Black Muscles

Almost two-thirds of syphilis cases in the United States in 2003 were in gay men and other men who have sex with men, according to a study published in the June edition of the American Journal of Public Health. A fall in the incidence of syphilis of over 50% amongst heterosexual men and women between 2000 and 2003 was more than offset by a significant increase in the incidence of the infection amongst men who have sex with men.

Syphilis causes genital ulcers and can facilitate the transmission and acquisition of HIV infection. It can also act as a marker for risky sexual activity, although the infection can be readily transmitted during sexual activities, such as oral sex, which do not involve a significant risk of HIV transmission.

During the 1980s, there was a 54% increase in the incidence of primary and secondary syphilis in the United States, with African-Americans disproportionately affected by the disease. It is thought that the increase in syphilis during the 1980s was tied to the increasing use of crack cocaine and prostitution by some users to fund their habit. By the mid-1990s, however, the incidence of syphilis in the US had fallen sharply, and in 1999 a national syphilis elimination plan was published.

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A judge Tuesday weighed whether the taped confessions of three New Yorkers accused in the ambush and death of gay Brooklynite Michael Sandy are admissible in court.John Fox, Ilya “Alex” Shurov and Anthony Fortunato, all 20, are charged with murder as a hate crime in the Oct. 8 incident. On videotaped statements played Tuesday in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn, the defendants said they meant only to rob Sandy, and blamed each other for the killing, the New York Times reported.

A fourth man, Gary Timmins, is cooperating with prosecutors and has not been charged.

The three defendants face 20 years behind bars if convicted, the New York Daily News reported. No trial date has been set.

On tape, Fox said Fortunato lured Sandy, via a gay Web site, to a remote parking lot in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, where the trio attacked and attempted to rob him, the Times reported.

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>(Seattle, Washington) Within hours of Tuesday’s announcement that Seattle’s Out and Proud – the volunteer group that puts on the city’s annual gay pride parade and festival – was filing for bankruptcy and canceling this year’s event, the organization’s phones began ringing.

>The city’s gay community was rallying to the cause.  By the end of the night enough money had come in to pay off the group’s $102,000 debt from last year’s parade and save the organization from bankruptcy.

>“Due to overwhelming support …, we will move forward with our plans to produce the parade down 4th Avenue on Sunday, June 24, 2007″, the group said in a press release Wednesday, following another emergency meeting of Out and Proud’s board.

>But, the organization said it would not be putting a festival to go with the parade this year.

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Oregon state Representative Dennis Richardson certainly offered a mountful in his newsletter last week:

This past week has been like no other. On Monday the world witnessed the tragedy at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. On Tuesday Oregon witnessed the passage of Domestic Benefits for same-sex couples (HB 2007) and Civil Rights based on sexual orientation.

Whoa. Talk about apples and oranges. 32 lives lost and the opportunity for countless happy lives to be lived. Our words fail us right now, so we’ll let Loaded Orygun do the talking:

I could come up with any number of adjectives to describe this noxious juxtaposition–such as ignorant, hateful, paranoid, misinformed, calculating, neanderthal or just plain stupid–but let’s just stick with “pathetic”…

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Two members of a gay rights group were arrested at Cornerstone University after the group vowed it would come to the campus even though the university made it clear it wasn’t welcome.

>According to the Jerusalem Post, several fliers condemning the parade, which is scheduled to take place in Jerusalem in June, were found in a vineyard near a monestary, close to where the medium-sized bomb went off.

>The Post reports that a nearby tractor driver was lightly wounded in the blast. Jerusalem District head Cmdr. Ilan Franco ordered a special team to opened an investigation into the incident.

>The Pride Parade was originally scheduled to take place last summer, but was canceled several times.

>It was first pushed off to November due to the outbreak of the Second Lebanon War in July. Then, due to the overwhelming threat of violence from parade protesters, the event was reworked into a rally that was confined to the Hebrew University campus in Givat Ram.

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Bay Area doctors are leading a campaign to bring gay men into their offices for a basic exam that women have been enduring for decades — the Pap test.

The goal is to push back rising rates of anal cancer, a preventable disease that has increased 37 percent in the United States since a decade ago, when the total number of cancer cases increased only 1 percent.

Anal Pap smears would help doctors spot precancerous lesions and wipe them out before they have a chance to turn malignant, say supporters of widespread use of the exam among gay men. But nationwide, doctors have been reluctant to embrace the screening test, partly because there is disagreement over whether it’s effective or even necessary.

Dr. Joel Palefsky, director of the Anal Neoplasia Clinic at UCSF, encourages anal Pap tests for gay men and other groups at high risk of developing anal cancer.

“We haven’t proven it yet, but we believe that we are likely to be preventing anal cancer,” said Palefsky, who hopes this summer to publish results from a study on anal cancer prevention. “Our approach is to move forward on the assumption that we are preventing cancer and working in parallel to the kind of research studies that will convince everyone else.”

Anal cancer is one of the rarer and less deadly forms of cancer in the United States. In 2006, there were about 4,660 cases, and 660 deaths, accounting for less than 1 percent of all cancer cases, according to the American Cancer Society.

While rates of anal cancer are low in the general population — and more women than men get anal cancer every year — they’re disproportionately high among gay men and people who are HIV-positive or have other immune-suppressive conditions. Part of the explanation for increased cases of anal cancer is better reporting of the disease, but Bay Area doctors say it also could be tied to HIV rates.

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