Facing AIDS is a digital photo sharing initiative with the goal of reducing HIV-related stigma and promoting HIV testing. Many AIDS.gov blog readers have contributed personal messages to the Facing AIDS photo gallery, most recently in recognition of World AIDS Day (December 1, 2012 – visit the gallery to see the inspiring messages collected over the five years of the initiative). Many of your Facing AIDS messages highlight the importance of confronting stigma and echo the theme of National HIV Testing Day: Take the Test. Take Control. That consistency made it easy for our team to re-purpose the photos into the newest video in our Facing AIDS series. To learn how participate in Facing AIDS, read this blog post. To watch other videos in the Facing AIDS series, please use this playlist. Click here to learn more about locating HIV testing near you. Please watch and share the “Facing AIDS for National HIV Testing Day” video.
The Family Acceptance Project, a San Francisco program aimed at reducing familial rejection of transgender, bisexual, lesbian, and gay youth, was named a “Promising Practice” at an October conference sponsored by the Center for Reducing Health Disparities at the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine, and the Latino Mental Health Concilio.
Researchers found, essentially, that supportive and accepting family members can help reduce health disparities, including HIV risk, among LGBT Latino youth and young adults. For more information on the Family Acceptance Project’s work, visit FamilyProject.SFSU.edu.
On Wednesday, October 24 there will be a free screening of “Gen Silent” at the Melwood Screening Room, 477 Melwood Avenue in Pittsburgh. Refreshments will be served at 6 PM. The film starts at 6:30 PM. Gen Silent startlingly discovers how oppression in the years before Stonewall now affects older LGBT people with fear and isolation. For more about the film, go to stumaddux.com.
National HIV Testing Day (NHTD) is an annual campaign coordinated by the National Association of People with AIDS to encourage people of all ages to “Take the Test, Take Control.”
Too many people don’t know they have HIV. In the United States, nearly 1.2 million people are living with HIV, and almost one in five don’t know they are infected. Getting tested is the first step to finding out if you have HIV. If you have HIV, getting medical care and taking medicines regularly helps you live a longer, healthier life and also lowers the chances of passing HIV on to others.
Do homophobic people actually fear their own unconscious feelings? A new study suggests that people who repress their own sexual attraction to the same sex are more likely to express hostility towards gays.
“In many cases these are people who are at war with themselves and they are turning this internal conflict outward,” study co-author Dr. Richard Ryan, professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, said in a university written statement.
In four separate experiments conducted in the U.S. and in Germany, each involving an average of 160 college students, researchers attempted to measure any differences between what people say about their sexual orientation and how they actually react. Their findings are published in the April issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
If your parents never talked to you about sex…or if they did and it didn’t go well, maybe you should watch the last episode of Glee. The scene in which Burt Hummel talks to his gay son, Kurt, is a shining example of how parents should talk to their kids when discussing sex for the first time. Kids need to know about protection, of course, but they also need to know that they matter and that casual sex really isn’t so casual…at least not when you’re that young.
. Click here to learn more about locating HIV testing near you. Please watch and share the “Facing AIDS for National HIV Testing Day” video.
