The Conversation Starts Here

And from the “where the hell is the mainstream American media with this?” file:

I reported on Michigan Messenger about an exciting new discovery in battling HIV:

A team of Canadian and American researchers say they have found the long elusive hiding spot for HIV, the virus which causes AIDS, and believe that combining chemotherapy with anti-retroviral medications could eliminate the virus completely from the human body, according to a report on Canadian Television.

While the advent of highly active anti-retroviral treatment, or HAART, has been effective in eliminating the virus from the blood of HIV infected persons, stop such treatments–which are expensive, often complicated regiments of pill popping, and linked to numerous side effects– and the virus bounces back, destroying the immune system in the process.

More at Michigan Messenger.

So where IS the mainstream media in America on this announcement? Is it being ignored because it is HIV? Or because Canadians lead the studies? Because John and Kate are getting a divorce (and seriously, who the HELL are John and Kate and why in the world do I care about their divorce?)? One of the many mysterious and scary things about mainstream media. The beast is untameable.

A recently released study (PDF) by Emory University researchers Hugo Mialon and Andrew Francis finds that a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage contributes to an increase of HIV prevalence of 4 cases per 100,000.

In a press release at Emory’s website the two researchers had this to say:

“We found the effects of tolerance for gays on HIV to be statistically significant and robust – they hold up under a range of empirical models,” says Hugo Mialon, an assistant professor of economics.

“Laws on gay marriage are in flux and under debate,” added Andrew Francis, also an assistant professor of economics, citing the recent decision by the California Supreme Court to uphold a ban on same-sex marriage. “It’s a hot issue, and we are hoping that policymakers will take our findings into account.”

Here is the speech I delivered to about 600 people at the Michigan Pride rally on Saturday June 13.

Thanks so much to Tom Rico for video taping it, and allowing me to share this. Did it work? I suppose we will never completely know, but I do know that one man approached me after the speech, gave me a hug and thanked me for the speech. He noted he was positive and my speech meant a lot to him.