D.C.'s Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance (GLAA) has released its questionnaire for the D.C. mayoral race, quizzing candidates on their thoughts on everything from the D.C. police department's Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit to  "water-based lubricant."

The document surveys the candidates on 26 questions in six categories: marriage, public health, public safety, human rights, education, and business. Some of the queries are pretty pointed: Just try giving the incorrect answer to "Will you support legislation to curb abuses by NIMBYs who are now allowed to file an endless series of baseless complaints to harass or extort bars and restaurants?" or "Will you rein in police officials who respond to legitimate crime concerns with unsustainable, media-centric quick fixes that infringe constitutionally protected civil liberties?" Come on. That's practically a cheat sheet!

Another question of note: Question 26 follows up on the GLAA's push to legalize prostitution earlier this year: "What are your thoughts regarding GLAA’s proposal . . . to mitigate the problems associated with prostitution by legalizing and regulating it? What will you do to provide alternatives to survival sex for at-risk populations like homeless youth and transgenders?"

Participating candidates must file answers to the GLAA by Aug. 17.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Some people believe that every human being has the right to a full and healthy life. Others believe that every human being has a right to a full and healthy life—as long as they aren't gay, addicted to drugs, or a prostitute.

And then, there are those who believe that only pre-born babies are innocent enough to deserve a full and healthy life. These people are the reason that the campaign against AIDS has to focus on infected pregnant women—instead of infected pregnant women, infected drug users, infected prostitutes, and infected gay men.

AIDS activist Elizabeth Pisani drove this point home in a recent interview with VICE Magazine. Pisani is a crusader against both AIDS and the bullshit which prevents health organizations from fighting it. There are a lot of insights in this long interview with Pisani. Most interesting to me is the way the fight against AIDS has been shaped by branding issues.

The face of AIDS, Pisani argues, has been focused so exclusively on the "innocents"—like pregnant women, their unborn children, and recipients of blood transfusions—that the epidemic has been left to thrive in the most at-risk populations—like gay men, drug users, and sex workers. The problem, of course, resolves itself in the most macabre way: The epidemic eventually spreads from "the wicked" to the "innocents," who are not as isolated as the judgmental types would like to believe.

Says Pisani:

Yes, gay men, drug injectors, and people who sell and buy sex, the three groups which are more likely to get HIV, are the so-called “wicked” people. At UNAIDS we had to find a way to turn it from a “disease of the wicked” into a “disease of the innocent”. Unfortunately, in the process of trying to do that, we turned attention from the groups who most needed it to the whole population. So what we were essentially trying to saying was, “If you don't invest in prevention for these high risk groups now, then you will have a bigger epidemic—i.e. innocent women and kids—later on.” What the politicians heard, however, was, “HIV prevention blah blah blah blah innocent women and children.” It's like talking to a dog who recognizes only its name and the name of the food. Can you recollect a precise moment for this shift in perception? It was when the African epidemic really hit people's radars. In Africa all of our data came from pregnant women, and you can't have a more touchy-feely innocent group than pregnant women and their unborn babies. That was the thing that really made people think it wasn't just a disease of 'the wicked'.

The whole interview is worth a read, including Pisani's explanation for why democracies have been less proactive at fighting the epidemic: "Democracy isn't all that good at protecting the rights of minority groups who don't vote. . . . when I say public health is a fascist discipline, I mean it." Hey, maybe that finally explains President Bush's initiatives to fund AIDS work in Africa?

Photo by bryan88