BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

A PROCLAMATION

On this World AIDS Day, as we approach the thirtieth year of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, we reflect on the many Americans and others around the globe lost to this devastating disease, and pledge our support to the 33 million people worldwide who live with HIV/AIDS. We also recommit to building on the great strides made in fighting HIV, to preventing the spread of the disease, to continuing our efforts to combat stigma and discrimination, and to finding a cure.
Today, we are experiencing a domestic HIV epidemic that demands our attention and leadership. My Administration has invigorated our response to HIV by releasing the first comprehensive National HIV/AIDS Strategy for the United States. Its vision is an America in which new HIV infections are rare, and when they do occur, all persons regardless of age, gender, race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, or socio-economic circumstance will have unfettered access to high quality, life extending care.
Signifying a renewed level of commitment and urgency, the National HIV/AIDS Strategy for the United States focuses on comprehensive, evidence based approaches to preventing HIV in high risk communities. It strengthens efforts to link and retain people living with HIV into care, and lays out new steps to ensure that the United States has the workforce necessary to serve Americans living with HIV. The Strategy also provides a path for reducing HIV related health disparities by adopting community level approaches to preventing and treating this disease, including addressing HIV related discrimination.
Along with this landmark Strategy, we have also made significant progress with the health reform law I signed this year, the Affordable Care Act. For far too long, Americans living with HIV and AIDS have endured great difficulties in obtaining adequate health insurance coverage and quality care. The Affordable Care Act prohibits insurance companies from using HIV status and other pre-existing conditions as a reason to deny health care coverage to children as of this year, and to all Americans beginning in 2014. To ensure that individuals living with HIV/AIDS can access the care they need, the Affordable Care Act ends lifetime limits and phases out annual limits on coverage. Starting in 2014, it forbids insurance companies from charging higher premiums because of HIV status, and introduces tax credits that will make coverage more affordable for all Americans. This landmark law also provides access to insurance coverage through the Pre Existing Condition Insurance Plan for the uninsured with chronic conditions.
Our Government has a role to play in reducing stigma, which is why my Administration eliminated the entry ban that previously barred individuals living with HIV/AIDS from entering the United States. As a result, the 2012 International AIDS Conference will be held in Washington, D.C., the first time this important meeting will be hosted by the United States in over two decades. For more information about our commitment to fighting this epidemic and the stigma surrounding it, I encourage all Americans to visit: www.AIDS.gov.
Tackling this disease requires a shared response that builds on the successes achieved to date. Globally, tens of millions of people have benefited from HIV prevention, treatment, and care programs supported by the American people. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria support anti retroviral treatments for millions around the world. My Administration has also made significant investments and increases in our efforts to fight the spread of HIV/AIDS at home and abroad by implementing a comprehensive package of proven prevention programs and improving the health of those in developing countries. Additionally, the Global Health Initiative integrates treatment and care with other interventions to provide a holistic approach to improving the health of people living with HIV/AIDS. Along with our global partners, we will continue to focus on saving lives through effective prevention activities, as well as other smart investments to maximize the impact of each dollar spent.
World AIDS Day serves as an important reminder that HIV/AIDS has not gone away. More than one million Americans currently live with HIV/AIDS in the United States, and more than 56,000 become infected each year. For too long, this epidemic has loomed over our Nation and our world, taking a devastating toll on some of the most vulnerable among us. On World AIDS Day, we mourn those we have lost and look to the promise of a brighter future and a world without HIV/AIDS.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States do hereby proclaim December 1, 2010, as World AIDS Day. I urge the Governors of the States and the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, officials of the other territories subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, and the American people to join in appropriate activities to remember the men, women, and children who have lost their lives to AIDS and to provide support and comfort to those living with this disease.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand ten, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty fifth.

President BARACK OBAMA

ATLANTA, GEORGIA – An attorney for a graduate school counseling student told federal judges in Atlanta on Tuesday that the student’s First Amendment rights were violated when professors at a Georgia university sought to punish her for her biblical views on gay rights.
Augusta State University put Jennifer Keeton on academic probation for saying it would be hard for her to work with gay clients, and threatened to expel her unless she attended events like Augusta’s gay pride parade, Keeton’s attorney Jeff Shafer told the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“She was told, ‘You don’t have to believe it. You just have to say you do,’” Shafer said.
Augusta State University countered that the counseling program would risk its accreditation if it didn’t hold Keeton to a code of ethics. The school has a duty to require students to counsel all segments of the community, including those who are gay or transgender, it said in court papers.
Keeton told other students that she was interested in practicing conversion therapy — where a therapist tries to “cure” a person from being homosexual — after graduation, said Cristina Correia with the state Attorney General’s office. Correia said Keeton also told her professors she would tell any clients who said they were gay that homosexuality is morally wrong.
University faculty were concerned that Keeton was scheduled to practice counseling in middle and high schools as part of her degree program and could possibly harm young students with her views, Correia said.
“The university has a responsibility when putting students in a practicum and graduating them,” Correia said. “When you have that kind of evidence, the faculty could not, under their ethical standards, put that student in a clinical setting without further remediation.”
Keeton, who said she’s a devout Christian “committed to the truth of the Bible,” enrolled in the school’s counselor education program in fall 2009 and soon began discussing her views that sexual behavior is a personal choice and that gender identity isn’t subject to change.
Faculty members were alarmed after she wrote in a term paper that it would be hard with her to work with gay clients. The school told her that her language was unethical according to guidelines from the American Counseling Association, and she was put on probation and warned she could be expelled.
She was asked in May 2010 to agree to a remediation plan that would require her to attend sensitivity training, read counseling journals and mix with gays at events like the city’s gay pride parade.
Keeton refused to comply with the plan, which she said in court papers would require her to “tell clients wanting to hear it that homosexual sex is moral.”
She filed a federal lawsuit claiming the school wanted to expel her because she “holds Christian ethical convictions” on human sexuality and gender identity. A judge rejected her challenge, leading to Tuesday’s court arguments.
Attorneys for both sides declined comment after the hearing because the case is under a gag order by the court.
The case has drawn national attention from religious groups and gay rights advocates.
Keeton’s lawsuit was brought by the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian advocacy group that that presses faith-based cases in court nationwide. It argues that the First Amendment protects Keeton’s rights to share her beliefs about gays with others.
The American Civil Liberties Union and Lambda Legal, the national gay rights law firm, took the opposing side. They argued that counselors shouldn’t discriminate based on sexual orientation and should avoid imposing their values on clients.
from The Associated Press
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OHIO – A 15-year-old Ross County boy will serve 90 days in a juvenile detention center for the assault of a gay student that gained national attention after a cell phone video of the attack went viral on the Internet.
Levi Sever, 15, was sentenced yesterday after previously pleading guilty to a delinquency count of assault before Juvenile Court Judge Richard Ward.
Zach Huston, 15, was assaulted on Oct. 17 in a classroom at Unioto High School, with the youth and his mother both saying he was targeted because he is gay.
Sever was ordered to undergo mental health counseling and continue his education during his detention, said Prosecutor Matthew Schmidt.
Sever has not attended school since the attack, but school officials have declined to discuss the discipline he received.
Huston and his mother, Rebecca Collins, have complained that school officials did not respond appropriately to their reports about bullying due to his sexual orientation.
The attack prompted the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio to threaten to take legal action against the school district unless it enacts changes to better protect students from bullying.
School officials have declined to address the ACLU’s request, which included amending the district’s anti-bullying policy to specifically prohibit the harassment of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender students.
from The Columbus Dispatch
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Related Post:

ACLU Threatens Lawsuit Against Unioto High School

Gay Student Attacked At School

Patrick Sullivan

COLORADO – Former Arapahoe County Sheriff Patrick Sullivan was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of trying to trade drugs to a man for sex, as investigators monitored the deal.
Drug task-force officers were “visually monitoring” the deal when the 68-year-old former national Sheriff of the Year delivered methamphetamine to an Aurora home and sought sex in return, said current Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson.
“This shows that no one is above the law, particularly a current or a former peace officer,” Robinson said.
Robinson said Sullivan had an ongoing relationship with the man as well as other men he had a history of bonding out of jails in the metro region.
Sullivan is being held on $250,000 bail in the jail that bears his name, the Patrick J. Sullivan Jr. Detention Facility. He was sheriff from 1984 until his retirement in 2002.
A call left at his family home in Littleton on Tuesday night was not returned. Sullivan’s adult daughter told TV reporters outside her parents’ home that the family was in disbelief and asked for privacy.
The former sheriff was being held in an isolation cell Tuesday night and could appear in court as early as Wednesday morning, Robinson said.
The investigation is ongoing, and more charges and arrests are expected.
Robinson said investigators received a tip earlier this month that Sullivan was involved in meth distribution, sparking the investigation that culminated in his arrest and staggering fall from grace.
Sullivan had retired from law enforcement to become director of safety and security for Cherry Creek Schools in 2002, retiring from there in 2008. He was hired in the aftermath of security concerns following the deadly Columbine rampage of 1999.
In a statement released Tuesday night, Cherry Creek School District Superintendent Mary Chesley said: “We are absolutely stunned at the news of Mr. Sullivan’s arrest and are fully cooperating the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office with their investigation.”
Sullivan had a storied law enforcement career and was named Sheriff of the Year by the National Sheriffs’ Association in 2001.
In 1989, the sheriff drove a Jeep through the fence of an Arapahoe County home to rescue two deputies and a wounded 17-year-old boy who had been taken hostage by a rape and murder suspect armed with a machine gun.
He was named undersheriff in 1983 and appointed sheriff six months later, after Sheriff Ed Nelson died of a heart attack. He went on to win four elections.
Sullivan was a nationally expert on cyberterrorism and other law enforcement issues. He participated in a statewide meth task force in 2000.
Sullivan faces a charge of unlawful distribution, manufacturing, dispensing or sale of a controlled substance, the Sheriff’s Office said.
The Class 5 felony carries a penalty of up to six years in prison.
Robinson called it a “sad time” for his department.
Former Arapahoe County Commissioner Jim Dyer, who was not on the commission when Sullivan was sheriff, said he was shocked when told of the sheriff’s arrest.
“I knew he had a distinguished career,” Dyer said. “I think he was a good guy. That’s shocking. I am absolutely astounded.”
Steve Ward, a former county commissioner who worked with Sullivan, said he “couldn’t be more shocked.”
“I’m sad for him,” he said. “As a law enforcement officer, he was second to none.”
Former Arapahoe County District Attorney Jim Peters, who worked with Sullivan, said the allegations against the former sheriff are “totally out of character” for the man he knew and are “hard to believe.”
“He was completely ethical, upright and honest,” Peters said. “He just oozed honesty and integrity. He was an outstanding sheriff.”
from The Denver Post

Daniel Radcliffe

Just last week Harry Potter and The Woman In Black star Daniel Radcliffe was quoted in the French press saying that he would very likely be playing a gay character in a film to release in 2012. And it would appear that gay character is no less than Beat poet Allen Ginsberg.
Sources tell Twitch that once Radcliffe wraps up his Broadway run in How To Succeed In Business Without Really Trying he will move on to Kill Your Darlings with writer-director John Krokidas.
A thriller based on actual events, Kill Your Darlings revolves around the relationship between Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Lucien Carr. Carr, for his part, is credited for connecting Ginsberg, Kerouac and William S Burroughs but, most notoriously, served time for the 1944 murder of his lover David Kammerer.
Word of the film first broke in 2009 with Christine Vachon (Boys Don’t Cry, Hedwig And The Angry Inch, A Dirty Shame) producing while Chris Evans, Jesse Eisenberg and Ben Whishaw were attached to play Kerouac, Ginsberg and Carr, respectively. It’s unknown if any of those three remain attached but Eisenberg, at least, is out with Radcliffe apparently taking his place.
Radcliffe’s UK based representatives have declined comment.
from Twitch
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