Patient's Sexuality May Have Impact on Care

Forbes.com republished an article stating:

Doctors, nurses and other health care professionals react more positively to men who reveal they're gay than to women who disclose they're lesbians, concludes a New Zealand study in the Journal of Advanced Nursing."

But lesbian and gay older adults (40+) who can disclose their sexuality to their health care provider report more positive experiences.

False assumptions of heterosexuality combined with an aging lesbian and gay boomer generation's assertiveness in healthcare makes the need to move sexuality training to the forefront of continuing medical education a priority.

Technorati tags: Healthcare, Gay and Lesbian, Aging

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what's next in washington state

Lawmaker pledges legislation to legalize same-sex marriage - The Olympian - Olympia, Washington: “Rep. Ed Murray, the openly gay Democrat from Seattle who led the fight to pass civil rights protections this year, pledged to follow with legislation legalizing same-sex marriage.”

Technorati tags: marriage, marriage equality

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Sex Drive Daily

Sex Drive Daily:

If you combined MySpace and Second Life into an adults-only playground, you might come up with what newly launched Utherverse wants to be. Utherverse is the company behind Red Light Center, one of the erotic MMOs launching this year (and the subject of an upcoming column).

2006 may well go down as the year the Internet became a commonplace conduit of human sexuality. The erotic massive multiplayer online games industry is introducing quite a few titles this year, and with graphics processing becoming superpowerful there is no stopping it. Wow-

Mark

Technorati tags: MMOs, videogames

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Boing Boing: Sex in space. No, seriously.

Boing Boing: Sex in space. No, seriously.

Some interesting links on what will of course eventually become commonplace--

Technorati tags: Sex, space, spaceflight

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Jewschool

Jewschool: bloggy goodness:
seems like quite the resource for those interested in today's progressive Judaism; check it out. Some of their headlines today:

Gay Pride Parade cancelled for J’lem; World Pride Events still on
Lebanese Children Receive Free Medical Care in Israel
Hizbullah's Patron's Grumble

Technorati tags: Progressive Judaism, Gay Pride, Jerusalem

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Ad Watch: Kim Cattrall's Too Sexy For New Zealand

Ad Watch: Kim Cattrall's Too Sexy For New Zealand

I have trouble even imagining this being aired in the United States, or more importantly, even being considered by a big company:



For the moment, of course, cable is a different story. From the Washington Post:

Cable television shows packed with sex and profanity, such as HBO's "Deadwood," FX's "Nip/Tuck" and Comedy Central's "South Park," would be subject to the same indecency regulations that govern over-the-air broadcasts if the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee has his way.

Currently, the Federal Communications Commission has the authority to fine only over-the-air radio and television broadcasters for violating its indecency regulations, which forbid airing sexual or excretory material between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., when children are most likely watching.

Technorati tags: Kim Cattrall, Jalopnik, cars

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George Michael Can't Get A Break / Queerty

George Michael at it again

Queerty got the scoop on this from the rags in the UK. Apparently he was in Hampstead Heath, presumably out for a stroll. It's the second time this year he was caught by the News of the World, I think...of course, no one should believe anything they print. :)



Mark

Technorati tags: George Michael, cruising, cottaging

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Nonconsensual touching is always bad

Technorati tags: Merkel, massage, Bush

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New financing in search for H.I.V. Vaccine - New York Times

Gates Foundation to Finance Search for H.I.V. Vaccine - New York Times:

This is great news! The world has long needed a "Manhattan Project" for HIV research, and even though there are doubters who say it's a long way off or impossible, no one will find a vaccine if we don't look for one.

SEATTLE, July 19 — The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation awarded more than a quarter of a billion dollars today to researchers in 19 countries to speed the lagging development of an H.I.V. vaccine.

The grants are the largest private investment in making such a vaccine, the foundation said. They represent a significant shift in emphasis, to large-scale collaborative projects instead of small teams of researchers working independently.

The money will be given over five years to 16 scientific teams...

Check out the money quotes from the NY Review of Books article on the difficulty of a vaccine approach:

The holy grail of AIDS prevention is a single-dose, safe, affordable, oral vaccine that gives lifelong protection against all subtypes of HIV. The first hurdle facing vaccine designers, therefore, is dealing with the extraordinary genetic complexity of the HIV epidemic.

HIV exists as two strains—HIV-1, which dominates the epidemic, and HIV-2, which is largely confined to West Africa. So far, at least ten different patterns of HIV-1 infection have been identified. These patterns reflect particular geographic and genetic profiles of viral spread. For example, HIV-1 subtype B (there are nine genetic subtypes) is the common form of the virus in North America and Western Europe. India, by contrast, is under threat from HIV-1 subtype C. In Africa, where some two thirds of those with HIV now live (about 25 million people) and where there were three million new infections in 2003 alone, the situation is more diverse. Southern and eastern regions of the continent face a predominantly HIV-1 subtype C epidemic. Central Africa sees a highly mixed picture—HIV-1 subtypes A, D, F, G, H, J, and K. The implications of these differences for vaccine development remain uncertain. The best guess is that the genetic complexity of HIV will influence the effectiveness of any tested vaccine.

There are also over a dozen virus variants, called circulating recombinant forms, whose genomes have a structure that lies in between those of known subtypes. They also contribute to the difficulty of creating a one-size-fits-all vaccine. At present, scientists do not know if each subtype and every variant will need its own specific vaccine. It may well be that they will.

Worse still, a given subtype of the virus does not stay the same. HIV is continually evolving...

Technorati tags: AIDS, vaccine

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Windows Gives No Tongue...

Windows Gives No Tongue / Reminder: Microsoft's bloated OS is truly terrible in the sack. But a Mac will make you moan:

As many of you know, we'd abandon Windows tomorrow at the National Sexuality Resource Center if I had my way; I can't discuss the Mac/Windows divide rationally with anyone. If you want me to do it, I have to do it on my Mac. Mark Morford, one of the San Francisco Chronicle's most delicious columnists, has hit the nail on the head, I think. It's about desire! Check it out:

It has those beady little eyes. It has that seedy come-hither stare. It has overstretched pleather pants and million-dollar gold caps over stained teeth, through which glides that famously shrill voice that seems at once tempting and full of promise and yet also more than a little whiny, deceptive, ill.

"Aww c'mon, baby," Windows pleads, kneeling at the foot of the bed. "This time it'll be different, I promise." It coughs that familiar phlegmy hack, like a busted Dell motherboard scraped over a lumpy C programmer.

"I'm clean as Gates' conscience! Coding smooth as PowerPoint in pudding! No hang-ups at the moment, guaranteed. Got me all the latest precautions, baby. Just downloaded 18 more urgent patches to cover up the latest in about 115,986 severe security holes and I'm triple condomed against all those bugs that sent me into such a crazy spasm last time. Check it out!"

[...]

Your breath comes in hot short gasps. Now it's not Windows at all. Now it's the long snake moan of a sleek silver MacBook running Apple's delicious OS X over your skin, caressing your belly, tickling your pelvic bones, kneading your flat panel.

Inhibitions vanish. Life opens. Your hips widen, your fingers roam, your imagination dances. This Mac, you know, will do anything you want, sacred to profane, Madonna to whore, with finesse and stability and zero fear of sudden viral invasion. They have mad skills down in the hot zone. Multilingual. Ambisexual. Sweet and pure on the outside and yet kinky as hell as soon as you say the word. Bonus: They don't insist on wearing old Comdex '98 baseball hats and oversized "Star Wars: Episode III" T-shirts while they get it on, like Windows. I mean, Oh my God.

Technorati tags: Windows, Mac OS, sexuality

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From Towleroad--a laugh for Thursday

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SFGate: Culture Blog! : Joss Whedon Still F--ing Rules

SFGate: Culture Blog! : Joss Whedon Still F--ing Rules

I'm a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as some of you may know--check out this speech Joss Whedon gave at the Equality Now fundraiser where he was honored--

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New York rejects marriage equality

We were hoping but to no avail. The New York Supreme Court rejected the notion that denial of marriage rights is an affront to the constitution. They made it sound real nice.
But I have a different idea of what went on. When I read this statement

We do not predict what people will think generations from now, but we believe the present generation should have a chance to decide the issue through its elected representatives

I realize that the republicans have once again been successful. They have accused the judiciary of being "activist" and here we are. The New York court is backing down and making the case that the legislation needs to make these decisions. It is not up to the court to state that basic inequality should be corrected, it is up to the state legislature. So now we have a situation where the republicans have been victorious and made it possible to write discrimination into law. The courts won't address it. This is serious.

Technorati Tags:
gay marriage, lgbt, discrimination, republican, gay, homosexuality

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