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LGBT Issues
Do you have or would you install a written policy in your office regarding sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination?
Yes. I would strictly prohibit such discrimination and would proactively insist that my staff treat all constituents with respect. I also anticipate that my staff would reflect the diversity of the district.
What is your position on the implementation of HIV names reporting (which involves tracking HIV cases by name rather than alpha-numeric code)?
Reporting names is troubling for two primary reasons: A person’s privacy cannot be violated if another person views a code but confidentiality can be breached if a name is reported. The consequences of disclosure could be devastating.
Second, a person who is thinking about whether or not to get tested may be influenced by the sense of security that coding provides. If reporting by name deters someone from getting tested, it’s a policy that needs to be reconsidered because earlier testing and earlier treatment add up to better and healthier lives.
The AIDS Confidentiality Act, amended this summer (Public Act 095-0007), includes language that may work to circumvent anonymity: “Nothing in this Act shall prohibit a health care provider from combining a form used to obtain informed consent for HIV testing with forms used to obtain written consent for general medical care or any other medical test or procedure provided that the forms make it clear that the subject may consent to general medical care, tests, or medical procedures without being required to consent to HIV testing and clearly explain how the subject may opt-out of HIV testing.”
If nothing prohibits the combination of forms, then there’s nothing to prevent the identity of the individual and their test results from being connected. Once information and identity meet, private information is potentially knowable by a third party.
What is your position regarding funding for HIV/AIDS treatment and education? Also, do you favor mandatory Medicaid coverage of those with the disease?
The evidence from health policy research and practice couldn’t be clearer: preventative health care and health education saves lives and saves money. Yet the state budget for 2008 cut $500,000 for HIV testing and even modest amounts for prevention services and housing support. Federal funds that assist low-income individuals have not kept pace. These funds, including those for transitional programs for the incarcerated, need to be restored, if not increased.
I would not support mandatory Medicaid coverage if it means that a person with HIV/AIDS would be required to enroll in Medicaid by virtue of his or her disease. But, if it means that the state would be mandated to provide Medicaid coverage to any individual with HIV/AIDS who chooses to enroll in the state’s program and is eligible by virtue of the HIV/AIDS, I would support such a measure.
If applicable, have you taken any steps to further HIV/AIDS treatment and education programs? If so, what are those measures?
No formal policy or political action, though I worked as a research analyst for a teen reproductive health initiative in the Woodlawn and Englewood neighborhoods. The primary focus was pregnancy and STD prevention, which included HIV/AIDS education as part of the overall program.
What is your position regarding comprehensive sexual education?
100% supportive.
The impact of the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic is hardest on racial minorities. How do you propose addressing those populations?
A number of factors contribute to this disturbing trend of disproportionate impact, including the high incarceration rate in minority populations, lack of public awareness, cultural stigmatization, and sex "on the down low."
I favor expanded investment in AIDS/HIV programs in communities of color, including increased outreach and HIV/AIDS testing, and perhaps more culturally specific information about the risks of HIV transmission. We also need to take a hard policy analysis look, rather than a judgmental one, at expanding needle-exchange programs and the distribution of condoms in correctional facilities.
What is your position regarding the treatment of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered) inmates in prisons and juvenile detention centers? What proposals can you offer to help rectify the problem?
Our gender-segregated incarceration facilities magnify and distort some of the worst aspects of our culture, placing LGBT arrestees and inmates in extreme isolation or at risk for abuse, assault, rape, STDs and HIV/AIDS. Part of the solution involves improving the correctional system overall, including greater screening and training for corrections officers and personnel.
The Illinois corrections agencies and all local governments need to prohibit all forms of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in correctional facilities and prominently post such prohibition.
A system for reporting all allegations and accounts of abuse needs to exist in every facility. Incidents must be promptly and impartially investigated and statistical data recorded. Persons found to be responsible for abuse, whether in whole or part and whether against inmates or staff should be disciplined and brought to justice. We should also study how current methods of gender sorting, or the birth certificate standard, impact the incarcerated and how alternatives might produce more civilized conditions.
Have you started or would you start sensitivity training for your staff members regarding LGBT issues? Yes.
Do you favor same-sex marriages? Yes.
Do you favor civil unions?
As the lesser option to marriage, perhaps, but it is not my preference. Civil unions provide some of the protections and benefits of marriage but it also creates a separate class and is therefore discriminatory.
Do you favor hate-crimes legislation that increases penalties for crimes based on the sexual orientation or gender identity of the person attacked?
We know that blacks, males and people with less education are more likely to get a longer sentence than other offenders. Similarly, people who murder gays or minorities are likely to receive shorter sentences than people who murder whites.
Hateful action should be penalized, regardless of the identity of the victim, but when the identity of the victim is the primary, causal factor for being targeted and when such a targeted crime is also intended to terrorize a specific community, increased penalties are warranted.
What is your stance regarding legislation related to the curbing of the use of methamphetamines? If applicable, what is your record concerning this issue?
Policies that stem or stop methamphetamine use is smart public health policy. Research suggests that sexual behavior under the influence of methamphetamine is more likely to be reckless and result in the transmission of HIV and other STDs. In fact, some research indicates that meth users are 5-6 times more likely to have unprotected sex.
The risk of unprotected sex may be compounded among methamphetamine users because one of the drug’s effects is to prevent orgasm. Prolonged sexual activity can cause abrasions and tears. This dermal breach, combined with the failure to use a condom and follow other safe sex practices, means the rate of HIV transmission among meth users is likely higher. Reduce the use of methamphetamines and reduce the transmission of HIV.
Methamphetamine “use,” though, is a misnomer. We need to think about it in terms of addiction. It doesn’t make it any less of a public health issue but it does humanize the difficulties that users face.
Addiction, whether to meth or to alcohol or something else, often masks undiagnosed or untreated depression. Independently and certainly together, depression and addiction rob individuals of their potential and sometimes even their lives. This is why I am a strong proponent for improved community mental health services and for all efforts to normalize and de-stigmatize our needs for mental health treatment.
Do you believe that LGBT individuals should become foster parents?
Only if they want to.
Do you believe that LGBT individuals have the right to adopt children?
Yes.
Are any members of your current staff openly LGBT?
Yes, and many of my campaign’s volunteers.
Please list any and all experience you have regarding LGBT-related issues.
LGBT-related issues are interwoven into the everyday life with my family and friends. They aren’t separate or distinct. To me, these are human issues and human rights, ideals that don’t have acronyms.
For example, my understanding of HIV/AIDS is not academic but the result of what happened in the late 1980s and early 1990s when the disease ravaged my community and killed my friends. There was no treatment then. Today, diagnoses are not death sentences and every time I’m reminded of this (less and less each year), I’m still flattened with gratitude.
My daughter’s guardian, or “Godpop” as we call him, is the man my husband and I chose to raise our girl if something ever happened to us. We chose Chris not because of or despite the fact that he is gay but because he is our friend, a strong and beautiful soul who knows our heart and who would raise our girl right.
The debate on marriage isn’t an abstraction; it lives as my friends struggle to define who is, or whom the state will allow to be, legally recognized parents. It affects how and who can provide health care coverage for their families, and who has the authority on end of life questions and implementing a loved one’s last wishes.
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