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By Jim Baxter
"Last year's Summit had more discussion of what the issues were," said Harold Levine, a New York-based consultant for SmithKline Beecham. " This year had more 'how-to,' more specifics." The focus on leadership training and organizing skills was in anticipation of the regional and local gay men's health gatherings planned for next year. "The rubber really hits the road on a local level," Levine said, "through physicians, community based health care organizations, clinics, AIDS service organizations." "People came together last week eager to do some local organizing, " said author and activist Eric Rofes. "Over the next year, Summit participants will blanket the nation with gay men's health projects like we went coast-to-coast with HIV prevention projects in the mid-1980s." Healthy People 2010 Healthy People 2010, the federal government's agenda on health and prevention objectives, received particular attention with a plenary session and several related workshops. Marty Rouse, Assistant to Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala, said the main reason he came to the Summit was to explain the Health People 2010. "The document comes out every ten years as a health prevention plan for America, and this is the first time added sexual orientation has been added to the list." "Being included in this document means that federal and local governments must address our health concerns and alleviate health disparities based upon sexual orientation, said Randall Sell, Assistant Professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health.
"Furthermore, the inclusion of sexual orientation alone without a question about sexual practices misses the point when we know tens of thousands of homosexually active people -- particularly young Blacks and Latinos -- don't identify as gay." Rouse defended the document, saying "This is a long, long process. I've already traveled to 25 cities, I came to the Gay Men's Health Summit, and because of that, the community is more aware of this document than any other community. We've done that because the Secretary understands this is a new area, and people weren't ready for it." "It's easy to point the finger at Bill Clinton or Donna Shalala or their gay representatives at the Summit," said Rofes. "But it's much harder to face the facts about gay men's own pathetic health organizing of the past decade and admit that--while it's so important that we've built an infrastructure and lobbying groups to fight HIV--we're tragically unfocused, under-resourced, and unprepared to tackle other health challenges at the federal level. "If Healthy People 2010 is not the document we want it to be, it's because we have not created the multi-issue, multi-cultural gay men's health movement to force the feds to include gay men of all colors in a central way," he said. Focusing on Specifics "The Gay Men's Summit is very valuable," said longtime AIDS researcher Vickie Mays, a psychology professor at the University of California, "because it allows you to become very focused on what the issues are for gay men and to move forward on a gay men's health agenda. I was quite excited by the work that was being done on developing a black gay male health agenda." A special all-day intensive for men of color was organized at the Summit by members of MOCHA (Men of Color in HIV/AIDS) 2000, a gay men of color project in Chicago, funded by the Office of Minority Health. Rashad Burgess, director of MOCHA, said "We did a session around building leadership in gay men of color communities, one on substance use and models of addiction, and one on gay youth."
Reaching Across Boundaries There was a strong emphasis at this year's Summit on talking across boundaries--between generations, between races, between gay men and lesbians. "There's been a tendency to position the gay health discussion as the AIDS dinosaurs vs. the new, holistic thinkers on gay health," said Daniel Wolfe, author of Men Like Us: The GMHC Complete Guide to Gay Men's Sexual, Physical and Emotional Well Being. " For lots of us, this summit was powerful precisely because it moved beyond ideological posturing to let us talk about a new vision of gay health, to draw on lessons of the women's movement, or the pre-AIDS health movement, as well as the history of HIV organizing." Wolfe facilitated several workshops, including Never Forget: Memory, Gay Cultures and the Generation Gap and Homespun Health: Reports From The Front As It Was Back Then. Shane Snowdon, LGBT Resources Coordinator at the University of California, San Francisco, who helped facilitate What is Our Relationship to the Women's Health Movement and What Should it Be? "It was a pleasure to talk with a group of men so respectful of the women's movement and its accomplishments," she said. "As I mentioned in the workshop, I heard more praise for the feminist health movement at Boulder than I have at women's meetings, where all too often we focus on how much remains to be done and where we've gone astray." Other workshop topics included holistic approaches to health care, substance use and party culture, gay life and health over 40 and under 30, suicide and eating disorders among gay men, cybersex and its impact on real-life sex, and issues among gay people in rural areas. "It was amazing to watch the five days unfold," Rofes said. "Now the hard work of linking local communities and getting them to expand health work with gay men beyond HIV/AIDS begins. I'm convinced people left Boulder ready to galvanize activism and program-development work in their local communities." A national Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Health Summit was discussed for 2003. Jim Baxter is editor and publisher of The Front Page, a lesbian and gay newspaper serving North Carolina since 1979. |
Boulder, Colorado--Health providers, activists, and others gathered July 19-23
for the second Gay Men's Health Summit. Over 400 individuals--including two
dozen women--came from 37 states and a handful of countries to participate
in over 100 workshops and programs.
Eric Rofes 
© 1997-2000 BEI