Chick-fil-A Vandal Speaks Out: 'I am a Proud Christian'

Manny Castro, the L.A.-based artist who claimed responsibility for the graffiti spray-painted on the side of a Torrance, California Chick-fil-A last week, has not been arrested for what he did despite his coming forward, and offers a statement to the Huffington Post about why he did it:

My statement painted on the side of the Chik-Fil-A in Torrance was not born out of hate. It was born out of frustration. It was meant to further a discussion about tolerance and acceptance. My Facebook wall was simply not large enough to do this. Contrary to popular belief, I am a proud Christian and I wholly subscribe to the verse: “Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone.”

I didn’t use violence. I used paint. Artists for centuries have expressed their opinions through this medium and I am no different. The word "FAG" spray painted on anything has never garnered the media attention that my cow with a paintbrush did. And that’s unfortunate.

Castro says he'll gladly pay for the cost of repainting the wall but won't sit at the back of the bus.

 

'Interview' Magazine Puts Top Male Models on Grindr

Fashion's top male models on a gay hook-up app? Interview magazine finds a sexy format for its underwear photo shoot. Model River Viiperi, above.

Woman Claims Chick-fil-A Wouldn't Hire Her Because She Didn't Belong to a Church: VIDEO

Truth Wins Out writes

In 1980, at the age of 16, Jean Sipes went down to the local Chick-fil-A in Tallahassee, Florida and filled out a job application. After submitting it, the manager came out to interview her. He began by asking standard employment-related questions -- but then he suddenly veered off on a peculiar and intrusive detour.

Staring intently at the 'Activities/Hobbies' section of the application, he said that he noticed Jean had left that portion blank. He then inquired whether she belonged to a local church.

Jean responded truthfully, telling him that she did not attend a church. The manager then asked if she belonged to any church-affiliated youth groups or organizations. Again, she told him that she did not. According to Jean, the manager judgmentally replied, "you seem like a nice young lady and you have experience, but I can't hire you because you are not affiliated with a church or church organization."

Says Sipes in the video: "It's not just a gay issue. It's an issue of anyone that doesn't fit in with their religious criteria."

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

Madonna Announces Pro-LGBT Pink Wristband Demonstration at St. Petersburg Concert

Madonna, who promised in March to speak out against the oppressive ban on "gay propaganda" passed by St. Petersburg, Russia, announced a short time ago on Facebook that she would be handing out pink wristbands "to anyone that wants to support the LGBT community."

She adds, "The wristband will be part of the show - be prepared to raise your arm in support!"

Said Madonna in March: “I will come to St. Petersburg to speak up for the gay community and to give strength and inspiration to anyone who is or feels oppressed. I’m a freedom fighter.”

Madonna would be directly opposing the anti-propaganda law by making such a gesture. The law’s author, city assemblyman Vitaly Milanov, said in March that she would be charged under the law if she did anything at her concert to disobey it. The anti-gay law bars (and imposes fines for) gay groups from forming publicly, gay books and periodicals, LGBT Pride events, and other "promotions" of homosexuality.

He said he was willing to attend the show “to control its moral content.”

The U.S. Embassies in Moscow and St. Petersburg sent out a security alert yesterday for U.S. citizens regarding concerts tonight and Thursday by Madonna in those cities.

Minnesota Band 'War Poets' Celebrate Marriage Equality in Debut VIDEO

War Poets, a new band featuring five straight veterans of Minnesota’s pop/rock scene, debuted their new video this week for the track "Close Enough", and decided to use the occasion to promote marriage equality.

Write the group, in a press release

Directed by Toni Trussoni and produced by Chris Bueckers, the music video for “Close Enough” brings the controversial issue of gay marriage to life. Archival footage and still photographs are sprinkled throughout, showing a pro-gay rally one minute and an anti-gay demonstration the next. The story is set in New York’s Greenwich Village, home of the Stonewall Inn, where the 1969 riots culminated in the first Gay Pride Parade. The video is dedicated to the memory of the Stonewall uprisings. Trussoni’s choices of locations were both idyllic St Paul and upscale Minneapolis, and St John the Evangelist Episcopal Church -- a gorgeous building in St Paul, MN, not far from the band’s Minneapolis headquarters -- serves as the location where both couples finally get married.
 
“This is the first time that I have worked on a project with gay couples as the focal point,” Bueckers explains. “It was a challenge. Some people would not work on the project because of the subject matter, and I was a little taken aback by that. The film community is usually very open and progressive about the topic of gay rights.”

Watch the video, AFTER THE JUMP...

Minnesotan voters, of course, are facing a ballot measure this November asking them to decide whether to constitutionally ban same-sex marriage.

Criminalizing the HIV-Positive Community

BY ARI EZRA WALDMAN

Despite a spate of good news for the eradication of HIV -- the FDA's approval of Truvada to prevent its transmission, the Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act and thus retaining the ACA's great benefits for those living with HIV, and the lifting of the HIV/AIDS travel ban that allowed the International AIDS Conference to take place in Washington, D.C. last month -- there are still countless jurisdictions in which it is essentially a crime to be a sexually active HIV-positive man. In some states, individuals with HIV can be convicted of crimes of varying degrees, with penalties exceeding 10 or 20 years in jail, if they have sex without first disclosing their HIV status. And that is true even if they practice safe sex, are taking antiretroviral medications, have undetectable viral loads, and/or are on the receptive side of the sexual encounter, four factors that when combined make it almost impossible to transmit the virus.

Lambda Legal's Scott Schoettes (right), Director of the organization's HIV Project, and his colleague, Christopher Clark (below), represent one of the many victims of these antiquated laws. Their client, Nick Rhoades, a 34-year-old gay Iowan, was sentenced to 25 years in prison, a punishment Mssrs. Schoettes and Clark got down to time served, despite having sex in a context that made it almost impossible to transmit the HIV virus. But, those 4 years of time served included weeks of solitary confinement, among other humiliations.

The continued presence and spread of HIV is a grave public health concern. Our government has an interest in not only slowing its spread, but, hopefully, eradicating the disease entirely. But, broad criminal statutes that carpet bomb the HIV community are not the answer.

Let's be clear about the issue here. Laws that criminalize the intentional attempted transmission of HIV are different than laws that simply make it a crime for all HIV-positive individuals to have sex without disclosure. Cases like that of Philippe Padieu, who intentionally tried to infect six women with HIV, and Nushawn Williams, who is alleged to have exposed between 48 and 123 women to HIV, stir a natural emotional and punitive response. Such anger has led to the implementation of countless criminal transmission of HIV statutes and laws that punish HIV-positive individuals who intentionally spread the disease or have unprotected sex without informing partners. But, the outcry for criminalization has caused overreach.

I argue that this overbroad criminalization is the product of a longstanding stigma associated with the HIV-positive population, in general. And, that stigma is nondiscriminatory -- it attaches to the Nushawn Williamses of the world just as it attaches to those who have no intent to harm anyone and to those who could not harm anyone even if they wanted to. I have seen cases where prosecutors were allowed to prove intent to kill or do harm merely by proving that the defendant had unprotected sex while aware of his HIV-positive status, even when the statute calls for more than mere knowledge of status. And, I have seen aggravated assault prosecutions of HIV-positive individuals who had a good faith belief that they could not transmit the disease, had used protection, and had no intent to harm. These are the cases that should concern us.

HIV criminal transmission statutes, many of which were written at the height of the AIDS crisis in the early 1990s, allow prosecutors to prove guilt merely by showing that the defendant was HIV-positive at the time of the sexual encounter and failed to disclose his status. But all those statutes hinge on some measure of the likelihood of transmission. And since today's medical technologies allow us to distinguish between types of HIV-positive individuals, our courts should recognize that not all HIV-positive Americans are dangerous weapons. Stigma and guilt-by-status have no place in the criminal law.

AFTER THE JUMP, let's consider the example of one case and see what the law is and what the law should be.

CONTINUED, AFTER THE JUMP...

Let's say a hypothetical state makes it unlawful for any person who knows he is HIV-positive to have sexual intercourse with another without first disclosing his HIV-positive status under a criminal statute that punishes anyone who uses a weapon in a way that is likely to do serious harm to the victim. Let's assume for the sake of this hypothetical that HIV can be considered a "weapon" and that the defendant will concede that he was aware that he was HIV-positive and that he did not disclose his HIV status prior to intercourse.

Prosecutors charged Beauregard ("Bo") Tomm with one count of this crime after his one-time sexual partner went to the police after finding out Bo was HIV-positive. The trial took less than a day with prosecutors offering the following evidence: Mr. Tomm is HIV-positive; he did not disclose his status; the defendant and the victim had anal intercourse, which is one of the primary ways HIV is transmitted; HIV is the virus that causes AIDS, a deadly disease with no cure; and, HIV/AIDS causes serious harm or death.

Alongside statistics about how many Americans have HIV and how frequently sexual intercourse transmits the virus, this kind of evidence has convicted countless HIV-positive individuals of relatively serious crimes, carrying significant prison time.

But, there are several problems with this criminal regime. I would like to discuss the most important one.

The "likelihood" of doing harm -- in this case, the likelihood of transmission of the virus -- depends on a host of factors that prosecutors did not address. Viral load, sexual position, and safe sex practices are just three of the most obvious. The lower the viral load -- the amount of virus in the blood -- the lower the likelihood of transmission, and when an individual's viral load is undetectable under current technology, the likelihood of transmission falls even further. Bo's position during his sexual encounter, as his name suggests, was as the receiving partner, and the likelihood of transmission from the receptive to the insertive partner is exponentially lower than the reverse. Finally, if Bo's sexual partner used a condom, the likelihood of transmission is even lower.

This is all to say that each case of anal sex is different. An HIV-positive defendant whose viral load is 40,000, who was the insertive partner, and who did not use a condom engaged in an activity with a significantly higher risk of transmitting the virus than someone whose viral load was under 40 (undetectable), was the receptive partner, and practiced safe sex. 

If prosecutors can prove that transmission is likely merely by offering evidence that anal sex possibly transmits HIV, then two things happen. First, it is factually incorrect. Anal sex can transmit HIV, but all incidents of anal sex aren't fungible. Second, it is legally insufficient. The notion that a "likelihood" threshold could be satisfied by the mere possibility that HIV could be transmitted both actually lowers the threshold and eviscerates the requirement that guilt be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Think about it: If all prosecutors had to do was prove is that anal sex can possibly transmit HIV, then no doubt could be reasonable. After all, “[a]nything is possible; there are no metaphysical certainties accessible to human reason; but a merely metaphysical doubt . . . is not a reasonable doubt for the purposes of the criminal law.”  This principle does not only exclude the fanciful (“it is possible that I will burst into flames”), but also the realistic, yet remote. 

If mere possibility cannot survive as a reasonable doubt, it cannot survive as proof beyond a reasonable doubt. After all, there can be no reasonable doubt that anything is possible. And, “anything is possible” cannot survive constitutional scrutiny as a basis for criminal conviction. That makes logical sense. The statement that “anyone could have grabbed the gun from me in the dark before the gun went off” is neither a reason to exclude anyone as a suspect nor a reason to charge everyone else with the crime. If it were, everyone would be charged with everything, no one would be convicted of anything, and the reasonable doubt standard would have no meaning.

That something may be possible, however, is exactly what certain states and the military courts have accepted as proof beyond a reasonable doubt in cases involving HIV-related aggravated assault. By lowering the burden on the government to prove only that HIV could possibly be transmitted, these jurisdictions have obviated the need for a reasonable doubt standard. There can be no scintilla of doubt, let alone a reasonable one, that HIV can theoretically be transmitted through sexual intercourse. For that matter, HIV can theoretically be transmitted by oral sex, spitting, biting, or getting scratched by a monkey, but each is less likely than the one before it.

This is what lawyers call a due process problem, a constitutional evil of the highest order, especially when the strong arm of the criminal law is in play. And, HIV-positive Americans are victims of these due process violations all the time. Thankfully, our attorneys at Lambda Legal are working on the problem.

For more information about this and other criminal law issues facing the HIV-positive community, check out Lambda Legal's HIV Project and the Center for HIV Law and Policy.

***

Ari Ezra Waldman teaches at Brooklyn Law School and is concurrently getting his PhD at Columbia University in New York City. He is a 2002 graduate of Harvard College and a 2005 graduate of Harvard Law School. His research focuses on technology, privacy, speech, and gay rights. Ari will be writing weekly posts on law and various LGBT issues. 

Follow Ari on Twitter at @ariezrawaldman.