White House hosts HIV/AIDS forum in D.C. Obama plans national strategy, seeks input (AEGiS.org) - White House hosts HIV/AIDS forum in D.C. Obama plans national strategy, seeks input
Washington Blade - September 25, 2009 Joey DiGuglielmo
http://www.aegis.org/news/wb/2009/WB090903.html

There were several memorable moments at Monday's White House-hosted community discussion forum on HIV and AIDS in an auditorium at the University of the District of Columbia -- a young man who is thriving who contracted HIV via a blood transfusion when he was an infant, a homeless woman who dissolved into tears upon speaking of the lack of housing for those with AIDS and another woman who said she got the disease when she was date raped.
But a handful of openly gay men also provided some of the most pointed and dramatic moments as well. Matt Cavanaugh, a stack of D.C. Fights Back leaflets in hand, angrily demanded to know why D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty wasn't in attendance.
"I'm tired of people dying, I'm tired of the fact that we continue every year to have more and more infections and I'm tired of waiting for the plan of Washington, D.C. that's going to be at least as robust as the plan in Zambia," Cavanaugh said. "I'm tired of the fact that the mayor isn't here."
Cavanaugh then used his remaining moments -- each speaker was given 90 seconds to speak -- to offer 30 seconds for Fenty to comment and explain why he wasn't present. The room was silent.
Another gay man, David Phillips, chided the Centers for Disease Control for its politically correct euphemisms.
"It's ridiculous that we cannot have frank, explicit education aimed at our communities," Phillips said. "I'm not an MSM. I'm a gay man. I wanna suck cock. I wanna fuck another man."
He also took a shot at U.S. Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who'd spoken previously but left before public remarks.
"I wish that Eleanor Norton was still here," he said. "Statistically speaking, in the time it took her to speak and recite history to us, two people were infected with HIV. One of them was a gay man."
The large auditorium appeared to be about 30 percent full. Several spoke of the need to have the Ryan White Care Act in effect for longer than a three-year period. The Act is set to expire on Sept. 30, but members of Congress have pledged that it will be renewed.
Jeffrey Crowley, who's gay and is director of the White House's Office of National AIDS Policy, presided over the event and reaffirmed what he said was President Obama's commitment to a national HIV/AIDS strategy. The meeting was ostensibly an opportunity for locals to weigh in on what that should entail. A previous session was held in Atlanta. Others are planned in Albuquerque, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, San Francisco and other cities. Dates haven't been set.
Shannon Hader, director of the D.C. AIDS Office, read brief prepared remarks from a laptop and said she was more interested in hearing from the crowd than speaking herself.
Norton spoke extemporaneously and faulted Congress for Washington's cataclysmic HIV rates because Congress stopped the District's needle exchange program for many years. Washington has the highest per capita HIV rates of any U.S. city, according to Hader's office.
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