The first three Gay Men’s Health Summits, convened by visionary writer and educator Eric Rofes in 1999, 2000, and 2002 in Boulder, Colorado, were hugely inspiring events that launched a grass-roots, community-based movement devoted to gay men’s health issues including but not limited to HIV/AIDS. There have been a few other summits since then, but after Eric’s unexpected death from a heart attack in 2006, I didn’t go. This year I heard at a very late date that there was another summit at George Washington University in Washington, DC, scheduled to coincide with the International AIDS Conference, so I thought I’d check in. This conference was thinly attended, haphazardly organized with mediocre (at best) programming — a mere shadow of former summits. Nevertheless, I tuned in to some of the conversations going on about PREP (the pre-exposure prophylaxis for HIV treatment just approved by the FDA) and met some nice folks from around the country.
Dave works in intelligence at the Pentagon and Brian is a grad student in psychology
David runs the Montana Gay Men’s Task Force and Hawk is an activist primarily with sex workers in North Carolina and NYC
The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence were a presence in DC, here represented by Sister Eden Ass (aka Brad Vanderbilt), moderating a session on peer-based community health promotion
as usual, Seattle was a strong presence at the summit — Todd Hull attended with a posse from Lifelong AIDS Alliance, including Jennifer Hatlo
I met trans activist Jeffrey Johnston, who works for the federal government as a public health analyst
Sister Glo applied elaborate makeup to lead a session on healing shame and unveiling joy
after the conference, I had dinner at Indique with my dear old friend Joe Martin, who had just attended the wedding of his former boss, Barney Frank
then I went back to spend the night in my dorm room at Thurston Hall
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