test of our wills. >> well, i think all of you have realized, probably by virtue of you coming to this, that this is an issue that has not gone away. i would love to say that our president, mr. obama, was correct when he said we can't be at war forever. we just have to end this thing. i wish that were the way the world worked, but mr. president, i'm sorry, both sides have to stop in a war, and unfortunately, as chris has discussed today, the other side hasn't decided to stop yet. so that means we need to stay involved as well. i'd ask you to join me in thanking chris for a great presentation. [applause] >> he is going to stay up here to sign any books, anyone who purchased one outside can bring it up and he'd be happy to sign it. thank you very much for being here at heritage with us.

>> sean strub talks about his life and efforts to bring awareness to the a.i.d.s. epidemic in the 1980s. in 1990, mr. strub, who him has lived with a.i.d.s. for over three decades was the first h.i.v. positive person to run for congress. this about an hour. >> very lovely. thank you so much. and thank you. i -- i tell people about the tours i'm going on.

40-some events, going to be so exhausted. but i love it. i enjoy talking to people and having the kind of conversations that have been arising at some of these events already. so, i'm going to read just for a few minutes, five or six minutes, the prologue from the book, and then we can go into questions and answers, and -- okay. there's so many people in this room i could go around thanking. steve and carol, and the photography i've enjoyed for years and years, and angus and thomas and mark and ted, and i go over here and lauren, or managinged it for at poz.

the reason we never missed a deadline the terms of delivering the magazine. despite our sometimes dysfunctional -- lauren hoffman right here. my cousin who worked at poz to. dropped out of college to come work for poz, and other people. and my pal, naomi, who is just an amazing gal. so, a lot of what i have said at some of these other events i don't need to see here because people understand the epidemic, people in this room, and in a way that is different from so many other places i have spoken. so i'll do the prologue and then we can get into a discussion. requires glasses.

>> december, 1989. new york city. i am nervousry sitting in a pew in st. patrick's cathedral in new york where cardinal conners is about to celebrate mass. it has been years since i celebrated mass and longer since i took communion. i remember the ah i felt as an an altar boy, and later the anger when the church betrayed me. it's bitterly cold. a near record low. parishioners holing hymnals in gloved hands. the mood in the church is tense, nothing like the droning boredom of the masses of my youth. as the minutes pass i think of the jesuits who said a good

catholic acts on the social teachings if that means confronting the church. outside st. patrick's, 4500 angry men and women have assembled. packing fifth avenue and chanting, with placards. curb your -- act up, the a.i.d.s. coalition is protesting o'connor's assault on safe sex and reproductive rights. there's an almost carnival like feeling in the protests. high camp and high serious news are capacity -- compatible. an artist dressed as jesus christ in a white shroud, carrying a wooden cross over his

shoulders. he wears a crown of thorns over his long hair. ray will be dead in less than a year. keith is there, too, in a knitted cap with a long, hand-knitted scarf wrapped happied his slender neck. he has two months left. inside the cathedral, o'connor's mass is interrupted again and again by protesters, surreptitiously spread throughout the church they stand up and yell out their statements. a friend jumps on a pew and shouts, o'connor, you're killing us. another friend, jamie, dressed as a priest, offers up a prayer in protest. two boyfriends in black leather motorcycle jackets handcuffs themes to a pew. after o'connor starts the homily, protesters throw condoms in the air and going limp in the center aisle. the cops, two long lines of blue

have their moment, bending wrists with plastic handcuffs; with this homily o'connor retreats from the altar to his thrown-like chair. sitting with his head in his hands, trying to convey spiritual pain. photographs of the media savvy cardinal will elicit overwhelming sympathy on the newspapers. communion begins amid the general confusion, protesters lean up. interspersed among the regular parishioners. whet it's their turn they make announcements. i support a woman's right to choose. condoms save lives. soon it is my turn to receive the body and blood of christ. small, dark-skinned priest is serve can my cue.

his investments are oversized and bright. he hesitates briefly. his eyes fixed on the pink triangle and silence equals death on the t-shirt underneath my coat. then he holds the host in the air and intones, the body of cries crist. this is my moment to confront the church when, instead of repeating the body of christ, as expected, i'm to make my political statement. but i've not prepared one. when i rehearsed this moment in my mind i imagined i might break into tears or erupt in rage because no slogan no words at all, seemed adequate. may the lord bless the man i love who died a year ago this week. i hear myself say. my voice begins as tremble but finishes strong. police standing a few feet away are ready to intervene, watching to see how the priest reacts.

his hand jerks slightly. but he looks me in the eye and gaves me the wafer. with my heart pounding i walk back to my pew. my mine is fixed on bodies, but not the body of christ. i think of michael's body, and the agonizing brain infection that turned his last days into a crucifixion. i think ol' the bodies of protesters carried out on stretchers and the body of those chanting outside, many struggling to survive. i think of my own body, wondering how much longer it will last. parishioners are staring at me, they're faces disgusted or sympathetic or stunned. some have their head bowed, hands pressed tightly in hair, like the devat at st. mary's, their faith unshakable, unwilling to brook any criticism of the church. they might be praying for us. after mass, i passed through the

cathedral's heavy doors into the bright sunlight and it seems to me into the arms of my true community. i am exaltant in a state that feels like grace. certain that if i am too die of a.i.d.s. aid, i will die as a fighter, not as a victim. [applause] >> i'd like to read that part in the book partly because it was the most controversial action that was taken. at times it might actually tear the group apart, it looked like. and by 10:00 monday morning, gay men's health crisis, american foundation for a.i.d.s.

research, everybody had their press releases out, con developing us, distancing themselves from what we were doing. we were very much alone. but there are a couple of things i like to point out now with the perspective of almost a quarter century. it will be the 25th 25th anniversary this december of that action. the first is there were 110 people arrived that day. roughly half inside the church and half were outside the church. and of those arrested, inside the church, if you look at the roster of names, something becomes immediately evident, because those names are -- clearly culturally catholic. irish names, italian names, polish names, because those of white house grew up within the tradition of the church, even if we had left the church or the church has left us, still felt some sense of a right to take our redress directly to the church. i never had any qualms about it.

i was one of the advocates for the action from the very beginning. the names on the list outside the church are not quite so culturally catholic. so i think that when people understand that the disruption of the mass inside the church was overwhelmingly done by people who had grown up in the church. i attended more than a thousand catholic masses in my life. my three sisters first entered all mary because of my father's dethrowing virgin. an occasion for all sorts of jokes over the years. when i was 13 i went to a jesuit boarding school and briefly thought i would be a priest. so i felt the church owed me the opportunity to express my anger and rage and disappointment in them. the second thing i like to point out is that that period, in the 1980s,arm 1990s, marked a point of sort of peak influence of the catholic church in

american politics. it has been on the decline ever since. not just because of that action. i think that action was part of it, though. part of pointing out the hypocrisy of the church, the danger of the church's dogma, particularly when they're interfering with the public school system and safer sex education, and in the way that -- in 1969, the riots in new york, the first time the gay community in new york ever pushed back against the civil code that oprocessed us. said we weren't going to take it anymore. 20 years later, at st. patrick's. that was the first time we had said we weren't going to take it anymore. so i think historically that over time people will see that action as more and more important milestone. the last thing i'll say about that action is that -- a little

anecdote. that's the action that got keith hairing to finally come to actup meetings. keith and i were born within a few weeks of each other. we moved to new york the same month. and a lot of us in "act up" new keith and had been trying to get him to come to the meetings because his career was exploding. he was as hot as he could be as the incredible up and coming young pop artist. keith -- a number of us knew that keith also had h.i.v. and was very concerned about keeping it secret because he was concerned about what would happen to his market and his collectors. he saw the speculation after andy warhol died and was really disgusted by it and didn't want to create that opportunity with him. so, the meetings, act up meetings on monday night there was an older member of act up,

on my fundraising committee, his name was svn swensen, and he sang, i've got your number, he used to claim he performed the first strip tease by a male on a legitimate stage in the u.s. sven had a framed thing in this bathroom said, the single sexiest performance by a man on stage. but win was older than most of us. probably my age today. and every night after the act up meetings on monday he would gather all the literature, posters, fliers, personal testimonials, brochure, distributed at the meeting and take them to keith harding at hi studio and he sat with keith as he painted. and he had been trying to get keith to come to the act up

meetings, and a few months before the pat -- st. patrick's demonstration, a poster was made in red and black and white, this big two big images on it. the image on the left was of cardinal o'connor wearing his miter, the pointed hat. the image on he right was roughly he same shape and it was flattened out used condom. and across the top of the poster in great big red letters it said: know your scumbacks, -- scumbags. and underneath the condom it said, this one stops aide. and that's when keith started coming to the actup meetings. the power of art to mobilize

advocacy. so the book starts out with me arriving arriving in washington as a 17-year-old, at the dawn of the bicentennial, which was a very hopeful time in american politics in washington. right past the vietnam war, right past the watergate scandals. there was a sense of relief. jimmy carter was running for president, promising, will never lie to you. there was a whole freshman class in congress focusing on reform and transparency, and seemed like a hopeful time where the country narrowly averted a constitution crisis and going in a progressive direction. but we realized that was the last closing on liberalism before the country went in a different direction for the next generation. my parents thought i was going to school at georgetown, which was true, but i was going there because i had a patronage job

running the elevator in the u.s. capitol. and i was ferrying senators and members of congress and supreme court justices and visiting v.i.p.es up and down my elevator. as i talk about that as being thrust into this intimate, insider view of american politics, and at that time the elevator operators and the pages were kind of like mascots. we could crawl all over the capitol. i talk about going up into the dome of the capitol and smoking a joint and seeing all of washington laid out before it. when the senate was in session very, very late at night sometimes the elevator operatorsed had to stay late and we would get annoyed. we want to get home. we would speak into the senate engineer's office and crank up the heat in the senate chamber. but at the same time, i was also dealing with my sex orientation,

terrified, and if there's one thing i think young people really don't understand is how terrifying the closet was back then. the closet on an individual basis can be just as terrifying today but the context back then was different. and the risk of coming out was everything i'd ever known in my life i basically had to put at risk to come out. so i described that process, and then is a started to become politicized and i met people in washington, powerful insiders and members of congress and my growing discontent between my consciousness in the sense of connection to a community that i didn't really find in washington. i read about in the washington blade and started to find it in new york and the people around me. i remember particularly in -- the fall of '78 when harvey milk was assassinated, and reading

it, i remember picking up the washington star in a newspaper box, and being so appalled at how the first coverage focused only on mayor moscone. the death of harvey milk was presented kind of like, only in san francisco, kind of way, and that disturbed me, and then even when i talked with the other young politicos i had gotten to know in washington, to them it felt like it had nothing to do with their lives. this was the other end of the country and had nothing do with the political area they were trying to start their careers. a period where there's a lot of reflection on the early days of the epidemic, starting to see a cultural production around the

early of epidemic in books and films, and all of which i welcomed and some of which is really wonderful. but a lot of it -- i find that a lot of people think that a.i.d.s. activism began with act up, and wasn't so. randy schultz wrote, "in the band played on" before act up started. an inc credible and vibrant a.i.d.s. advocacy group that was more radical than act up, more radicals in its ideals and what is was trying to do, was perhaps more theatrical and media friendly, and so i try and convey in the book what it meant when dan turner and bobby campbell michael cowen and richard berk witt, ands met in denver in june of 1983 and hammered out this manifesto, the

denver principles and that not only was incredibly important for people with a.i.d.s. and how it defined the self-help movement in creating a peer-to-peer service delivery system and also the very first time in the history of humanity, the very first time in the history of humanity, where people who shared a disease, organized and asserted their right to a political voice and the decisionmaking that would so profoundly affect their lives, and that's important, and it is now an ideal that has been replicated in other diseases, and other parts of the world. what we created -- sometimes i hear people talk about the 80s as awful as the death and dying there, was also something quite beautiful. and it was the way we were so cohesive as a community and we were carrying for each other.

when someone tested positive, as the test came out, their diagnosis was accepted as a collective responsibility. the gay community wrapped their arms around them and said we'll get through this together. we created organizations that were very peer-to-peer. the boards directors never talk about them as the clientses because the clients were creating the organizations and were on the board of directors of the organizations, and over time we have fallen away from that ideal was that so pioneering and so important. by the way, the denver principles sort of codified this in a document, the ideals were not original. they were essentially that artic lated in the women's health movement in the 1960s and '70s, and the guys who wrote the denver prims were very consciously -- their political world view was shaped by feminism. michael cowen had read "our body ourselves" and they saw -- they

recognized how the personal -- how healthcare was political. so, we created this whole movement. we created organizations to conduct research to deliver services, to access treatments, to support each other. and yet over time we kind of fallen away from that and a lot of the service delivery organizations have moved more towards the traditional benefactor/victim model of service delivery, and so then when act up started, in my involvement with act up was very important and central to saving my life. act up's activism was different. it wasn't been self-help, about creating this for ourselves. it was about exerting pressure externally. how to get the fda, the nih, the government, the drug companies

t have been doing, and that was a very different sort of activism. ultimately became much more focused on treatment activism because the treatments were starting to trickle out. we were just desperate to expedite them and waiting for the next one and trying to get it. that was very important. but in the process, the human rights based approach to the epidemic was concerned about privacy and confidentiality and also about patient autonomy and stigma, kind of got put to the side. and that's where a.i.d.s. activism began, fighting that stick half. we're in a catchup phase where is there is renewed effort of -- like the criminalization that he referred to. so, the book has lots of fun, juicy stuff of me, peaking out a window with gore vidal and getting tennessee williams to

sign the letter for the human rights campaign fund, and fun stuff like that, and i also hope it will akuwait a lot of people with the early years of the epidemic because there were some awfully good ideas then that we could revisit and we need to today. so, happy to take any questions. [applause] yes? >> have you been thinking about writing a book for a long time? something in your thought process before a number of years before you put it on paper? >> i had been and had been resistant to write about the epidemic. i didn't want to write about the epidemic. when my health came back and i moved up and was living the woods, my life was different. those who don't know, i at one time weighed more than 40 pounds less than i weighed now, covered

in lesions, my cd4 count was one and my lobe was 3.3 million, and you don't go through that experience, as a number of the people in the room have, without it changing your life and values and perspective. and i actually -- when i decided i wanted to write a book, i was look smooth other issues and i did some research and spent several years working on one topic in particular, and then i -- it nagged at me, and -- i was talking to someone in "the new york times," and i was trying to convey to him what it was like in those years, with member who doesn't know and -- somebody who doesn't know and becomes frustrating. i started talking about immigrant. he is deadening he is gone, he is gone, and i blurted out, somebody has to be the memory, and as i was saying it, thought, oh, my god, i'm one of those people. so i started to feel a sense of

obligation, as time passes there are fewer and fewer of us who were there on the front lines and are around who are able to speak first hand. in a city like san francisco there are more of those people, but i'll tell you, overall, collectively around the country, there aren't so many and there are fewer and fewer. and if you look at the books and films about the holocaust that came out. they didn't come out in the 1940s or 1950s. it wasn't until the early 1960s that started to kick in, and then geared up and plateaued in the '80s and remained at steady level. and always sort of been very reluctant to make holocaust analogies for all sorts of reasons but i have an underring of the never again cry we have heard so much, like i never thought i would. because what people forget and

how quickly they forget it, including within our own community, is astonishing and terrifying to me. so, i encourage everybody to write your recollections to make your films to contribute to these exhibits and in time a clearer and clearer picture will emerge of what that was like and hopefully people will learn from it. i have noticed one thing. we talked about this at dinner. and just speaking specifically with gay men, with really young gay men, this is like interesting. it's history. it's leak the movie "milk." it's history. with gay men of my generation, they lived it. they want to read it. they're interested in it. in between, there's a big gap. gay men in their 30s and 40s, a lot of them spent part of their lives distancing themselves from the epidemic knowledge that's not me. that's not my life, and creating

lives that don't intersect with the epidemic in any way. and i'm not saying that in a blame sort of way. it's understandable, but i think we need to recognize that because that's also one of the obstacles to dealing with the prevention challenges we have today. yes? >> i think it's great that ""dallas buyers club" is out, and for us to who are survivors, it's hard to sit through but it's important history, and i'm glad that mainstreamers is seeing it and i'm really gad matthew mcconaughey is winning awards and getting recognized. the flip side is hbo just spent all this money and publicity on this new show "looking" and the first two episodes it's -- okay, it's cute gay men, filmed in san francisco, having graphic sex, no mention of safe sex or h.i.v. or condoms or anything.

it's like, i've been waiting for this, just the so-called honest, up front conversation, it doesn't come up. it's -- that generation, it's like, something. >> that's probably reflective of reality, too. certainly for a large number of people out there. just part of the problem. "dallas buyers club," i tell everybody to support it go to it. we want it to be successful because if it's successful we know hollywood there will be more films. it nose reflective of the buyers club movement. i like to point out i and a member of my friends are mentioned in the movie. it's the line where matthew mcconaughey is asked where he got the idea for starting a buyers club. he said a bunch of faggots in new york did it. >> have you noticed any difference when it comes to maybe the questions in different

locales you have done your presentation? >> for the book i've just done half a of them but i do a fair amount of speaking on these topics anyway, and on campuses it just is astonishing. i can go to college campuses and have the best and the brightest, and what they don't know, no one has ever told them, is just astonishing. even in some really scary things. i was speaking at a school -- actually was a catholic school and there was one guy who was involved with the gay group, all enthusiastic, and we were talking, and he said he is negative. good for you, that's great. he said something else. and we're talking -- he thought because he tested negative he would always be negative. this is a college student. most of us in our 50s probably got better sex education in

junior high school and high school than most kids graduating from high school today because of abstinence only education, how school districts are so gun shy around things that of politically contentious. young people of color are far more likely to get abstinence only education, which we know leads to greater rate of up wanted pregnancy and stds. the -- but it's also not very effective. the fear that motivate so many of us, right, when your friends are dying all around you, that is not an effective tool for young people today. the reality is the consequences of h.i.v. infection are very different today for people who have access to health care than they were years ago. you have to deal with the epidemic today. the shame-based and fear-based prevention messaging, i think is actually contributing to furthering the epidemic.

i don't think it's helping it. new york city, department of health, spent three-quarters of a million dollars creating a video called, it's never just h.i.v., and you can fine it online. shows these young guys, all very beautiful looking like characters out after lost, woeful, and the message of the film you be h.i.v. it's not just h.i.v. it's brain fog and -- and it can be those things. i have brittle bones but a young person today, they know that not everybody gets that. they know people with h.i.v. who look just fine. and that kind of scare tactic like that, it's like telling somebody, don't smoke a joint because two weeks later you'll be slamming heroin. the know better, and just like, just say no to drugs, use a condom everytime is white noise.

you can call up health departments all over the country, including new york city, and ask about using condoms for oral sex. oh, yes, absolutely, everytime. such a disconnect between the reality of practice and the reality of the risk and what we are telling people. and that only leads to further infection. it doesn't slow the epidemic down at all. but these fear-based things, the inner city -- focus groups, gay men love them. well, all right, gay men of our generation, who have a sort of angst, you want to slap the young kid upside the head and say you know what we went through and you're having sex and not worrying? there's a part that likes it for that. so the people already engaging in the desired behavior, they tend to respond well to that advertising because it's an endorsement of what they're

doing. it's just -- yeah, you're pretty smart. the people who he was behavior you're trying to changer it pushes them further and further and further away because they know it's not like that. they know that you're exaggerating, trying to scare them. so i think there's a real problem in sex education in general in the messaging that is so common around the prevention programs, and then of course, how we're targeting prevention money. two-thirds of the new cases are with gay men, msomes, and of these cdc funding spent on prevention, only about 3% or 2.8% is targeted to men who have sex with men. of the overall funds that are targeted to any community, it's somewhat higher. like 30% of those funds. but we're not spending the money where the transmission -- the h.i.v. transmissions are happening.

>> cleave, and then this fellow here. >> have an a.i.d.s.-free generation by 2015? >> the end is near. we can end the epidemic, the a.i.d.s. conference in 2012, the messaging was all supposed to be, it's within our grasp. that is garbage, and presenting that that lie doesn't do anything to make it happen. >> would you repeat the -- the work on the criminalization. >> i promised this guy a question to get that in. [inaudible] >> just want to know what you feel the biggest blind spot is right now in a.i.d.s. activism. now everyone is jumping on the stigma train, and everyone is hearing about all these rogue

infectors that are out there and everyone has heard the news stories and all that. what this major blind spot we're not paying attention to as activists. >> let me get to that. a senior at cdc presented data showing that at the present rates of conversion of college age gay men today, half of them, 50% of them, will have h.i.v. by the time they're 50. of college age gay men of color, half of them will have h.i.v. by the time they're 35. for young gay men today it is like 1981. and it's hidden because the epidemic is stats tick. the same number is -- the male to males tran mission is increasing, and yet for most part the lgbt community has abandoned the epidemic and is on to other opportunities, shall we say.

and in terms of the question you were asking, about the biggest gap, so the criminalization stuff, i think comes out of a couple of things of criminalization is broadly the inappropriate use of someone's h.i.v. status in a criminal prosecution. sometimes that's for nondisclosure before having sex, sometimes it is somebody is charged with a prostitution charge and the penalty is more severe because they also have h.i.v. or charged with an assault charge, a guy in texas serving 35 years for spitting at someone. a guy in new york state who just got out of prison after serving six and a half years for spitting at someone. new york state and texas don't have h.i.v. specific statutes. that's just an enhancement on the assault statutes. two-thirds of the states have h.i.v. specific statutes. so, some of that came out of our taking our eye off the ball in terms of the stigma and the

human right approach to the epidemic. when a lot of our own community's leadership rolled over on mandatory names reporting in the-month-old '90s its set the stage for this. i wrote a column in february of 1998. and i go back and read it and i -- it was about mandatory name reporting, leading to criminalization. so, one of the biggest things i think we're missing around the stigma, i think that almost all of the money spent on billboards and bus ads and public education campaigns, some cases that is useful in educating the public about the epidemic, it not useful in reducing stigma and in many cases i believe it is making stigma worse. what reduces stigma is empowering the stigmatized. there's no other way to reduce stigma without empoweringpowerie

stigmatized. when the civil rights movement made gains it wasn't because the white majority woke up and said they wouldn't be racist. it was bass the black minority was empowered. so when you tested positive you were hooked up with a support group, a.i.d.s. coalition or being alive, network of other people with h.i.v. that's where you learn to disclose, and in fact for years, many places told someone who tested positive, don't disclose until you have the network because disclosure can be dangerous. more dangerous today than back then. those networks, those organizations that provided that support, were where people learned to deal with the stigma, they found support, they got information. we got information from each other and from places like poz and other places.

increasingly, someone's diagnosed today they don't think they need get any information. they're going to get all their information from what their doctor gives them, which is generally given to them by abbott or one of the companies that makes the antiretrovials. so the failure to support -- the reason the networks are gone is because the funding was gone. that money is gone. so i think it's very important to restore those networks we actually have a little bit of an effort happening around that. a few years ago the national association of people with a.i.d.s. finally shut down because it had long ago stopped really being a network of people with h.i.v. it was principally funded by the industry and by the cdc. and that created an opportunity. so a new organization. not incorporated. a collaboration between the national networks of people with h.i.v., through the positive women's network, and the

campaign to end a.i.d.s. and the project which robert tutle and i and laura and a few others founded. and so we're actually -- there's a level of collaboration that i haven't seen in many years, and our idea is that ultimately that will lead to restoring funding to support these networks at a local level. i kind of got off on the networks but -- so the criminalization stuff. if you ask someone do you think it should be -- if you ask yourself, do you think it should be a criminal offense for someone with h.i.v. not to disclose that fact prior to having sex with someone? honestly ask yourself that question. about two-thirds of gay men respond to that question they believe it should be a criminal offense. now, the question i think people are answering is -- by the way, the young are they are -- yes,

i'm look agent you younger people -- the younger the person, the more likely they are to think that. the survey, 79% of gay men believe that should be a criminal offense. the problem with that -- all sorts of problems -- the question people are answering do you think a person should ever knowingly put another person at risk of harm? no, no one should ever knowingly put another person at recollection of hammer. that's the human, moral, ethical response. that's not what these statutes are about. they're generally about whether the person with h.i.v. can prove they disclosed prior to having sex, independent of whether there was risk or harm inflicted. and so this is resulting in -- we have documented more a thousand instances where charges have been filed under h.i.v.-specific statutes. so you're seeing things like

iowa, met a guy online, they have sex, everybody agrees he used a condom. everybody agrees he was undetectable. he got 25 years in prison and lifetime sex offender registration. fortunately in that case, he was released after a year. he still has lifetime sex offender ridge station and they're appealing to the iowa supreme court. we have someone on the board, kerry thomas in idaho, who used a condom, undetectable. he got 30 years. three gliese into a 30-year sentence in a brian in idaho. robert, my partner in starting the project, from shreveport, louisiana. he was in a difficult relationship and his partner threatened to turn him in if they broke up for not having initially disclosed to him. that's exactly what the partner did. robert served six months in prison. he has to be registered sex offender for 15 years. his driver's license has in big red capital letters, sex offender, on it.

and these cases are happening at a faster and faster and faster rate. so, the injustice for people h.i.v., horrific public health policy. you can't be prosecuted if you don't know your positive. so it's come take the test and risk arrest. laws create an illusion of safety for people who are negative or don't know their h.i.v. status. says it's somebody else's job to protect you. that's an arrogance. thinking it's the rest of the worlds' job to protect your negative h.i.v. status. the h.i.v. specific statutes are the most extreme man fess station of stigma. what is more stigmatizing when the government create as different law for some part of society base owed an immutable characteristic, it if was based on race we would call it are par -- apartheid.

it is wrong to create different laws on people based on things they cannot change. so we'recrafting an underclass in the law and encompassing people born with a.i.d.s. we have one young man, eddie, in spokecan, serve a year and a half for november disclosing to his girlfriend, novelty because she wanted him prosecuted. he used a condom. he said in high school i was reading american ohio history about the declaration of independence. says we're awful born equal. what about me? i. equal by it have this additional obligation that before engaging in the most intimate thing a person can do i have to get sort of legal obligation out of the way. we don't have similar laws or prosecutions for people with hpv.

more women died of cervical cancer last year from hpv. sexually transmilted. than died of a.i.d.s. from h.i.v. but hpv is not uniquely stigmatized. h.i.v. isout law sexuality, associated with people of color, people who use drugs, with gay men, and so it is treated so differently under the law. the prosecutions around this cases, several in the news this week -- are invariably wrong in terms of the facts of the cases that are often hysterical. talking about a.i.d.s. predators, and have you seen this man, and 300 potential victims. one case in missouri, we haven't been able to do much help with but have been trying to give a little support -- all over the national news. may have infected 300 people. now where that number came from?

when he was charged and the guy charged the -- had been tested positive, the prosecutor said, ten years before, and they asked him how often he had sex, he said, maybe twice a among with different people. so they extrapolated twice a month over ten years and came up with headlines, may have infected 300 people. there's only one person who even claims he infected him and that person has taken it back and is not sure he did get it from that person. so the media coverage is highly stigmatizing in these cases. there's now the research is coming out showing how it is discouraging people from getting tested, how whether these criminalization statutes, there's a greater level of mistrust of public health authorities and addition tra divisional measures like partner notification and treatment adherence programs. so i actually believe these

criminalization prosecutions not incidental and not just, isn't it awful these people get prosecuted. i think they're major factor in the stigma and the ongoing epidemic. so often public health measures -- what happened after 1996, when combination therapy came out, and i've been talking about this dale so if -- all day -- if i repeat myself i apologize. >> people with a.i.d.s. are seen differently, that we're going to diane awful death. after combination therapy came out and the broader public began to understand we weren't going to die, as quickly as we once were, we started being seen as inherently dangerous, as viral infectors, living long sore we would be around to infect people longer, and especially through the public health system and the criminal justice system. we are dangerous population that

needs to be south out, identified, tested, reported, tagged, tracked, and a lot of the country, if you choose to go off your meds, you have a hard time getting healthcare services, or you have somebody fromme from your county health department knocking on your door. they're tracking viral low tests. mississippi, until recently, when you test positive you had to sign a form agreeing not to become pregnant or to. progress nate -- impregnate anyone. so think back to those who have h.i.v., when you found out you were positive and what that moment was like. for most people, even if you're expecting it or whatever, you still have some degree of mild shock. it's a period of great stress. so now people are tested positive, a form is slipped crease the table -- i punked a

testing center in louisiana not long ago, and you're told you have to sign this form. you don't have to sign it. your not told you don't have to sign it. and the form acknowledges you were given your positive test result and cites cites the statn that state and you can't do this and whatever whatever. es to the forms come back in prosecutions and more importantly, you're giving people a legal document to sign and you're raising the prospect of legal retribution at a point at peak distress and fertility. somebody reads through the form, says you didn't tell me i could have him arrested. and lot of these prosecutions start right there before that person adjusts they're diagnosis, accepts any responsibility of their own in that diagnosis, or understands how they're ultimately contributing to making making te stigma worse for themselves. so that's the project, the work i have been focused on the last

few years, with the pennies we do. we have a little short film about it on the web site, and maybe -- we have time -- maybe just two more questions. >> could you explain in sort of -- describe the background, the picture on the cover? >> well, first of all, last night after a lovely time at politic and prose, i signed a woman book for a woman, and chev said it almost looks like it could be you. okay. so, scrivener, a terrific publisher, incredibly supportive on this, asked know bring in some photographs and i i thought they wanted to do a signature of pictures in the middle of the book.

and i had -- powder them out -- poured them out on a table, and the editor said, there it is, that's it, and he picked it up and wanted it for the cover. i said, what? i didn't get it. and that is me kissing michael, who i write about in the book and it was just bat month before he died. he got meningitis right after thanksgiving in 1988 and died very quickly. and i think that why they thought that picture would work so well is, first of all, it's sweet, conveys more about love and affection than about sex. the title of the book, it can be a little daunting, a.i.d.s., politics do -- this helps convey it's a personal story and maybe make it a little more accessible, a story rather than homework or something. you had a question? >> we met right after the sex

and justice conference in -- and when you were talking about the criminalization issue just now it was making me riff -- first i'd like to ask you this. say a little bet more about sex offender registration, but it was making me riff on hour i heard about sex offender registration, which was when i was a young we're activist, and it was -- young we're activists and guys were getting busted for having section with other men in the place there was no h.i.v. and there was not a sod my law change, and i think a lot of people even now in our community don't understand, your sex offender registration, we think creepy pedestrian file down the street. we don't think that it's living within our community in the way that it has for many years. i wonder if you would be willing to riff on that a little bit.

>> i have been familiar with how horrific second offenders laws and there are more people in the u.s. registers as sex offender than there are in alaska. it makes it virtually impossible. you can't live in places even where you work. the only jobs available to somebody on the sex offender registration are minimum wage jobs, often in restaurants. what mcdonald's is going to hire the person who is on the sex offender registry work at mcdonald's, when robert subtle moved from shreveport to pennsylvania to live with me and my partner for a while while we were starting the project, he had to register in pennsylvania, and he was mostly delighted it didn't charge big fees inch louisiana there are big fees, and some of the municipalities raised the fees dramatically,

$600 a 'er to force sex offender0s go to go somewhere else. but because he was in louisiana, their statute requires a level of public notification. he had to buy adds in a local newspaper. had to pay the state to send post cards to people in his immediate zip code and area. that if you transfer to pennsylvania, regardless of the offense, if you have to do public notification where you were previously registered, they require it in pennsylvania. so, i took him out to the state police barracks and they were respectful and it was pretty easy process. a week later, -- milford is a town of 1100 people. i live in the middle of the little village. knock, knock, knock, thursday morning, our local police chief was there in uniform, with his gun and a clipboard, and color fliers warning, megan's law, sex

offender registry, picture of robert, and he said, by law, he has to do this, and he went to everybody home within whatever distance, and i think he had to go toe go to all schools and day cair centers within a mile. and robert said, at least in shreveport it was city and he had his family and friends. now he is an african-american man in a small rural northeast pennsylvania town where he already stood out and now the sex offender thing. i was certain our newspaper would write about it. it what that level of notification in pennsylvania. if you had been convicted in pennsylvania would have only been for people who are predators or used a weapon. so robert and i each wrote a piece about this for our local newspaper, which was very brave of robert, believe me, and it was interesting. there were people in the community -- i saw people in the -- we were having lunch -- looking at us and surfaces some

support for hem, people who actually read it and understood. there is sort of a nascent movement among people who are on sex offender registrations to try to create an effort to combat this, and they're being helped by the economy. because a lot of the legislatures are starting to look at these. these are people, consenting adult behavior no children involved no coercion involved, no weapon involved. why are we spending this incredible amount of money on them? so, on the other hand, what candidate for os wants to be the candidate, changing sex offender laws. that's the problem with it. ...

>> thank you. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]