (and the progressive advocacy groups that want to scuttle any Bush nominee) are still culling through Roberts’ background, looking for signs of how he may rule on a range of issues. But when it comes to AIDS, the primary legal questions for the Supreme Court have been those dissecting anti-bias laws for people with disabilities.

Here’s a quick primer:

The background. The most relevant legal question for people with HIV/AIDS has been and remains the definition of “disabled.” The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), passed by Congress in 1990, protects people with disabilities from discrimination -- like being denied employment, housing or healthcare because their boss, landlord or emergency room nurse has an issue with their health status. But the question courts have struggled with since the law’s passing is what makes for a disability under the law? The agreed-upon standard is that a condition must substantially limit a “major life activity.”

The debate. AIDS has always met the legal standard for disability – meaning that from Medicaid and SSI programs to the ADA, people with a full-blown AIDS diagnosed have always been covered. Not so for HIV.

But AIDS legal activists have long worked to expand these systems and protections to include people who have tested positive for HIV but not developed AIDS. Just because you’re not yet sick, they argue, doesn’t mean you can’t be discriminated against and don’t need healthcare.

Those who argue for a more narrow reading of the law in general and the ADA in specific counter that, while it may be a tough world out there for people with HIV, they aren’t technically disabled and Congress has not written any laws to protect them.

The case. This debate finally percolated up to the Supreme Court in 1998, through a case known as Bragdon v. Abbott – the Roe v. Wade of disability law. In 1994, Sidney Abbott walked into a dentist’s office in Maine and asked to have her cavities filled. She was HIV positive. The dentist, Randon Bragdon, refused and directed her to the public hospital. Abbott sued.

The settled law of the land? In a tight 1998 ruling, a slim majority of justices sided with Abbot. By a 5 to 4 vote, the Supreme Court declared that HIV is in fact a disability because it limits the “major life activity” of reproduction.

“Reproduction and the sexual dynamics surrounding it are central to the life process itself,” wrote swing-vote Justice Anthony Kennedy, who penned the majority opinion. “Conception and childbirth are not impossible for an HIV victim but, without doubt, are dangerous to the public health.” And that, Kennedy declared, “impairs” HIV-positive folks enough to offer them protection under the ADA.

Retiring Justice O’Connor, who has been touted as the court’s moderating voice, did not side with the majority in Bragdon. She wrote an opinion separate from both that of the majority and of the arch-conservatives who dissented, in which she stated that “the act of giving birth to a child, while a very important part of the lives of many women, is not generally the same as the representative major life activities of all persons.”

O’Connor was onto something. Since the ruling narrowly declared procreation as the “major life activity” that HIV impairs, is it broad enough to stand up to future challenges? And while the ruling made clear that people with HIV could not be discriminated against in housing, work and healthcare settings, it remains to be seen if it will have broader impact. Does, for instance, it mean that federal programs like Medicaid that offer benefits to people with disabilities must open up to people with HIV as well as AIDS?

These are legal questions that just may find their way back to the Supreme Court one day. Would Bush’s nominee Roberts vote for a more or less expansive reading of the law? So far, no one knows.

Kai Wright is editor of BlackAIDS.org.