I sit next to my attorney silently, facing the immigration judge. I am told my case (aka my life, aspirations and my body) is under his jurisdiction. I am dressed as professionally as possible to aptly represent my "Alien of Extraordinary Ability" status. I nervously look around the room. My dark eyes catch another attorney behind us signaling me to take off my hat. Promptly I take off my favorite accessory (my only sign of faggotry) to show my compliance with the US judicial practices. The judge begins his inquiry, to which my attorney reveals my HIV status, and my inability to adjust my status even though my petition for permanent residency to the US was granted on the basis of my claim as an "Alien of Extraordinary Ability" in February 2002.

The pain of hiding underground, days of unemployment, hunger, fear of accessing treatment leading me to near death flashes across my mind. Where would I turn for the wasted seven years of my life? Will this judge be able to understand the lost wages, aspirations, depression and most of all the psychological violence of being separated from my beloved parents? It is clear my journey to justice is only beginning.

This blog post is my first public step in ending isolation, silence, fear and their antecedent dysfunctions that the HIV ban on immigration and travel has wrought upon my life. It has disrupted my educational, work and all major life aspirations. I have silently watched my friends getting married, accessing green card,...

Hans Rosling unveils new data visuals that untangle the complex risk factors of one of the world's deadliest (and most misunderstood) diseases: HIV. He argues that preventing transmissions -- not drug treatments -- is the key to ending the epidemic.

This summer, Dr. Héctor Carrillo joins the 2009 Summer Institute as featured faculty.

The majority of research that discusses HIV risk, sexuality, and race seems to follow a linear formula that connects one’s sexuality and race to risky behaviors and subsequent vulnerability to HIV. Dr. Héctor Carrillo’s research however, adds an understanding of cultural context with regards to sexuality in Mexico that complicates the idea of what labels like ‘gay’ or ‘risk’ mean in different environments. What happens when men who have sex with other men, and because they are not gay or bisexual, do not believe themselves to be at risk for HIV because they do not claim a gay identity? One of Dr. Carrillo’s recent studies ‘Trayectos’, which means trajectory or path, follows the ever-changing context of sexuality as individuals move across the Mexican-US border in what he and others call...

In Judaism, there is a tenant called ‘”Tikkun Olam”, which translated from Hebrew means “repair the world”.

Last Thursday, eighty high school sophomore students from Emery/Weiner, a Jewish Community School in Houston, Texas descended upon the San Francisco LGBT Community Center to hear a panel of local community activists talk about social and health issues impacting LGBT people. The goal of the panel was for students to learn about issues facing LGBT people as well as to begin to develop tools they could use to promote greater equality for LGBT people back home.

When the Youth Program of the San Francisco LGBT Community Center called me to see if I would be interested in representing NSRC on the panel, I was thrilled (and a bit surprised too) to hear that an event like this was even...

The 21st National Conference on LGBT Equality—Creating Change—convenes next week in Denver, Colorado (January 28-February 1) and NSRC once again plans to be there in support of placing sexual literacy at the very heart of the movement where it has been conspicuously downplayed or disappeared altogether in recent years.

So what does sexuality literacy have to do with achieving LGBT equality?

Everything. And the grassroots LGBT movement is now beginning to recognize and act on it.

This year, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force’s commitment to...

The CDC released a new report yesterday detailing the rising rates of STDs-especially among women, minorities and young people aged 18-24. The report discusses how much of the recent progress being made to eliminate syphilis has been reversed. Furthermore, the report highlights how STDs cost the U.S. health care system as much as $15.3 billion dollars annually.

Years of abstinence only education have no doubt led to this record breaking rise in STD rates by promoting ignorance as a national policy.

Dr. John Douglas, Director of the CDC's Division on STD Prevention hits the nail in the head of this problem-namely, that society itself is not being responsible enough when it comes to discussing sexual health....doctors often choose not to discuss STDs and sexual health with their patients, clergy fail to address sexual health, teachers are gagged from speaking about it due to dangerous abstinence policies....and parents often think everyone else is handling it so they don't have to or want to.

America needs to talk about sex. All of us, not some of us because we are each responsible for ourselves and others. 

One fantastic way to talk about sex and learn realistic strategies for decreasing STD and HIV rates among youth is to attend...