Word: hiv
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...openly gay celebrities and gay public gatherings. Manila held Asia's first gay-pride parade in 1994; this year there were similar festivals in a dozen other Asian cities. "If nothing else, people aren't denying the existence of homosexuality anymore," says Jeffrey O'Malley, the director of the HIV group for the United Nations Development Program in New York City. "That's a huge difference from 20 years...
...Nepal, as in the rest of the world, the fight for gay rights is closely linked to the fight against HIV and AIDS. The deadly virus was initially tagged as a "gay disease" in the West, and its early victims struggled against a blatant and sometimes violent backlash. In Asia, homophobia took a different form: denial. For years, authorities asserted that HIV couldn't be a problem because homosexuality simply didn't exist. But by the late 1990s, it was obvious that HIV/AIDS posed a serious public-health threat that would only get worse if ignorance remained official policy...
...legal gray area. Section 377 of the Indian penal code, a law passed by the British colonial administration in 1860, criminalized sodomy and was still in effect, leaving gays vulnerable to the whims of local law enforcement. Police in Lucknow, a city in north India, arrested four HIV outreach workers in 2001 under Section 377 on charges including "conspiring to commit sodomy." The incident was alarming - but ultimately it served as the catalyst for a historic gay-rights ruling. The Naz Foundation filed a public-interest lawsuit on the arrested activists' behalf and after eight years of litigation, the Delhi...
...Center where they live rather than endure more hurt. The center was the first AIDS hospice in Vietnam. But since the introduction of lifesaving antiretroviral medications, few come there to die anymore. The sanctuary-like setting, run by the Roman Catholic Church, has become a home to HIV-positive orphans and those who have no where else to go. "I thought it would be a happy day for them," says Sister Bao, "but it turned out to be a day of sadness...
When classes opened across Vietnam on August 17, few students were as excited - or as nervous - as a group of 15 HIV-positive children who had finally been given permission to attend school. For the past two years, the Ho Chi Minh City orphanage where they live had been lobbying to enroll them in a public primary school. Now that the day had arrived, the children were so excited that many were up before the sun, already dressed in the new clothes the nuns had bought for the special occasion...