We have just returned from a very pleasant evening celebrating Chris’s birthday. Chris wanted to try Jasper’s Restaurant, which offers Gourmet Backyard Cuisine, and then enjoy a glass of wine at Cru Wine Bar after the meal.

It was a wonderful evening celebrated with our friends: Bobby & Ian, Layton, Brian, Jonas & Corey.

We even had time to explore dodgeball and update our listings while we waited for our table at Cru.

Layton was the only sensible one that bought a camera, so hopefully there will be some pictures from the evening posted shortly.

I was remiss to not post this at the start of the day, but it’s my man’s birthday today, and I have to let the world know that I am wishing him a happy birthday!

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear Chris
Happy birthday to you.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. federal court ruled on Thursday that a 1998 law designed to block children from viewing Internet pornography violates the U.S. Constitution’s free speech protections.

Read the article here.

It seems that “some gay rights advocates who previously fought for ‘marriage or nothing’ are shifting strategies,” according to a report in the Boston Herald. Of course, the big organizations that claim to represent the interest of the GLBT community aren’t going to be changing their strategy, and so things will get much worse before they start to get better.

The Freedom to Marry group has stated that, “anything short of marriage relegates gays and lesbians to second-class status,” a position that is reflected by the Human Rights Campaign. Sadly, it is this attitude (in my view) that has been responsible for the vast amount of constitutional amendments across the United States that ban gay marriage, or anything that resembles it. It’s the main reason that I’m no longer a member of HRC.

It seems that it’s not just the North Texas region that is seeing an increase HIV infections among mid-life men (35-49). According to this article, the increase could be explained by a number of reasons:

• having survived the HIV pandemic, urban gay men in mid-life may be particularly vulnerable to the negative effects of decimated social networks
• the methamphetamine epidemic that has swept through urban gay communities also contributes to high levels of new HIV infections
• gay men in mid-life are at the center of a ‘perfect storm,’ in which multiple problems converge to create a very high-risk environment

I couldn’t agree more with this comment from the article, “We urgently need to create programs that directly address the real reasons that gay men engage in high-risk behavior.” It’s not always just about remembering those we’ve lost to HIV/AIDS, but sometimes the fight has to intervene and prevent more losses.

Source: Gay News Blog