For many HIV-positive Americans, and those who advocate on their behalf, these are days of anxious waiting as the Supreme Court ponders President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul.
This loose-knit community – made up of activists, health professionals and an estimated 1.2 million people living with HIV – has invested high hopes in the Affordable Care Act, anticipating that it could dramatically improve access to lifesaving care and treatment. The act is now in limbo as the high court deliberates on its constitutionality, notably its requirement that most Americans obtain health insurance. A ruling could come in June.
“The HIV treatment community sees the act as a critical step in our fight against the AIDS epidemic,” said Scott Schoettes of Lambda Legal, a national gay-rights advocacy group. “People have been counting on it, making plans based on its implementation, so for it to be pulled out from under their feet at this point would be a tremendous loss.”
Among its many provisions, the health care law has two major benefits for HIV-positive people: It expands Medicaid so that those with low incomes can get earlier access to treatment, and it eliminates limits on pre-existing conditions that have prevented many people with HIV from obtaining private insurance.
Under current policies, low-income HIV-positive people often do not qualify for Medicaid if they are not yet sick enough to be classified as disabled.
In the view of advocacy groups, this creates a cruel Catch 22 – at a stage when they are still active and productive, these people can’t afford the antiretroviral treatments that could help them stay that way. Only when their condition worsens are they able to qualify for Medicaid and get treatment that might have prevented the deterioration.
The health care act would remove the disability requirement and makes Medicaid available to a broader range of low-income adults.
“It will prolong life potentially by decades for literally hundreds of thousands of persons,” said the National Minority AIDS Council in its Supreme Court brief. “Individuals can continue to work and go about their daily lives as productive members of society.”
According to the Department of Health and Human Services, only about 13 percent of people with HIV have private health insurance and about 24 percent have no coverage at all. As a group, HHS says, these people “have been particularly vulnerable to insurance industry abuses” and face barriers to obtaining care from qualified providers.
Under the new law, insurers cannot rescind existing coverage to adults unless there’s evidence of fraud. As if 2014, when the law is scheduled for full implementation, insurers will not be allowed to deny coverage to anyone with HIV/AIDS or impose annual limits on coverage.
Schoettes, who is Lambda Legal’s HIV Project director and is HIV-positive himself, says this part of the law would curtail harmful insurance practices.
“Most private insurers have refused to provide affordable coverage to those with HIV,” he and other Lambda Legal lawyers wrote in a brief submitted to the Supreme Court in March.
“This market failure has caused serious consequences both for individuals with HIV – who suffer unnecessary illness and premature death – and for society generally in higher overall health care costs and lost productivity,” the lawyers wrote. “Virtually all this suffering is avoidable: medical care is available that can turn HIV into a chronic, manageable condition.”
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SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA — Scores of conservative South Korean Christians will pray together on Sunday against Lady Gaga’s Seoul concert, organisers said, accusing the US pop star of advocating homosexuality and pornography.
The pop diva arrived in South Korea on Friday, a week before her Seoul performance which kicks off her “Born This Way Ball Global Tour.”
About 300 Protestant church members will gather in downtown Seoul Sunday night to hold a group prayer against the concert in the capital, Kang Ju-Hyun, a prayer organiser told AFP.
“We will pray to God that the concert will not be realised so that homosexuality and pornography will not spread around the country,” he said.
Kang, who leads a group called Alliance for Sound Culture In Sexuality, said other major church groups would join his campaign by holding protests around the Seoul headquarters of Hyundai Card, the concert organiser.
The Korean Association of Church Communication vowed last month to take “concerted action to stop young people from being infected with homosexuality and pornography.”
Kang’s group last week put out street banners in Seoul accusing the eccentric singer of “spreading unhealthy sexual culture” through “lewd lyrics and performances,” before they were removed by the city officials.
South Koreans aged under 18 have been banned from the much-anticipated concert after it was rated unsuitable for younger audiences.
The show had an initial age rating of 12 and older but the Korea Media Rating Board — a state watchdog — adjusted it upwards.
Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, is famous for the hit songs “Bad Romance” and “Poker Face,” and has become a strident voice for gay rights and anti-bullying campaigns.
From the April 27 concert at Seoul’s Olympic Stadium, Lady Gaga will take her hits and extravagant costumes to Asian venues including Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines, and then on to 21 European cities.
The singer is expected to do 110 shows this year following up the success of her album “Born This Way”, which has sold nearly six million copies worldwide since it was released in May 2011.
The star, who has a record number of almost 22 million followers on Twitter, told fans that she would “perform the tour of your life” on her Twitter posting on Sunday.
South Korea has East Asia’s largest Christian community after the Philippines, with about 8.6 million Protestants and 5.1 million Catholics. About 10 million South Koreans are Buddhists.
from AFP
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NEW YORK – A gay-rights group is urging New York state’s high court to overturn the conviction of an HIV-positive man whose saliva was found to be a “dangerous instrument” in a biting case.
David Plunkett was sentenced in 2007 to 10 years in prison for aggravated assault, a felony that requires the use of a “dangerous instrument.”
Plunkett argued unsuccessfully the charge could not be sustained because HIV cannot be transmitted through saliva. The Court of Appeals, New York’s top court, will hear Plunkett’s case on Thursday.
Lambda Legal, a national group that advocates for gays and lesbians and people with HIV, argued in a court brief filed this week that upholding Plunkett’s conviction would further stigmatize people living with HIV and AIDS.
“Clearly, the trial court here erroneously believed that HIV could be transmitted by saliva,” the Lambda Legal brief reads.
In 2006, the staff at a medical clinic in Ilion, about 70 miles east of Syracuse, called police to complain that Plunkett was causing a disturbance. Police said he punched and bit one of the responding officers, according to court documents.
Herkimer County Court Judge Patrick Kirk in 2007 denied Plunkett’s motion to dismiss the aggravated assault charge, ruling that while Plunkett’s teeth could not be considered a dangerous instrument, his saliva could.
Plunkett pleaded guilty and was given a 10-year prison sentence. In 2010, an appeals court found that by pleading guilty, Plunkett had forfeited his right to challenge any trial court error.
Plunkett and Lambda Legal argue that under New York law, only substances that are “readily capable of causing death or other serious physical injury” can be considered dangerous instruments.
A number of studies have found saliva does not contain sufficient concentrations of HIV to transmit the virus to other people. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “contact with saliva alone has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV.”
Plunkett’s attorney, Audrey Baron Dunning, argued in an appellate brief that upholding Plunkett’s conviction could “open the door for enhanced prosecution of persons with many forms of illness, contagious disease or condition.”
The Herkimer County District Attorney’s office did not return a call seeking comment.
from Reuters

Ron Brown

OMAHA, NEBRASKA — Nebraska assistant football coach Ron Brown has been called, among other things, a homophobe and a hater.
He turns the other cheek.
The 55-year-old Brown knows he walks a fine line as a high-profile employee of a taxpayer-funded university. His detractors say he crossed it last month when he attended an Omaha City Council hearing and testified against an anti-discrimination ordinance that extended protections to gay and transgender people.
In Brown’s three-minute appearance, he challenged ordinance sponsor Ben Gray and other members to remember that the Bible does not condone homosexuality. He told council members they would be held to “great accountability for the decision you are making.”
“The question I have for you all is, like Pontius Pilate, what are you going to do with Jesus?” Brown asked. “Ultimately, if you don’t have a relationship with him, and you don’t really have a Bible-believing mentality, really, anything goes… At the end of the day it matters what God thinks most.”
Barbara Baier, a member of the Lincoln Board of Education, wrote to university administrators to request Brown’s firing in the wake of his testimony. She noted the university-wide policy not to discriminate based on, among other things, sexual orientation.
Brown — in a decision he said he now regrets — gave Memorial Stadium in Lincoln as his address of record. Baier said some people could have inferred he was representing the university, not just himself, when he appeared before the council. She said Brown’s continued employment creates an atmosphere hostile to gay student-athletes.
“He says terrible things about members of my community — citizens of this country, people who have not committed any crimes,” Baier said. “He compares gays and lesbians to people who have committed crimes, people who are desiring to go and cause the destruction of the American family, and nothing could be further from the truth.”
Chancellor Harvey Perlman admonished Brown for giving the stadium address, but said Brown’s personal views do not reflect those of the university.
It was not the first time Brown has spoken out against homosexuality, and not the first time people have called for his dismissal for doing so.
“To be fired for my faith would be a greater honor than to be fired because we didn’t win enough games,” Brown said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I haven’t lost any sleep over it. I realize at some point, we live in a politically correct enough culture where that very well could happen.”
It was just six months ago that Brown earned national acclaim for leading a prayer for healing at midfield before the Cornhuskers’ game at scandal-torn Penn State.
“Hero to goat,” Brown said.
Brown is adamant he won’t change his Bible-inspired message or quit delivering it. As a Christian, he said, he’s called to evangelize.
At a time when Tim Tebow’s faith has been the subject of admiration and ridicule, there are those who like the fearlessness Brown shows going against the grain of what they say is a culture out to marginalize religion and unwilling to define right and wrong.
A Lincoln city councilman has said he plans to propose a similar anti-discrimination ordinance next week and that a public hearing could be held May 7. Brown said he is “praying about” speaking in opposition if his schedule allows.
In a state where the Cornhuskers are assigned celebrity status, separating Brown from the program would be a stretch.
Brown acknowledges that he uses his position as a platform for his ministry. He sprinkles in football metaphors during his many speaking engagements and sometimes references the players he’s coached.
He said the risk of losing his job pales in comparison to the price others have paid for standing up for their beliefs. Christians throughout the world, he pointed out, have been murdered because of their faith.
“The same thing that was a sin 2,000 years ago is a sin today,” Brown said. “The thing that was right 2,000 years ago is right today.”
Brown was born in New York in 1956 to an unwed mother who placed him in an orphanage. His adoptive parents brought him up as a Catholic, and he said he had a mostly trouble-free childhood even as his mom and dad struggled to make ends meet. With their encouragement, he said, he earned an academic scholarship to Brown University and starred there as a defensive back.
He said he felt a spiritual emptiness during his college years but came to be influenced by the devout lifestyle of one of his teammates, Harry Walls. Brown said he was born again in 1979 and began evangelizing.
He now heads a Christian ministry called FreedMen Nebraska, hosts a show on a statewide Christian radio network, appears on a cable-access channel in Lincoln and writes a column for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes’ magazine. Brown also has written books on Christian character and growth.
Brown has been an assistant at Nebraska under three head coaches, starting with Tom Osborne in 1987. He was let go when Bill Callahan replaced Frank Solich in 2004. Bo Pelini, who took over for Callahan in 2008, rehired Brown.
Advocacy groups called for Brown’s firing after he condemned homosexuality on a Christian radio show in 1999, and the American Civil Liberties Union has threatened legal action against Nebraska public schools that require students to attend Brown’s Bible-fueled motivational talks.
The attention Brown has received for his non-football activities has worn on Pelini.
“Why don’t you ask me why I hired him?” Pelini said. “I hired him because he’s a good football coach. He’s trustworthy. He has a lot of integrity. I hired him because I believe in him as a football coach and a guy who has positive impact on kids.”
Pelini said he knows Brown injects religion into his relationships with his players and none has complained.
Osborne, now the athletic director, said Brown is within his rights to express his personal views.
“I think it’s important that there be clarity with what you do in your capacity at the university and what you do as a private citizen,” Osborne said.
Brown stepped to the pulpit at Dundee Presbyterian Church in Omaha on Sunday night and began preaching with the same passion he brings to coaching. He gave a pep talk about the role of missionaries. Football was the backdrop, with Brown mentioning star running back Rex Burkhead as he spoke figuratively about “pushing the ball over the goal line.”
Brown offered a disclaimer after his 50-minute talk, saying his views did not necessarily reflect those of the university. Pamphlets in the pews referred to Brown as an “accomplished football coach” but made no mention of his ties to the Huskers.
Brown said he isn’t “picking on” gays and lesbians. He said a gay agenda has cropped up in American culture and that he is merely responding to it.
He said gays and lesbians do not deserve the same protections as groups that historically have been discriminated against, such as blacks and women.
“I have simply said that based on the Bible, homosexuality, the lifestyle of homosexuality, is a sin,” he said. “That has created a flame within itself. But I’ve decided I’m not going to be afraid of people calling me a bigot or a homophobic or narrow-minded out of a simple, gentle, compassionate expression of the truth of God’s word. I’m not going to be bought off by that.”
from The Associated Press
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Assistant Coach’s Remarks Do Not Represent The University