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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (July 7, 2006)
JULY 7, 2006 JUStjOUt 19 Big City Produce Local Folks, Local Produce the regulation, writing: “There is no correlation between the health, welfare and safety of foster children and the blanket exclusion of any indi vidual who is a homosexual or who resides in a household with a homo sexual.... The driving force behind adoption ot the regulation was not to promote the health, safety and welfare of foster children, but rather [to prom ulgate] the board’s view of morality and its bias against homosexuals." Arkansas’s Child Welfare Agency Review Board established a policy in 1999 that ‘‘no person may serve as a foster parent if any adult member of that person's household is a homo Gay-focused ads, like these from Diesel, are OK U.S. citizens. to make a drug from a new class, called integrase inhibitors, available later this summer. “Taken together, the approval of Prezista combined with access to recently approved and soon-to-be-available new drugs marks a major step forward for people with advanced disease. The result should he that very tew people will he 'out of options’ any longer," said Brenda Lein, a veteran AIDS treatment activist. ii — Activist and Teacher Mourned Eric Rotes, a-leader, activist, visionary and former board member of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, died ot an apparent heart attack June 26. He was 51. Rofes started his activism in the 1970s in Boston, where he worked at Guy ('mnmwnity News. He was a founder of Boston’s first group tor queer teachers, two of the first queer youth groups in the country and the first Boston-based group focused on organizing queer voters, Boston Lesbian and Gay Political Alliance. From October 1985 to April 1988, Rofes served as executive director of the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Community Services Center, the largest queer nonprofit organization in the world. The center initiated some of the nation’s first HIV prevention programs, created a shelter for queer and homeless youth and opened the first and largest HIV testing site in California. Rofes led the organizing of three national summits focused on the health and wellness of gay male communities, including the most recent summit in October 2005 in Salt Lake City. From 1999 to the time of his death, he was an associate professor of education at Humboldt State University in Arcata, Calif. ARKAN State Supreme Court Rejects Foster Parent Ban In a unanimous decision handed down June 29, the Arkansas Supreme Court struck down a regula tion that banned gay and lesbian people from serv ing as foster parents. The decision ends a seven-year legal battle by the American Civil Liberties Union. Pointing to the findings of a lower court that overturned the han, the court criticized the Child Welfare Agency Review Board’s reasons for enacting sexual." That same year, the ACLU filed a lawsuit challenging the policy on behalf of a lesbian from Fayetteville, with most a gay couple from Little Rock and a heterosexual man from Waldron whose gay son sometimes lives at home. All of them want to serve as foster parents hut are automatically disqualified from doing so by the ban. “There is already a rigorous, individualized screening procedure in place that ensures that only those who can provide a safe, stable, healthy hotjie are approved as foster parents,” said attorney Leslie Cooper, who argued the case before the court. "Today’s ruling means that gay people will go through the same screening process as any other applicants, rather than he automatically rejected no matter how qualified they are." 10°5 winner Susto’nab'e System Little Store . . . Big on Diversity. 722 N. Sumner (af N. 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Those whom the test shows will progress to AIDS rapidly may elect to treat the infection more aggressively than those who are more naturally resistant to the disease. The test works by measuring the density of a certain type of receptor, known as CCR5, which is ¿ie primary HIV receptor in T cells. People carry varying amounts of these receptors depending on their genetic makeup. The fewer receptors people have, the more likely they are to have a slow progression to AIDS. “We believe the CCR5 Halotype Test is one of the most important things an individual with HIV can do to help in their treatment,” says Jack Keehma, CEO of Independent Forensics. Karl Reich chief scientific officer of Independent Forensics, adds: “The development of the CCR5 Halotype Test really puts us on the shoulders of giants. 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