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Lindsey Graham: "This Will Upset Many Gay Men, But I Ain't Gay"

Ben Smith at Politico points to the New York Times Magazine profile of Sen. Lindsey Graham and the South Carolina Republican addresses those persistent rumors ...

"His greater transgression, however, has been his willingness — even eagerness — to seek common ground with Democrats. For his sins, Glenn Beck termed the senator Obama Lite, while Rush Limbaugh labeled him Lindsey Grahamnesty. Less tame are the blogosphere monikers, like 'Miss Lindsey,'  that play off of Graham’s never-married status. During a South Carolina Tea Party rally this spring, one speaker created an uproar by postulating that Graham supported a guest-worker program out of fear that the Democrats might otherwise expose his homosexuality. Graham smirked when I brought this up. 'Like maybe I’m having a clandestine affair with Ricky Martin,' he said. 'I know it’s really gonna upset a lot of gay men — I’m sure hundreds of ’em are gonna be jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge — but I ain’t available. I ain’t gay. Sorry.'"

If you say so, hon.

Anti-Gay Black Republican Tim Scott Wins SC Congressional Primary

The Republican Party is poised to elect its first black Republican congressman from South Carolina in a century. State Rep. Tim Scott handily won yesterday's runoff election in the Palmetto State's First Congressional District.

Scott, also a state lawmaker, hoped to become South Carolina's first black GOP congressman in more than a century. He beat Paul Thurmond, the son of the late U.S. Sen. and former segregationist Strom Thurmond in the runoff after securing the backing of several Republican leaders in Washington. With 83 percent of precincts counted, he led with 69 percent of the vote to 31 percent for Thurmond. The GOP-leaning district stretches down the Carolina coast and includes Fort Sumter where the first shots of the Civil War were fired. If elected to the House, Scott would be the GOP's first black lawmaker since Oklahoma's J.C. Watts retired in 2003.

The Sarah Palin- and Mike Huckabee-endorsed Tea Party conservative is stridently anti-gay. On the candidate's website, Scott boasts: 'Tim Scott believes in the sanctity of traditional marriage between a man and a woman and opposes gay marriage." The candidate opposes the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Tim Scott also supported the GOP-dominated state legislature's proposal to slash the state's entire HIV/AIDS budget, including funding to the critical AIDS Drug Assistance Program. South Carolina has the 8th highest HIV rate in the nation. New seroconversions in the Carolinas are disproportionately black and young black gay/bisexual men. With friends these ...

"Scott will face Democrat Ben Frasier, who also is black, in November, and is strongly favored to win," adds WCSC. "The district is 72 percent white and has sent a Republican to Congress for three decades."

In related news: State Rep. Nikki Haley, an Indian-American woman, easily won the Republican nomination for governor. If elected, Haley would become the state's first female governor

Watch a news report AFTER THE JUMP ...

Anti-Gay Black Republican Tim Scott Poised to Win SC-01 Primary

The Republican Party is poised to nominate and elect its first black Republican congressman from South Carolina in a century. State Rep. Tim Scott is the Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee-endorsed, black, anti-gay Tea Party conservative. Scott is the only black Republican expected to win this cycle and just "one of two or three given any chance at all," reports the Washington Post.

After placing first in the primary two weeks ago, Scott faces a runoff with Paul Thurmond in today's GOP House primary runoff. Thurmond is a member of the Charleston County Council and son of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, who infamously ran for president in 1948 on the segregationist "Dixiecrat" ticket. After his death, it was discovered that at age 22 he fathered a child with his family's black maid.

The national GOP—hoping to elect its first black congressman since J.C. Watts (Okla.) left office in 2003—has thrown its support (and cash) behind Thurmond's opponent, state legislator Tim Scott. "Tim Scott deeply believes in what makes America and certainly South Carolina great -- faith, family and freedom," said former Arkansas governor and presidential contender Mike Huckabee, who on Friday became the latest national figure to throw his support behind Scott. Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin jumped in the next day. And although the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) is officially neutral in the race, two of its top leaders have given money to Scott's campaign.

On the candidate's website, Scott boasts: 'Tim Scott believes in the sanctity of traditional marriage between a man and a woman and opposes gay marriage." The candidate also opposes repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

Tim Scott also supported the GOP-dominated state legislature's proposal to slash the state's entire HIV/AIDS budget, including funding to the critical AIDS Drug Assistance Program. Columbia, SC has the 9th highest HIV rate in the nation. New seroconversions in the Carolinas are disproportionately young black gay and bisexual men. More at our pieces for Black AIDS Weekly, "Recession Forces States to Slash ADAP" and "New Data Reveal HIV Hammering Black Gay and Bisexual Men."

FBI Considers Hate Crime Charge in Brutal Marine Gay Bashing

An update to the brutal weekend gay-bashing in Savannah allegedly at the hands of two Marines. Cpl. Keil Joseph Cronauer, 22, and Lance Cpl. Christopher Charles Stanzel, 23, claim the 26-year-old gay man made "unwanted verbal advances" and say they felt "threatened." The two have been restricted to MCAS Beaufort in nearby South Carolina during the investigation.

Georgia LGBT activists are outraged the soldiers are not facing felonies after beating the 26-year-old gay man unconscious, reports GA Voice.

"The two Marines arrested and charged in the beating over the weekend face misdemeanor charges. 'I’m very concerned this happened in the first place. But these misdemeanor charges are outrageous,' [Georgia Equality Executive Director Jeff] Graham added. 'And then to turn [the Marines] over to the military police is a miscarriage of justice.' A vigil for the victim, 26-year-old Kieran Daly, is being planned for Sunday at 2 p.m. at Johnson Square in Savannah, said Kevin Clark, board member for Georgia Equality in Savannah."

Georgia is only one of five states without a hate crimes law. The Federal Bureau of Investigation office in Atlanta is exploring the possibility of charging the Marines under the new federal hate crime statute, reports the Marine Corps Times.

"FBI spokesman Steve Emmett in Atlanta said Monday the agency and federal prosecutors were looking into whether the weekend attack on 26-year-old Kieran Daly meets requirements for hate crime charges by the Justice Department. He declined to comment further. ... A spokesman for Marine Air Corps Station Beaufort said the two Marines have received death threats online from people angered by the case. He urged people not to jump to conclusions. 'There are two sides to every story and right now the only side getting told is the alleged victim’s,' said Gunnery Sgt. Chad McMeen. 'People have looked them up on Facebook and they’re now giving them death threats, for what may have been a simple bar fight.'"

The "simple fight" of two Marines against one civilian lead to Kieran Daly suffering bruising to the brain and two seizures immediately after the attack. Daly remains hospitalized and denies coming onto the soldiers. "I was just standing here eating my pizza," said Daly. "The only thing I said to him, it was in a really relaxed tone was, 'No. I'm not winking at you.'"

REPORT: AIDS Drug Funding Threatened by Tea Party Activists

More on a story we've been following at Rod 2.0. The recession has forced a number of states to slash funding to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program, helps low-income HIV positive persons pay for their expensive, life-saving medications. Those in the program are disproportionately black, many of the men are gay or bisexual.

To complicate matters: A number of congressional Democrats and Republicans who have long supported ADAP are reluctant to re-authorize funding because they fear Tea Party activists will target their re-election bids over the spending, reports the Washington Blade.

William Arnold, executive director of the National ADAP Working Group, said intense pressure on members of Congress to curtail spending by the so-called Tea Party movement has made it difficult to line up support for an emergency supplemental appropriation measure. Arnold and officials with other national AIDS and LGBT organizations say the program is facing a crisis never seen before, where a growing number of low income people with HIV or AIDS may be denied life-saving anti-retroviral drugs in at least 11 states this year because state ADAP affiliates have run out of money. ...

Advocacy groups familiar with the program say an emergency appropriation of at least $126 million is needed this year to provide AIDS drugs for all that need them. But they say the Obama administration and Democratic leaders in Congress have yet to make a commitment to back such an appropriations measure. ...Some Capitol Hill insiders have said the reluctance by lawmakers to back spending measures appears to have stopped a supplemental appropriations bill normally approved each year to pay for federal disaster relief efforts. AIDS activists were hoping a supportive committee member would seek to add the ADAP emergency appropriation to this bill. ... Moderate and conservative Blue Dog Democrats were among those reluctant to back the bill, said people familiar with the measure.

The Tea Party movement is against all federal spending, even if it saves lives? Or against funding medications for people who are HIV positive and largely low-income, black, gay or all of the above?

Read the full story at the Washington Blade ...

South Carolina's  GOP-dominated legislature has proposed slashing the entire HIV/AIDS budget, including funding to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program. Columbia has the 9th highest HIV rate in the nation. New infections are disproportionately young black gay and bisexual men. More at our piece for Black AIDS Weekly, "Recession Forces States to Slash ADAP".

Columbia SC Elects Steve Benjamin, First Black Mayor and LGBT Ally

For the first time in the history of South Carolina’s capital city, voters in Columbia selected a black mayor on Tuesday. Mayor-Elect Steve Benjamin was overwhelmingly elected and aggressively courted the LGBT vote, South Carlolina LGBT activists tell Rod 2.0.

Benjamin received 10,784 votes (56 percent) in a runoff, beating city Councilman Kirkman Finlay III, who got 8,558 votes (44 percent) with just a few precincts remaining, according to the Richland County Election Commission’s website. Benjamin won the initial election two weeks ago by about 1,000 votes, but fell well short of the majority needed to avoid a runoff. It’s the first major political win for Benjamin, a 40-year-old father of 5- and 2-year-old girls considered a rising star in Democratic politics in South Carolina. He spent three years running the South Carolina Department of Probation, Pardon and Parole, leaving the agency for an unsuccessful run for attorney general in 2002. Benjamin defeated a familiar name in Columbia politics. Finlay is the son of former Columbia Mayor Kirkman Finlay Jr., who served from 1978 to 1986. Benjamin replaces Mayor Bob Coble, who decided to step down after two decades in office.

And problems already for the mayor-elect. Only hours after his election, Benjamin was involved in a car crash on while on his way to an early morning television interview. The new mayor was not harmed but the driver is said to be in serious condition.

Early on, the candidate began courting LGBT voters, South Carolina activists tell Rod 2.0 Benjamin's gay fundraisers were prominently highlighted on his campaign webpage and he went out of his way to address LGBT issues and events. Columbia's Pink Party reportedly raised about $16,500 for the campaign.

Columbia-based Alvin McEwen blogs at Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters and is one of the state's leading black gay activists. "Steve made a huge outreach to Columbia's LGBT community including speaking at the community center," Alvin tells Rod 2.0. "The lgbt community held several fundraisers for him. It's not far-fetched to Say that the community played an huge role in his victory."

"It could have also cost him votes from his religious base," another South Carolina tells R20. "My hat's off to him."

In related news: Columbia continues to grapple with an HIV/AIDS funding crisis.  The GOP-dominated legislature has proposed cut the entire AIDS budget, including funding to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program. Columbia has the 9th highest HIV rate in the nation. New infections are disproportionately young black gay and bisexual men. More at our last piece for Black AIDS Weekly, "Recession Forces States to Slash ADAP".

UPDATE: AIDS Funding Cuts Feared in South Carolina Counties

More on a story we've been following at Rod 2.0. The Republican dominated legislature in South Carolina has proposed to cut its entire HIV/AIDS budget, including funding to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program. ADAP helps low-income HIVers, many of whom are who are unemployed or uninsured, pay for their medications. Those in the program are disproportionately black, many of the men are gay or bisexual.

The agency that administers South Carolina's ADAP is concerned about the availability of life-saving medications in critical counties, reports The Times and Democrat.

The Edisto Health District, which serves Orangeburg, Calhoun and Bamberg counties, has one of the highest rates in the state of people infected with HIV/AIDS. With state appropriations to the AIDS Drug Assistance Program facing an estimated $4.1 million shortfall, many local health and community leaders are concerned about the availability of critical medications for those living with HIV/AIDS. S.C. HIV Care Crisis Task Force reports that the annual funding need based on current patient load is $25.2 million for medications, with the current ADAP budget standing at only $21.1 million. 

The South Carolina HIV/AIDS Care Crisis Task Force reports that there are 1,163 individuals living with HIV/AIDS in the District. Eighty-five percent of that population is black. ADAP serves 233 people in that district. "I received ADAP funding assistance back in 1991, but back then, it was easier to get into the program than it is now," one man said. "It was a good thing, because I really couldn't afford my medication. The job insurance wouldn't cover it because of the price tag, and my concern now is how the younger generation who are being diagnosed HIV-positive are going to survive if they can't get the medication that they need."

The good news: While the proposed budget provides no state-based funding, ADAP will continue to run on $2.2 million from the federal government via Medicaid. But that means it will serve only a fraction of its caseload.

Meanwhile: More than 700 people are newly diagnosed with HIV each year, and more than 100 new ADAP applications arrive each month. And in South Carolina, just like many states across the South, that means black gay and bi men  will be hardest hit.  According to the Department of Health and Environmental Control, black men account for about half of persons recently diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in South Carolina. The vast majority, some 70 percent of those cases, are "attributed to sexual contact among men who have sex with men (MSM)."

Our latest article for Black AIDS Weekly, "Recession Forces States to Slash AIDS Drug Assistance Programs", surveys then nationwide trend toward cutting ADAP funding. HIV positive black gay men discuss what their life would be like without ADAP. Read the full article HERE.

Gay Obsessed Virginia AG Cuccinelli to Sue Over Health Care Reform

More on a story we first reported Friday. Gay-obsessed, far right wing Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli will file suit against the federal government claiming that the health-care reform legislation is unconstitutional, reports the Times Dispatch.

Cuccinelli is expected to argue that the bill, with its mandate that requires nearly every American to be insured by 2014, violates the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. The attorney general's office will file suit once President Barack Obama signs the bill into law, which could occur early this week."At no time in our history has the government mandated its citizens buy a good or service," Cuccinelli said in a statement last night.

Word of the impending legal action came as the U.S. House debated late into the evening and passed the landmark reform legislation, 219-212. The votes of the House delegation from Virginia mirrored those cast when Obama's health-reform package first came up for a vote in November. Four of Virginia's six Democratic congressmen supported the $940 billion bill: Rep. Robert C. Scott, D-3rd, Rep. Tom Perriello, D-5th, Rep. Gerald E. Connolly, D-11th, and Rep. James P. Moran, D-8th.

Cuccinelli's action is the first of an aggressive, multi-prong strategy by Republicans to nullify health care reform, adds the New York Times. "Republicans said they would seek to repeal the measure, challenge its constitutionality and coordinate efforts in statehouses to block its implementation. ... Attorneys general in three states—Virginia, Florida and South Carolina—have indicated they will file legal challenges to the measure, arguing that its requirement that individuals buy insurance is a violation of the Constitution."

In somewhat unrelated news: Cuccinelli said in a television news interview that "homosexual acts" are harmful to society. Keep it classy, Ken.

There is an LGBT protest of Virginia AG Cuccinelli on Tuesday at George Mason University School of Law at 4P. Facebook info HERE.

WATCH: Hundreds Rally to Save AIDS Funding in South Carolina

More on a story that we've been following at Rod 2.0": On Saturday, hundreds rallied against massive proposed cuts in HIV/AIDS funding at the South Carolina State Capitol in Columbia. The Republican dominated legislature in South Carolina, which boasts the nation's 8th highest HIV rate, voted to cut all HIV/AIDS funding from the budget.

Watch video of the rally and WIS-TV's report AFTER THE JUMP...

The budget for the 2010-11 fiscal year, which starts July 1, eliminates all HIV/AIDS funding including money for the AIDS Drug Assistance Program (ADAP), which provides life-saving HIV/AIDS drugs to the state's low-income, uninsured and under-insured residents. The cut would mean the 2,055 people enrolled in ADAP would no longer get help in paying for their expensive, life-saving anti-retrovirals. South Carolina's ADAP recipients are overwhelming black.

New data shows HIV infection rates are rising in the Carolinas, especially in Charlotte and Columbia, which has the 9th highest HIV rate in the nation. New infections are disproportionately young black gay and bisexual men, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

 

Our latest article for Black AIDS Weekly, "Recession Forces States to Slash AIDS Drug Assistance Programs", surveys then nationwide trend toward cutting ADAP funding. HIV positive black gay men discuss what their life would be like without ADAP. Read the full article HERE.

Watch video of the rally and WIS-TV's report AFTER THE JUMP...

Mississippi Dept Corrections Ends Segregation of HIV Poz Prisoners

The Mississippi Department of Corrections will end its much-criticized 23-year-old policy of keeping male HIV-positive inmates in segregated units, reports the Clarion-Ledger.

Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps said, starting in May, male HIV-positive inmates will be allowed into general prison population - a move prison reform advocates applauded Wednesday. The decision leaves just Alabama and South Carolina as the only states that keep such inmates separate. Epps said he plans to gradually implement the policy while moving 152 prisoners housed at the State Penitentiary at Parchman to prisons throughout the system. The ACLU brought suit against the state in 1990 on behalf of HIV-positive prisoners at Parchman to force the state to provide proper medical care. In 2005, U.S. District Judge Jerry Davis ruled MDOC had addressed problems with prisoner conditions, bringing the suit to an end.

Since 1987, MDOC has performed mandatory HIV tests on all prisoners entering the state penal system. HIV positive inmates have been housed in a segregated unit at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, the state’s highest security prison. The change means poz prisoners will be able to participate in job training and other programs, in addition to avoiding public disclosure of their HIV status.

The Centers for Disease Control recently reported an "alarming" number of HIV seroconversions among young black men—especially younger black gay and bisexual men—in Mississippi.

In related news: California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has cut $9.5 million from the budget for HIV positive prisoner medications. That's in addition to $85 million gutted from other HIV/AIDS services. More in our report in Black AIDS Weekly ...

Some Background:
CDC: "Alarming" HIV Rates Among Young Black Gay Men in MS