Welcome to Fabulous Friday, a review of the week's news for the LGBT Kos Community. We'll be highlighting some interesting news stories, as well as providing a list of some notable LGBT diaries here at Daily Kos. If you ever run across stories/blog posts/diaries that should be included here, please send a Kosmail to LGBT Kos.
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LGBT News - Youth/Education
Princeton Review Ranks Most (and Least) LGBT-Friendly Colleges
The Princeton Review has released its lists and ranking for U.S. Colleges and Universities, including the most (and least) LGBT-friendly.
At the top of this year’s list of LGBT-friendly campuses is New York University. Coincidentally (or not), it also ranks in the top 20 for Best College Theater, Dodgeball Targets and Reefer Madness). Also in the top 5 are Stanford, Emerson, Wellesley and Bennington. While we expected liberal women’s colleges to make a better showing, Smith and Mt. Holyoke did come in at 15 and 19. No Oregon colleges or universities were represented on the list.
Wheaten College (an Illinois Christian institution) topped the list of LGBT-unfriendly schools, to the disappointment of some alumni and current students.
Don't Teach, Don't Tell? District Gay Policy Questioned
Anoka, Minnesota (CNN) -- Late at night, long after class is dismissed, middle school teacher Jefferson Fietek logs on for his night shift: answering the texts and Facebook posts of suicidal teens.
Fietek, an adviser for his school's Gay-Straight Alliance in Anoka, Minnesota, says he gets messages from students contemplating suicide or those with friends in crisis at least once a week.
Some of the distressed kids are gay, others are questioning their sexuality, he said. Fietek's off-duty interventions may blur the line between teacher and friend, but Fietek, who's openly gay, said some of these kids have no one else to turn to for support.
LGBT News - Transgender
Transgender woman running for Houston council
Jenifer Rene Pool is running for an at-large position on the Houston city council. Sue Lovell, who reached her term limit, is vacating the seat. Before Lovell joined the council, Mayor Annise Parker also served on the council at large.
Unlike her two predecessors who are lesbian, Pool is transgender.
Pool explained that in Houston, the at-large seat, rather than the single member district that includes Montrose, is the LGBT seat. She said that Houston’s LGBT community has always been even more spread out than that in Dallas. To put together the LGBT vote, a candidate needs to run citywide, she said.
APNewsBreak: TSA managers at LA airport get sensitivity training after transgender complaint
SAN FRANCISCO — The Transportation Security Administration said Thursday that its managers at Los Angeles International Airport are undergoing mandatory sensitivity training after a transgender employee alleged she was ordered to dress like a man, pat down male passengers and use the men’s restroom.
Ashley Yang, 29, who spent two years as a security checkpoint screener at LAX, was fired last summer after co-workers observed her using the women’s room, according to a copy of her termination letter obtained by The Associated Press. She contested the firing, resulting in a settlement that mandated the training.
“Ashley lives her life as a woman. Her co-workers recognized her as a woman. Passengers recognized her as a woman. But her employer didn’t,” said attorney Kristina Wertz of the San Francisco-based Transgender Law Center, which helped her file a civil rights complaint. “She was asked to hide who she was just in order to earn a living.”
LGBT News - Health/HIV
HIV/AIDS and the black community: a continued American tragedy
Two troubling aspects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic are readily apparent in the new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the “Estimated HIV Incidence in the United States, 2006–2009.” The annual number of infections is holding steady at about 50,000. Great that it’s not rising. Bewildering that it hasn’t decreased over the last decade. More alarming is the report’s further confirmation that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is the equivalent of a five-alarm fire in the African American community, with young black gay men bearing the brunt of it.
In each of the years from 2006 to 2009, black men who have sex with men ages 13 to 29 led all groups becoming HIV-positive. In 2006, they were 49 percent of new infections. By 2009, they were 60 percent. All told, the number of young, black, gay men who became HIV-positive jumped from 4,400 in 2006 to 6,500 in 2009.
The Good And Bad News On HIV In The U.S.
The latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show a mixed picture for HIV/AIDS in this country.
While the number of people infected with HIV each year is relatively steady — approximately 50,000 new infections each year — there was a 48 percent increase in the number of young HIV-infected African American men who have sex with men from 2006 to 2009.
"We are very concerned about this trend for this group and as they age in the future," CDC Director Thomas Frieden said in teleconference with reporters. Of the 1.2 million people infected with HIV in the U.S., more than 500,000 are black, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. (KHN is a program of the foundation).
LGBT News - International
Mideast HIV Epidemic Emerging as Sex Between Men Fuels Disease, Study Says
Sex between men is responsible for more than a quarter of new HIV infections in parts of the Middle East and North Africa, according to a study that shows epidemics of the AIDS-causing virus are emerging in the region.
High-risk sex between truck drivers in Morocco and Pakistan, prisoners in Lebanon and street children in Egypt are fueling the spread of HIV among those groups, researchers in Qatar found in a study of data from 23 nations published yesterday by the Public Library of Science in its journal PLoS Medicine.
The survey is the first to describe the state of HIV among gay and bisexual men in a region where same-sex intercourse is often criminal and the stigma associated with it can hinder efforts to prevent transmissions, the researchers said. They hope the findings will spur governments to curb the epidemics, said Laith Abu-Raddad, an associate professor of public health at the Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar who led the study.
Italy’s parliament rejects anti-homophobia bill
LGBT rights organizations and other activists are lashing out at Italy’s parliament decision to reject a bill calling for stiffer sentences for those involved in hate crimes against homosexuals and transsexuals.
The parliament’s lower house, dominated by Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s conservatives, rejected the bill on Tuesday, July 26.
LGBT Kos News
In addition to Fabulous Friday, posted every Friday at 5:30pm (ET), we publish a diary every Wednesday at 8:00pm (ET), and an open thread every Sunday at 2:30pm (ET). If you are interested in hosting an open thread or writing a diary for the group, please send a message to the group.
Notable Diaries
LGBT-related diaries from the previous week (Friday, July 29th through Thursday, August 4th) that did not make the recommended diaries list and were not rescued.