Recently, I took a li’l trip back home to Texas and a very dear family friend of mine asked me, “Are you being safe?” Without hesitation I responded, “Of course I am. I mean, L.A. isn’t that dangerous.” “No, I mean sexually,” she replied. “Are you being sexually safe?” She went on to say, “Young people today seem to act like the HIV/AIDS epidemic that happened when I was growing up never existed. What they fail to realize is that it’s going on right now, all around them… us, just in a different capacity.”

This got me thinking. I got online, did some general searching and found some very sobering statistics. According to until.org, half of all new infections each year occur in people 25 years of age or younger. 70 percent of these new infections occur in men.

It seems that despite the continuing impact of HIV/AIDS worldwide and particularly among the gay community, awareness is waning among young people, including gay men.

The CDC released current HIV/AIDS statistics fall of 2005 on studies from the years 2001-2005. Expect updated information and new studies to be released November 2007.

Do you know your status?

The sudden media firestorm around Idaho Senator Larry Craig's arrest for lewd conduct is spinning off some pretty interesting stories - ones that will probably leave a generation of parents hesitant to take their kids into public restrooms across the country, and those that are equally infuriating that local police seemingly have nothing better to do.

365gay.com picks up an AP story that reveals that, including Craig, Minneapolis police officers have made 41 arrests for lewd conduct in the same airport in four months. They have even responded to Craigslist ads posted by travelers passing through:

The 40 others caught up in the sting, according to the police reports, included airport and airline employees, an account executive with Revlon, an IT consultant for Ernst & Young, a 3M executive and a Lands End employee.

In an incident June 25, [Officer] Karsnia arrested three men at once.

He wrote in his report that he was waiting for two suspects to come out of their stalls to be arrested. Then a third suspect near urinals exposed himself to the officer with a smile.

(Karsnia, who is the same officer who arrested Craig, must be one hot ticket.)

ABC News comes out with a story seemingly aimed straight at the unassuming mothers of America that details gay men's cruising habits. It takes a jab, though, at Senator Craig, in its insistence that cruisers are deeply closeted, unhappy gay men:

With many other options available for gay men to meet each other, Gershen Kaufman, a professor emeritus of psychology at Michigan State University and author of the book "Coming Out of Shame," said public cruising is practiced mainly by deeply closeted men.

"Cruisers are not sex offenders. They are deeply, deeply closeted. There is a lot of self-hatred and shame and they can't allow themselves to come to terms with their sexuality. There is also the added element of danger and being discovered," he said.

Also, Towleroad digs up an interesting story on Time.com that reports on a big bust of nefarious homoseks'ul activity in Idaho -- from 1955.

Beijing police announced today a new initiative designed to remind visitors to Chinese web sites that the government is monitoring their activity. The Chinese government closely watches domestic Web content and usage (certain LGBT content, HIV/AIDS-related content, and gay porn has all been labeled "illegal" in the past). This campaign will pop up on all Beijing-registered Web sites by the end of the year.

It's something the Chinese government has been doing for a while, but Beijing gone so far as to design cute "virtual" police officers that will pop up on computer screens from time to time as reminders that the government is watching. Who knew big brother would look like an Asian anime character?

365gay.com reported last year on the Chinese government's closing of several popular gay message boards, which had threads regarding coming out and HIV education.

The initiative has the cooperation of two of China's biggest Web portals, Sohu and Sina. Not surprising, since the last thing you want to do when you're living in China is f with the government. Also, an interesting factiod: in two years, China will surpass the US as the country with the most Internet users.

The L.A. Times reports today that a notorious club drug, ketamine (also called "special K"), has been shown to effectively treat otherwise medication-resistant depressed people. Dr. Carlos Zarate at the National Institute of Mental health, published the study in the Archives of General Psychiatry:

In a small experiment led by Zarate last year, five of 18 people who received a single intravenous dose of ketamine experienced a dramatic lifting of their depression the first day and were still much better a week later. All patients in the experiment had first tried regular antidepressants but did not improve on them.

The drug affects an entirely different neurotransmitter than most other antidepressant drugs, and this study may lead to more effective antidepressants in the future. There's just one problem:

Ketamine can cause hallucinations and confusion and is sometimes abused as a club drug. In fact, he said, all patients who received the drug in his study reported out-of-body hallucinations.

We suppose whether that's a problem depends on the individual...

(via WOW Report)

A 71-year-old man who has been fighting for over two years to gain rights to his deceased partner's pension plan has finally won, in a case that sets precedent for 5,500 union workers in northen California.

Marvin Burrows had been with his partner Bill Swenor for 51 years until Swenor's death in 2005. (Yes, you read that right -- 51 years.) Swenor was a longshoreman, and his union, International Longshore and Warehouse Union, refused to grant Burrows domestic partner benefits for the pension. As a result, Burrows lost his house, and had to depelete his bank account after a surgery.

The union finally came around last week. Sounds like it could be the most macho labor union possible from its name, but they issued a touching statement:

"Our union's motto is, `An injury to one is an injury to all,' and we definitely feel that applies in this case."

The National Center for Lesbian Rights was responsible for advocating Burrows' case over the past two years.

(The image of Burrows on this page is a screen capture from a poignant video about Burrows and Swenor's relationship produced by the National Sexuality Research Center at San Francisco State University. It can be viewed in its entirety here.)