Newly dating and slightly anxious, two men bared their arms for blood tests and pondered the possibility that one of them, or both, could be infected with HIV. An innovative program – called Testing Together – would allow them to hear their test results minutes later, while sitting side by side.
Eric Zemanovic, a dental hygienist, and Dominic Poteste, a restaurant server, had been dating two months after a yearlong friendship. In the past, they’d both practiced safe sex and got regular HIV tests. Both are in their early 30s. They’d grown up when AIDS meant an early, horrible death. So, whenever they heard about friends testing positive, they felt pangs of fear.
Poteste explained: “There’s always an anxiety that comes with getting tested, even though 99 percent of the time I’ve been safe and been careful, there still is always …” His voice trailed off.
“A slight possibility,” Zemanovic completed the sentence.
“A slight possibility,” Poteste agreed.
Testing Together, now under way in Chicago and Atlanta, takes an unusual approach: It encourages gay male couples to get tested together and hear their results together. After delivering the results, a counselor talks with the couple about what to do next, including agreements they may want to make with each other about sex and health.
Are we agreeing to be monogamous? Is any sexual activity outside the relationship OK? How are we going to protect each other from infection? Couples address these questions and more.
The idea is to bring honesty to sexual relationships, said one of the researchers behind the program, Rob Stephenson of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in Atlanta.
Relationships offer only “mythical protection” from HIV, Stephenson said. Some couples may have avoided talking about each other’s HIV status, thinking, “If he were HIV positive he would have told me,” or “If he wanted to know, he would have asked.”
Poteste and Zemanovic, the newly dating Chicago couple, differed in their past approaches. Zemanovic was in the habit of asking his sex partners about their HIV status; he was “neurotic” about it, he said. Poteste hadn’t been as sexually active as his new boyfriend, but he hadn’t always asked the questions: Have you been tested? What’s your status?
“You have an assumption that if there’s something this person could do to potentially hurt me, they would tell me,” he said.
Zemanovic hoped getting tested together and discussing results with a counselor would build trust between them.
Poteste hoped the counselor could help them start a conversation so they could ask and answer difficult questions.
It started in Africa more than 20 years ago. Researchers believe couples testing has successfully reduced the spread of AIDS among married, heterosexual couples in some African regions. One study that looked at couples where one spouse is HIV positive and the other is HIV negative estimated that couples testing was cutting the rate of transmission by more than half.
In Washington, D.C., where the rate of HIV infection rivals some African nations, some community agencies allow couples to test together. Family and Medical Counseling Service Inc. has been testing about 145 couples together annually since 2008. Most are heterosexual couples.
In Chicago and Atlanta, Testing Together, funded by the MAC AIDS Fund, hopes to test 400 couples by the end of the year.
Each participant in Testing Together signs a consent form that addresses receiving counseling, testing and results with a partner in the same room at the same time with a trained counselor: “I hereby consent to allow my partner to know the results of my HIV test,” it begins.
The program challenges conventional practices in the United States, where HIV testing is usually private and for individuals only. At most other clinics, a man who asks if his partner can be there when he hears his test result is denied because of patient confidentiality concerns.
There are two trends fueling Testing Together. One, the number of gay Americans telling the U.S. Census they’re living with same-sex partners nearly doubled in the past decade, to about 650,000 couples. About half those same-sex partnerships are gay men.
What’s more, a new line of research suggests that up to 68 percent of new HIV infections in gay men come from a main sex partner, not from casual sex, in part because main sex partners are more likely to forgo condoms.
Counselors are trained on how to deliver test results, with particular emphasis on how to tell partners the most difficult news: one partner has the virus and the other doesn’t. With these so-called “HIV discordant” couples, counselors have a great opportunity to reduce the spread of the virus by helping the couple learn ways to protect the uninfected partner, primarily through correct and consistent condom use.
Counselors are trained to dispel myths. If the couple thinks the test result means one partner has been unfaithful, the counselor might point out that the infected partner could have acquired HIV before the partner became a couple. If the couple believes the virus is “sleeping” and can’t be transmitted, the counselor might explain that HIV can be transmitted even if there are no signs or symptoms. If the couple believes their status is proof that precautions aren’t needed, the counselor might explain that HIV could be transmitted in the future as the infected partner’s virus levels rise.
Sam Hoehnle is a counselor in the Chicago program. “It never becomes easier emotionally” to deliver the news to an HIV discordant couple, Hoehnle said. He tells the HIV negative partner his results first, then spends more time and attention on the HIV positive partner. He’s seen partners support each other, but he acknowledges he can’t read minds. A show of compassion could mask anger or fear.
“You don’t know what’s happening internally, in their heads, about how they’re feeling about each other,” he said.
Poteste and Zemanovic got the best news possible: They were both HIV negative.
They both laughed with the sheer relief of it. The counselor had been nonjudgmental and hadn’t wanted to talk about the past, only the future, pressing them to talk specifically and directly about their agreement on sex outside the relationship.
Zemanovic: “We both agreed on monogamy. And if we do need to go outside the relationship (we agreed) to talk to each other and find out, `OK, what do we need to do here?’”
Poteste: “This was a full exploration of (monogamy), whereas before, it was a casual statement or a passing joke that was maybe passive-aggressive…. We need to be much more direct in communications than we have been.”
As a thank-you gift for participating in the program, they received two movie passes and a gift certificate for drinks and popcorn.
After the other decisions they’d made that day, deciding on which movie to see would be a snap.
from The Associated Press

ELMHURST, ILLINOIS – About 5 percent of prospective Elmhurst College students identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender on the first set of applications received after the suburban college drew national attention as the first in the United States to ask about sexual orientation.
“We didn’t know what to expect, which is why we asked the question,” Gary Rold, dean of admission, said Tuesday.
Of the 109 prospective students who identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, 63 were accepted, Rold said. In all, 2,204 applied for admission. The results may not reflect the entire incoming student population because some may not have been comfortable answering the question truthfully, he said.
“Many parents are highly engaged in their student’s college application process. You have the phenomenon of an 18-year-old who may know who they are, but may not want family to (know),” Rold said.
Elmhurst College announced it would add the question last year, after gay rights group Campus Pride encouraged colleges to so do. Colleges are more likely to ignore the need for substantive change if they don’t collect data about its LGBT population, said Shane Windmeyer, executive director of Campus Pride.
“By putting the question (on the application form) it holds the college accountable,” Windmeyer said.
Elmhurst College estimates that 85 to 90 percent of potential students answered the question on this year’s applications.
“The real motivation here is to send a signal to gay and lesbian students that this is a gay- and lesbian-friendly environment,” Rold said.
The college received national attention after inclusion of the question was announced. While Campus Pride heralded the move, some social conservatives derided the school.
“I did a couple talk radio (interviews) and found those to be more for entertainment value than anybody actually learning anything,” Rold said. “Thoughtful people, in general, have examined this issue and have come away feeling better about it.”
He said the college was contacted by five “nationally known schools” considering a similar application question, though Rold declined to name them.
About 10 percent of U.S. colleges have anti-discrimination policies to protect gays and lesbians, but that’s not enough, Windmeyer said.
from The Chicago Tribune
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WEST HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA – In response to growing complaints about West Hollywood’s annual Pride parade and festival, the city has decided to form a committee dedicated to overhauling the event for 2013.
Consuming almost two hours of a five-hour council meeting Tuesday night, the Pride discussion grew impassioned at times as both councilmembers and public commenters spoke about their vision for the annual gay Pride celebration, which takes place on the second weekend in June.
At the Dec. 19 council meeting, Councilman John D’Amico called for changes to the event. “There is a serious disconnect for a lot of people on that event,” he said, noting that many residents have long complained about the 42-year-old parade, often calling it “lame” or “tired.”
Rodney Scott, executive director of Christopher Street West (CSW), which puts on the pride festivities, explained to attendees of Tuesday’s meeting that the event brings in approximately $1.2 million in income each year. About $400,000 of that amount comes from festival admission tickets.
Scott said the event has $1.1 to $1.2 million in expenses each year. The city waives many of the fees associated with putting on the parade and festival, but CSW reimburses the city for the cost of festival preparation, sheriff’s personnel and clean up.
The parade, which travels down Santa Monica Boulevard from Crescent Heights to San Vicente, attracts an estimated 250,000 to 400,000 people. Approximately 25,000 people attend the accompanying festival held in West Hollywood Park.
D’Amico asked Scott to articulate what he understood the community concerns to be. Scott said the issues centered around creating areas for gay youth and transgender people, plus a need for more dance space.
D’Amico said Pride was no longer a political event. “The politics have drained out in favor of commerce,” he told Scott. He also said many residents do not feel included anymore and that the parade was far too long, often lasting three hours.
During public comment, many people spoke about the exuberance of coming to their first gay pride event and how exciting it was to ride or march in the parade. Others talked about the satisfaction they gained from volunteering.
Several business representatives said they earned a fourth to a third of their yearly profits during Pride. Chamber of Commerce CEO Genevieve Morell said CSW was as important a partner in the city as any other business.
Former Councilman Steve Martin said it might be impossible to recreate the electricity of a person’s first gay Pride event, but that the city was now the “trustee” of the event, so it was important to raise its quality.
Several public speakers said they felt caged in by the fencing around West Hollywood Park during the festival, but Scott said the enclosure was important for the security of attendees, and to protect the vendors’ booths overnight.
The admission fee ($15 in advance, $20 at the gate) was also a point of concern for residents. Scott noted Long Beach, San Diego and Palm Springs also charged admission to their Pride events, while San Francisco did not, but Councilman John Heilman did not want people to focus on the logistics of admission.
“I think we should be focusing on how to make the whole experience the best it can be and not really worrying about whether people can afford $20 to get in,” Heilman said. “I think our community by and large can afford that charge, and if they can’t, we need to provide a mechanism to accommodate them.”
At one point, Heilman asked what CSW would want from the city to help improve the event. CSW board member Steve Ganzell, who stepped in after Scott left for a flight, replied “miracles,” adding that more space in the park would be ideal.
D’Amico said it was important for CSW to spell out what it required from the city to upgrade the event. “Tell us exactly what you need from us,” D’Amico said. “If it’s $10 million and 10 acres, tell us.”
In the end, the council decided that CSW does an admirable job organizing the event, but needed help with fundraising. Mayor John Duran suggested the council could revive the West Hollywood Community Foundation to help spur community involvement and fundraising, but the council postponed acting on that idea.
Duran and D’Amico agreed to serve on a committee with CSW officials to find ways to raise the quality of the event. Their role will be limited in the next few months since plans for the 2012 festival are well under way. Come July, once this year’s festival is over, the two will be more heavily involved.
D’Amico said he was glad the conversation was happening, and that the city would take a more active role in the event.
“We cannot back down from our need to be leaders in the [gay] movement,” D’Amico said. “Where that will take us is only limited by how we end the conversation ourselves.”
from The West Hollywood Patch
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As of 2010, according to a recent report from the Pew Research Center, married couples had fallen to barely 51% of U.S. households, with a full 5% drop in new marriages between 2009 and 2010 alone. The data for 2011 aren’t in yet, but if that decline continued last year, less than half of American adults are in a legal marriage now.
Is marriage going the way of the electric typewriter and the VHS tape? Not exactly.
The decline of marriage seems especially dramatic in comparison to the way things were 50 years ago. In 1960, almost half of 18- to 24-year-olds and 82% of 25- to 34-year-olds were married. In 2010, the comparable figures were 9% and 44%. Ironically, however, 50 years ago what had everyone worried was the rapid rise in the proportion of married-couple households, as young people rushed to the altar.
The age of marriage has been falling since 1900, but it plummeted between 1940 and 1955, when the average age of first marriage for women dropped by twice as much as in the preceding half-century. By 1960, half of all women were married by the age of 20.
Experts sounded the alarm. The 1962 annual conference of the Child Study Assn. of America proclaimed early marriage part of a disturbing “lowering of standards in the areas of marriage, schooling, employment and the formulation of long-term goals.” Educators and psychiatrists blamed the problem on parents too concerned with their children’s “immediate happiness” to insist they exercise “self-control.” (Sound familiar?) Dozens of articles urged young people to say no to marriage until they had completed their education, demonstrated their ability to, as the New York Times put it in a 1959 article, “afford the kind of [living] quarters they will need and want.”
To almost everyone’s surprise, the next generations of youth followed that advice. Today, the average age of first marriage is almost 27 for women and 29 for men, up from 20 and 22 in 1960.
This does not mean marriage is an endangered institution. True, there are more divorced people in the population than in 1960, but divorce rates have been falling for 30 years. It also appears that more individuals than in the past will remain unmarried all their lives — perhaps 15%, compared with the historical norm of 10%. But with more people marrying for the first time as late as their 60s, we can’t even be sure of that. As gays and lesbians gain marriage rights, the proportion of married young adults may rise.
Still, the last half-century has seen a momentous change in the role that marriage plays in organizing lives. Marriage used to be almost mandatory, one of the first things people did when they left home. It was not a decision that required much deliberation or even deep knowledge of one’s prospective partner. In the 1950s, the average bride and groom had known each other for only six months.
Interviewing men and women who married in the 1950s and 1960s, I was struck by the similarities in how they explained their decision to marry: “It was time to settle down”; “I was 23 and people were starting to wonder”; “You just did it, that’s all.” Alternatively, many “had” to marry: almost half of teenage brides were pregnant at the time of their wedding.
Fifty years ago, getting married was a step young people took on the road to becoming economically secure, emotionally responsible and socially respectable. Today, it is more often the reward couples give themselves when they have achieved those goals. The vast majority of new marriages are between couples who have already cohabited. But many cohabiting couples refuse to marry until they are convinced that each partner has demonstrated his or her economic and emotional reliability.
There are many positive aspects to people’s more deliberative approach to marriage. Every year that a woman postpones marriage, up until her early 30s lowers her chance of divorce. Largely because individuals no longer feel forced to enter or stay in a bad marriage, domestic violence rates within marriage have fallen by more than 30% over the last three decades.
But the transformation of marriage has posed particular challenges for individuals from low-income communities and with low educational levels. In 1960, even a college-educated woman typically earned less than a man with only a high school degree, so getting married was the best investment a woman could make in her future. And even a male high school dropout was a pretty good “catch” because rising real wages usually allowed him to earn enough to support a family within a few years of finding a steady job. However, since 1969, the wages earned by men with a high school degree have dropped by 47%. Last month, while more than 1 million workers with bachelor’s degrees found jobs, half a million high school graduates lost their jobs.
This means that a woman whose pool of marriage candidates does not include someone with a college degree has good reason to be cautious about marrying, even if she gets pregnant. If she forgoes investing in her own education or curtails her own work hours, as women frequently do upon marriage, she may end up worse off economically, as well as emotionally, than if she had remained single. Couples in low-income communities now consistently tell researchers that they will not marry until they have achieved enough economic stability to give them a shot at sustaining a lifelong relationship.
So the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots has been paralleled by a widening gap between the “I do’s” and the “I do not’s.” Unfortunately, not being married further exacerbates social inequality because the majority of marriages now involve two wage earners, multiplying the advantage of those who can form stable, committed partnerships and avoid divorce.
Marriage isn’t disappearing. Most unmarried Americans say they want to eventually marry, and the vast majority will do so. But even in the best of times — which these are not — we’re unlikely to see people returning to early and lifelong marriage. That bus left the station a long time ago, and it’s been going in the opposite direction ever since.
from The Los Angeles Times