Donald Baxter of Iowa City, Iowa, was riding his bike one evening in 2007 when he got into an altercation with a minivan driver who swerved in and out of his lane and began taunting him.

The fight escalated when Baxter hit the van and the driver abruptly stopped to beat Baxter over the head with a four-foot-long windshield scraper. As Baxter lay on the street, the driver waved his finger in Baxter’s face. At some point, Baxter bit him.

After the fight broke up, Baxter said he took down the man’s license plate number and called the police.

“That was my first mistake,” said Baxter, who was eventually arrested for assault in the altercation. The reason, according to Baxter, was because he was HIV positive.

His situation is not rare.

Iowa law states that any HIV-positive person can be convicted of a felony, punishable by a minimum of 25 years, if he or she has intimate contact with someone, transfers or donates bodily fluids or shares needles with another person without disclosing their HIV status.

Today, 34 states and two territories have criminal laws to prosecute people who are HIV positive and do not disclose their status to their partners or other people they expose to their bodily fluids, whether through biting, spitting or sharing of needles.

A policy paper issued by the Obama administration in July 2010 aims to end such laws that ultimately criminalize people living with HIV whether or not they actually transmit the virus.

Advocacy groups such as the Positive Justice Project aim to repeal and reform HIV criminalization statutes and policies. Their goal is to promote research, engage with the public health sector and educate the public and policy makers about what they consider to be the harms of criminalization.

As Catherine Hanssens of PJP and the Center for HIV Law and Policy pointed out during an NLGJA panel, in two and half years 120 Americans were prosecuted under these laws.

“These women, men, gay men, and armed service members were prosecuted as a consequence of being sexually active or colliding with law enforcement while HIV positive,” Hanssens said.

HIV criminalization laws and statutes were first encouraged in 1987, several years into the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The purpose on the federal level was to ensure states would hold HIV positive people legally accountable for ensuring their partners knew of their status. Such policies were the first of their kind and were developed under President Reagan’s Commission on the Human Immunodeficiency Virus Epidemic.

Iowa resisted passing such a statue until federal funding factored into the discussion.
In 1990, the federal government passed the Ryan White Care Act. It mandated that states needed laws in place to prosecute HIV individuals who expose others to the virus in order to have access to their emergency AIDS relief grants.

Even with funding pressure, Iowa was still hesitant to adopt such a law. It was not until 1998 that the state finally passed its criminalization law.

In 2000, the criminal transmission mandate of the Ryan White Care Act was eliminated under federal law. By this time, 32 states had some sort of HIV-specific criminalization statute and 50 states declared they had preexisting laws to address the issue.

When most of these 50 ways of legally addressing the issue were enacted, medical research on the transmission of HIV was incomplete, and epidemic paranoia was at a high.

Today, peer-reviewed medical evidence proves that it is impossible to contract HIV from spitting and biting. Medical evidence also proves it is nearly impossible to contract HIV using sex toys during intercourse, and even having oral, anal or vaginal intercourse with a person who has HIV but has a low viral count. These low probabilities of contraction do not even account for the decreased possibility that arises when an individual’s HIV positive sexual partner is taking proper medication.

But advances in research haven’t been enough to change the law.

Todd Heywood, senior reporter of the Michigan Messenger, is an HIV positive man who dedicates his career to bringing attention to criminalization laws and overturning what he views as oppressive legislation.

Heywood said he believes that, in the face of medical realizations and advancements, these laws are outdated and counterproductive, arguing that these laws ultimately deter people from getting testing. His theory coincides with many researchers’ conclusions.

In 2008 Dr. Scott Burris and Edwin Cameron argued in the Journal of American Medicine that criminalization laws ultimately deter people from being tested for several reasons. They noted the majority of people who transmit HIV to others do so as consensual partners who were unaware one of them was HIV positive. So their behavior is perceived to be ordinary because they are unknowingly transmitting the virus.

The authors argue that it is not society’s responsibility to condemn individuals who are HIV positive, but to promote HIV education and sexual responsibility. Those who are HIV positive experience such stigma from the mainstream. As a result, they argue, people who are potentially HIV positive avoid getting tested in fear of being scarlet lettered by the rest of society.
The authors conclude in their study titled, “The Case against Criminalization of HIV Transmission,” that the “blunt use of HIV-specific criminal statutes and prosecutions does the opposite.”

For people like Baxter of Iowa City, these public health concerns over an individual’s personal responsibility for their own sexual health are irrelevant. Medical proof that advocates believe should eradicate the beliefs and laws that criminalize HIV positive individuals for biting or spitting (or even threatening to) is prevalent but often ignored by policymakers.

Baxter was viewed as lucky by critics of criminalization in that the Johnson County prosecutors decided against charging him with Iowa’s HIV statute.

He was charged, prosecuted and found guilty of assault causing injury and his HIV status was used against him during the trial.

Baxter was sentenced to community service, a fine and anger management classes. His story was featured during an “In the Life” segment last year on public television.

“People need to know that this happened and if it happened to a privileged white guy like me, imagine how people who can’t defend themselves [as easily] would deal with this issue,” Baxter said on the show.

NLGJA Student Project participants Shanna Wester and Jorge Salazar wandered the streets of downtown Philadelphia in search of the oldest LGBT bookstore in the United States. The Arizona State University students planned to profile the historic bookstore, Giovanni’s Room, as a part their first daily assignment for this year’s Student Project. In the midst of their search the two came across street vendors, sky scrapers and mothers pushing strollers — but no bookstore.

“It’s nice, but it’s a big change from Arizona,” Salazar said while trying to reroute his Google Maps app after going the wrong way. “I don’t think we have buildings that go up for more than five stories.”

Camille Beredjick, left, and Yimou Lee work in the student newsroom.

NLGJA’s Student Project is an opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students from across the country to get hands-on journalism experience and discover stories in new cities. Students work with industry professionals to produce stories and multimedia pieces that capture the news surrounding NLGJA’s convention and other LGBT themes. The Student Project coincides with the organization’s annual convention, which is in a different city each year.

Related: NLGJA convention attendance up 45%

This year’s NLGJA Convention and Student Project are being held in the heart of Philadelphia at the Loews Hotel. Twelve students from across the country — from USC to the University of Iowa all the way to NYU — are working in multiple media to tackle this year’s theme of civil rights.

With the help of NLGJA Student Project coordinator Caroline Que, Yahoo’s D.C. editor, as well as mentors from the Associated Press and other organizations, the students got off to a strong start on their first day, wrong turns and all.

Being involved in NLGJA’s 2011 Student Project is a much different experience than what Wester and Jorge Salazar experienced while attending last year’s conference in San Francisco.

“Our favorite part of last year’s convention was the breakaway sessions,” Salazar said. “They were very interesting. We hope we can go to some this year.”

Related: Gay journalists rally around revolution

Both Salazar and Wester expressed excitement about the opportunities the Student Project presents and look forward to seeing convention speakers Don Lemon and Ann Curry.

Yimou Lee, a graduate student from the University of Texas at Austin, approached two men who were sitting together on a stoop for an interview. The pair allowed Lee to snap photos as they embraced. Lee picked the men because they seemed to epitomize the diversity and brotherly love that Philadelphia is known for.

“I want to be a journalist because I want to give a voice to the voiceless,” Lee said. “I want to give a voice to those people, to those communities that don’t get a lot of respectable coverage in the mainstream media, ranging from the gay community, homeless people and even Muslims in the United States.”

Karen Hawkins and Brett Zongker of the Associated Press are serving as Student Project mentors. (Photo by James Michalowski/All rights reserved)

Karen Hawkins, Chicago-based Associated Press reporter and fifth-year NLGJA Student Project mentor, said her favorite part of the convention is meeting and working with the students. She said she enjoys watching students come up with stories and helping them develop them throughout the course of the week.

They “bring all of the ideas from academia that we are out of touch with,” Hawkins said. “Working with the students really re-energizes me for when I go back to work.”

Although the Student Project is now a valued part of NLGJA’s annual convention, it was not a staple at the organization’s outset.

NLGJA was founded in 1990 by the late Roy Aarons, who started the organization after the American Society of Newspaper Editors approached him to work on a survey of gay and lesbian journalists in 1989. Aarons, executive editor of the Oakland Tribune at the time, found the results of his study to be so alarming that he came out at ASNE’s convention in 1990. Aarons launched NLGJA from his Northern California living room shortly after he delivered his groundbreaking speech at the convention.

Aarons was dedicated to promoting fair and accurate coverage of the LGBT community in the mainstream media until his death in 2004.

Jorge Salazar, a senior at Arizona State University, shows off his new iPad. Project sponors Comcast and NBC Universal donated the iPads and FlipCams to each participant. (©2011 James Michalowski/All rights reserved)

NLGJA executive director Michael Tune says that, although the methods have evolved since the organization’s founding in 1990, NLGJA’s mission remains the same.

“The pieces and metrics may have changed over time,” Tune said. “But our mission and top priority is always fair and accurate coverage in strong and diverse newsrooms.”

The Student Project was launched in 1997 as a way to incorporate a younger generation of journalists into NLGJA’s work.

“No pressure, but you guys [NLGJA Student Project participants] are the future of journalism,” Hawkins said.

The Mazonni Center, Philadelphia’s LGBT health center, recently revamped Many Men, Many Voices, an HIV prevention program that takes young men of color on retreats. Walk through the experience with a facilitator and participant.

For the last year and a half, Fred Karger has been on a mission to inspire, to educate and to show young LGBT people they can make a difference. And what better way to send a message than to run for president?

Fred Karger is running for the GOP presidential nomination. (Photo by Camille Beredjick)

Karger is openly gay and running for the Republican nomination for president of the United States, hoping to challenge stereotypes of Republicans as homophobic and set an example for gay youth. A great deal of his publicity has come from gay media, and he felt it important to attend the 2011 National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association convention in Philadelphia, he said.

“It’s the LGBT bloggers, journalists and media that have always been there for me from the very first time I started,” Karger said. “I’m one guy, but with the media and the members here I was able to be very successful.”

Karger announced his presidential bid in April 2010 and is the first openly gay person to run. Karger knows he’s an enigma on the political scene, especially as a Republican. But he’s far from a newbie – he’s been working on GOP presidential campaigns alongside such candidates as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan since the 1970s.

Bygone politicians Nelson Rockefeller and Charles Percy represented the Republican Party that Karger grew up with and learned to love as a teenager, he said. They were progressive, socially moderate people committed to entrepreneurship and personal responsibility. Karger is admittedly more progressive than other candidates of his party, and proudly so, he said.

“I’ve been fighting for that Republican Party my entire adult life,” he said. “It’s been important to instill these values in me that government and the private sector can work hand in hand, and certainly government has a role in helping people… I think we never should lose sight of compassion for others.”

Karger has been a member of NLGJA for five years. He’s attended every convention in that time, and this year’s national conference in Philadelphia is no exception.

And though a 61-year-old white male Republican hardly represents every journalist or every LGBT person in the country, Karger wants LGBT media and its audience to know he’ll stand up for them. He was hoping to speak at this weekend’s convention, but plans fell through over worries he was the only candidate at the conference.

“I fight like hell to get into the Republican convention in California and they let me in, I fight to get into the straw poll in New Hampshire and they let me in, but that an LGBT group refuses to let me speak is unconscionable,” he said. “I’m very hurt and upset.”

Karger didn’t come out publicly until he was 56. He said his political and personal lives would be drastically different if he’d come out sooner. Now an unapologetic activist, he recalls his days in the closet as inspiration to push the envelope and challenge people on new levels.

A favorite slogan he uses comes from a sign he read at a California protest: “No more Mr. Nice Gay.”

“This is a civil rights movement … and we need to be aggressive,” he said. “I’ve always done that in my professional career, [but] not in my life, my gay life. I accepted second-class citizenry, which is not Fred Karger, but it was easier.”

Karger takes inspiration from some of the earliest openly gay politicians, like Bob Gentry, the country’s first openly gay mayor, and revered politician Harvey Milk, the first openly gay public official in California and the outspoken community leader whose activism helped spark the gay rights movement.

But he’s just as inspired by youth activists who continue the work of early advocates. Karger said he is floored by teenagers who attend rallies and protests, and he admires teenagers who have come out to themselves earlier than he did. He believes coming out can be a political move — and an important one in addressing such issues as bullying.

“It’s these young, young heroes who are changing perceptions, changing hearts and minds all over the country,” he said. “Coming out is essential.”

What does he ultimately hope people will take from his campaign?

“Frisbees,” he responds without missing a beat. He’s only half joking – blue Frisbees displaying his slogan “Fred Who?” are some of his most unique campaign materials.

Karger’s lively spirit and zest for conversation are contagious, but he doesn’t shy from a serious question. Aside from its political motives, Karger’s campaign is setting an example for LGBT youth in America who feel trapped by their sexuality, he said. Supporters, some as young as 13 years old, send him emails with words of thanks and praise.

“I’m sitting at home crying as I read many of these emails because they are crediting me or thanking me,” he said. “An 82-year-old saw me on Rachel Maddow and said, ‘Fred, you are not just influencing younger people. I’ve been in the closet my whole life and I can’t tell you what an impact you’re having.’”

The GOP nomination is hardly in the bag, though Karger believes he has a chance to make a name for himself in the big leagues. Whether or not he makes it to election night, Karger says he’s fully committed to the campaign, if only to show LGBT youth it can be done.

“I want to send that message to younger people,” he said. “You can run for office. You can do anything you want to do.”

At Love Saves the Day, manager Stasia Kauriga outfits local drag queens in vintage wear.

When you think of the top places in the country for LGBT couples to live, towns like Pleasant Ridge, Mich., and Oakland Park, Fla., don’t usually spring to mind. But a new analysis of the 2010 Census yielded some surprising results. New York and Philadelphia, often considered gay meccas, don’t even make the Top 10. But New Hope, Pa., one charming square mile in scenic Bucks County, clocked in at No. 8. Listen below to find out what makes New Hope so gay.

Controversial plans for an LGBT senior housing complex at Philadelphia’s William Way Community Center abruptly ended this month. But Executive Director Chris Bartlett insists that his 35-year-old center will work to meet the needs of the underserved LGBT senior population.

As the newly elected “Mr. Gay Philadelphia of 2011,” Dashiell Sears, a political science junior and gymnast at Temple University, said the title means more than just an impossible dream come true for a gay who grew up in Hanover, Pa. For him, it represents his best friend Kayla Hrycek. She took her own life after experiencing bullying for her sexuality in high school, which made him decide to come out of the closet in the first year of college and voice for the LGBT community.

“One of my greatest regrets of my life was not coming out sooner than I did,” said Sears. “Now when I go out to do something for the LGBT community, I will think about Kayla because this is something she will do. It’s like she is still here.”

Most people associate the beginning of the LGBT civil rights movement with the police raids at New York’s Stonewall Inn in 1969. But beginning in 1965, Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings led marches for gay and lesbian civil rights on Independence Hall in Philadelphia every Fourth of July. Just like Philadelphia is the birthplace of American independence, the city is also served as the initial hotbed of gay activism that has sparked a monumental fight for LGBT civil rights.

The 2011 NLGJA Student Project talked to Ed Hermance, owner of Giovanni’s Room, the longest continually operating gay bookstore in the United States, about living in the heart of Philadelphia during the beginnings of the gay civil rights movement.

Unity, an alliance of Hispanic, Asian American and Native American journalist associations, has formally asked the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association to join its ranks, reversing its previous opposition to the group’s inclusion.

“The missions of Unity and the NLGJA are completely overlapping. We are both in favor of media diversity in a shrinking media market,” said David Steinberg, NLGJA’s president.

Related: NLGJA convention attendance up 45%

Steinberg revealed details of Unity’s invitation to the NLGJA Student Project before announcing it to members Friday evening at the national convention in Philadelphia. He said many details must still be discussed and that the board wants to hear from members.

“This is a wonderful opportunity to show we have the same issues and are going through the same things,” said Susan Green, a member of NLGJA’s Board of Directors. At the convention, Green said she joined the organization after meeting NLGJA members at a Unity conference who encouraged her to come out in the newsroom.

A decision will be made within weeks because convention planning must begin far in advance, Steinberg said. That leaves some worried about the fast pace of NLGJA’s decision.

“My fear is that because this decision has to be made quickly, not every voice in this organization will be heard,” Karen Bailis, an NLGJA lifetime member and Newsday editor.
The announcement came after confusion over why details of NLGJA’s 2012 convention plans had not been released.

If the NLGJA joins Unity, the national convention will be replaced by the joint conference of Unity organizations in Las Vegas in August 2012.

“It needs to benefit NLGJA financially and programmatically,” Steinberg said. The board is currently researching how joining Unity would affect the organization financially, compared to hosting a separate convention. Unity divides revenue among its partners using a complex formula.

The board is also considering how joining the Unity conference, attended by thousands, may also attract new corporate sponsors to NLGJA.

Unity voted against including NLGJA in 1994 and 1998, and NLGJA did not actively lobby to join this year, the group said. Unity leaders had previously debated whether the predominantly-white NLGJA complemented the coalition’s other minority organizations. In 1998, the full name was changed to be “Unity: Journalists of Color.”

“Michael Tune (NLGJA’s executive director) jokes there’s nothing more colorful than a rainbow,” Steinberg said.

Still, NLGJA is discussing whether a full membership in Unity would bring a name change to the organization.

Unity holds joint conferences every four years. After the National Association of Black Journalists left Unity this year in a dispute over revenue sharing, the remaining organizations are the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association and the Native American Journalists Association.

In 1998, NABJ cast the sole vote against NLGJA’s inclusion in Unity, which blocked NLGJA from joining at that time.

There are many programs that offer services to people with HIV or AIDs. Action Aids, a Philadelphia-based organization that offers a range of services, has a buddy program that trains volunteers to provide emotional and practical support through a kind of limited friendship. Elmer “Bud” Dewey has been a buddy for close to 30 years. His volunteering with HIV programs has changed his life.