In commemorating World AIDS Day, it’s good to take a look at where we stand. A lot of releases are hitting my inbox today, including several from the White House. First, a frank look at the epidemic that airs on public TV today.

Mr. Bruce is a cat. A cat who loves the band Queen. Freddie Mercury, Queen’s the lead singer loved cats. Today would have been Mercury’s 65th birthday, but sadly he died of AIDS-related complications in 1991. In his memory, friends and family  immediately established the Mercury Phoenix Trust raise to money and awareness about AIDS. Since 1992 the Mercury Phoenix Trust has been responsible for donating more than $15 million in the fight against AIDS  through proceeds and royalties from the 1992 Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert for AIDS Awareness and other fund raising efforts.

Well, progress was good while it lasted.

North Carolina State Representative Larry Brown, proving that ignorance about public health knows no bounds even in the 21st century, wants to deny state assistance to citizens who contracted HIV through their own “perverted lifestyle.” This returns the debate to the era of the Innocent Victim, when only little children who got AIDS through botched blood transfusions or while being born to junkie moms were worthy of America’s attention and assistance. There’s a reason the most comprehensive federal assistance for HIV patients is named after a boy who was shunned at school, not a friendless San Francisco drag queen tossed out on the street.

While you work within the constraints put on any Speaker, to implement the agenda of the president who’s in your own party, please let San Francisco have real representation again. San Francisco values really matter to America. The City needs a Congressperson again. Let San Franciscans elect someone who needn’t compromise on their every viewpoint for the sake of the Speakership. You can do this, Madame Speaker. Please make it so. Finally, as I always close my letters and emails to you, more and more futile though they seem because of your dual role nowadays: Thank you for your service to San Francisco, to California, and to the United States of America.

Gays get thrown under the bus with women, Hispanics, public option and single-payer supporters, community colleges, and student loan borrowers. I thought it might be possible to enact health care reform without LGBTs having to take one for the team, but no.

President-elect Obama chose eliminationist hate preacher Rick Warren to give the invocation at Obama’s Inaguration. With this choice, Obama sends three destructive messages. Number one: In Obama’s America, equal rights and reproductive freedom aren’t for everyone. Number two: Presdient-elect Obama likes sharing the stage with hate. Number three:

Today is the 20th anniversary of World AIDS Day. It is also the 25th anniversary of the discovery of the AIDS virus (or 27th, depending on whose calculations you are reading). The fact that AIDS remains the #1 health threat worldwide ought to be an eye-opener for the complacent.  Sadly, it is no news to folks whose lives have been touched — personally, or through family and friends — by HIV/AIDS.

Say what you want about Madonna: Her response to the AIDS crisis has always been immediate and direct.

Though she is best known for her public reactions–appearing at an AIDS Project Los Angeles fund raising fashion show, flashing her breasts to the approving roar of the crowd as she strolled the catwalk in Gaultier; promoting safe sex as part of her stage show tours and in her book Sex;

Since its dawn in America around 100 years ago, sex education has been and remains a controversial and provocative topic with often greatly polarized opinions about and approaches to it. In the last 12 years, since the advent of federally-funded abstinence-only sex education, the battles over sex ed by parents, advocacy, religious and health organizations and the government have amplified.