Trans case causes concern
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Barber of Seville
Ana Gasteyer
The
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Vol. 45 • No. 49 • December 3-9, 2015
SF plan to end HIV shows progress
Confab highlights LGBT aging research by Matthew S. Bajko
by Liz Highleyman
A
s more and more LGBT seniors are living out of the closet, the issues they are confronting during their golden years are receiving increased attention from researchers who study aging. Thus, at this year’s SF State professor annual conference Brian de Vries held by the Gerontological Society of America, a record number of presentations and posters were presented that dealt with LGBT aging. Topics ranged from social isolation and mental distress faced by LGBT seniors to weight issues among lesbian and bisexual senior women and how gay men and their families access end-of-life services. While not always specific to LGBT seniors living with HIV, many panels also discussed various aspects of aging with HIV or AIDS. “It is really important to be raising LGBT issues in the professional community. It gives voice to those issues in the larger scheme of aging issues,” said conference attendee Mark Brennan-Ing, Ph.D., director for research and evaluation at Acria, which is based in New York. “It gives you a seat at the table to affect issues in aging.” Just as the number of older adults in America continues to climb, so too does the population of LGBT seniors. Yet because many health surveys do not include questions about sexual orientation or gender identity, the true size of America’s LGBT senior population remains unknown. The U.S. Administration on Aging has estimated the number of LGBT seniors age 60 and older to be anywhere between 1.75 million to 4 million. California is estimated to have 215,000 LGB people age 55 and older. (There is no statewide data for the transgender senior population.) As the Bay Area Reporter has previously noted, there are nearly 20,000 LGBT residents 60 years of age or older living in San Francisco. Nationwide, the population of LGBT seniors is projected to double by 2030. It is believed that the first LGBT-specific symposium at a GSA convention was held in 2002, a year prior to the formation of the LGBT-focused Rainbow Research Group. At this year’s confab there were three LGBT-specific symposiums and five others that included LGBT-centered research presentations. In addition, there were 19 LGBT-specific posters on research studies presented during the conference. See page 12 >>
S
O Christmas Tree! T
Rick Gerharter
he San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band receives hearty applause from the nearly hundred merry-makers who came out the evening of November 30 for the annual lighting of the Castro Holiday Tree, sponsored by the Castro Merchants business group.
an Francisco made good progress in HIV prevention and treatment during 2015, and its successes have brought the city national and worldwide attention. But more Liz Highleyman work is needed to “get SFDPH Bridge to zero,” especially in reaching currently un- HIV Director Dr. Susan Buchbinder derserved groups. “Like Silicon Valley in the tech world, San Francisco is where innovation happens in the HIV world,” Dr. Diane Havlir, chief of the HIV/AIDS division at San Francisco General Hospital, said at a December 1 forum commemorating World AIDS Day. Havlir and committee members from the See page 16 >>
SF schoolchildren mark World AIDS Day by Sari Staver
W
hen community activist George Kelly recently spoke to the fourth graders at Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy about his 32-year struggle living with HIV, he noticed one student getting teary-eyed. Jada Tucker, 9, had lost her uncle to AIDS. After sharing a hug, Kelly suggested that the girl honor her uncle’s memory by writing out his name in chalk on a sidewalk in San Francisco’s gay Castro district during a special event held Tuesday, December 1 to commemorate World AIDS Day. Tucker was one of the first students who agreed to be part of the Inscribe Project, in which students, volunteers, and community residents met on Castro Street to inscribe the names of hundreds of people who had been affected by AIDS. The collaboration between the Castro elementary school, named after the city’s first gay supervisor, and a group of long-term HIV survivors, called Honoring Our Experience, saw the names of more than 1,000 people written out along the sidewalks. Before the 75 students and teachers from the Milk school walked down to Castro Street with their pails of chalk, Jada’s mother, Barbara Banks, thanked the organizers for getting the kids involved in the project. “When my brother was first diagnosed” with HIV, there was so much stigma associated with the diagnosis that it took him 10 years “to even tell us he was HIV positive,” Banks said, noting
Jane Philomen Cleland
Cruz Anderson, left, and Val Cornejo, helped inscribe the names of people living with HIV, as well as those lost to the AIDS epidemic, on a Castro district sidewalk during a World AIDS Day event held in San Francisco December 1.
how “things have changed a lot since then and I think it’s wonderful that the subject is out in the open now” so children grow up knowing about the disease. When Kelly spoke to Jada’s class, said Banks, her daughter “was really hit very hard” because she had also known a school volunteer, Tom Ray, who died of AIDS in 2012. And, added
Banks, “George’s announcement to the class that he too was HIV-positive, really saddened my daughter.” Other Milk students filled the sidewalks with names they brought from lists given to them from friends and family. Wyatt Shaffer, 9, had See page 18 >>
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