Marsha P. Johnson, in a photo from the new documentary. Victoria Cruz, a dogged crime-victim advocate in New York City, has taken on one last case before retirement. She wants to solve the mysterious 1992 death of Marsha P. Johnson — a trans woman like Cruz herself — who’s body was pulled from the Hudson river after disappearing the evening before. The cause of death had been ruled a suicide, but that doesn’t wash with Marsha’s friends or with much of the LGBT population of New Yor

Thirty-two years ago this month, I received a phone call from a nurse at my doctor’s office telling me that I had tested HIV positive. We didn’t schedule a follow-up visit or begin a treatment plan, because there wasn’t a single medication approved for the virus, which had only been identified the previous year. The story of those times is achingly familiar to many of us. I lived in two-year increments, waiting for whatever illness would signal the beginning of my decline. I spent a lot

I am on my feet at the Thanksgiving table, and my fists are slamming into the linen napkins. Silverware is quaking, pottery is rattling. The force of a particularly hard blow to the tabletop sends a dinner roll catapulting from the bread basket. My screams are borrowed from post-election protest marches. They are deafening and unending. Fight him. Reject hate. Protect ourselves. Surrounding the table are members of my family, some red and some blue. They pay me no attention. They are chattin

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is a very touchy organization, most especially when it comes to the Olympic rings. They guard their trademark jealously and litigiously, commonly suing anyone who dares to approximate the iconic rings for their own purposes. Even local street vendors during the Games have been shut down for violating copyright. Anthony Braswell wasn’t thinking about that when he and a co-worker came up with a dangerous idea. It was 1995, and Atlanta was in the heigh

TheSexYouWant.ca - go see it - is a resource created by the AIDS Committee of Toronto (ACT) with whom I go back aeons, in partnership with GMSH (Gay Mens Sexual Health Alliance) with whom I’ve also had more than casual contact.  I was part of the HIVStigma.com campaign that GMSH facilitated,  and I’m also a member of their poz prevention working group since its inception. ACT and GMSH worked on TheSexYouWant.ca initiative in consultation with an Advisory Comm

  This is a rather personal blog video, there’s no doubt about that. I’m even a little apprehensive because it doesn’t offer the usual helpful tips or the “entertainment value” of my other videos. But one of my problems has always been trying to be the life of the party when I’m not feeling it. So please allow me to offer you a different Mark than you might be used to, unplugged and exposed. The last few weeks have been tough, I won’t lie to you. My nine-year relationship came

You’re part of a healthcare revolution in cyberspace, my friends. It’s changing the way people find treatment information, relate to their doctor, and support one another. And you’re about to meet some of the marvellous people who are leading the charge. Did you know that 80% of internet users spend time gathering health information  That makes it the third most popular online pursuit, following only e-mail and using a search engine (and yes, that means more than porn. Is your mind

You must know this, because it matters. Because it has already changed your life and you may not even realize it. It was 1983. Just a year prior, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) became the fearful nameplate for the murderer of gay friends and lovers. The virus that caused it, HIV, had only been identified a few months earlier. Amidst this atmosphere of unremitting grief and fear, a group of activists met in Denver as part of a gay and lesbian health conference. Among them, a dozen

Today I accepted the Facebook friend request of someone I knew in high school. We haven’t spoken in more than thirty years. She is married with a load of kids, and God knows why she wants to befriend the scandalous queer who wore knee-high platform boots to the junior dance in our home town of Bossier City, Louisiana. I did what I always do. I accepted her request and included a link to My Fabulous Disease, labeled as a blog chronicling my life “as an HIV positive gay man in recovery from

HIV negative gay men hear a lot about what they should be doing (or not doing), but rarely about what they are doing well. They have had to plod along, making the best choices they could to remain negative, fearing every blood test, and often watching friends become infected with HIV. Clearly, HIV positive people are subjected to daily stigmatization and prejudice, from the workplace to the dating pool. But this isn’t a contest. Considering this blog site is devoted to living joyfully with H