PWA Campout

This is a flyer for the PWA (Persons with AIDS) Campout held twice a year at a private campground near Cameron, Texas.

Clicking the thumbnail will download the PDF file, which can be printed or shared with other gay men living with HIV/AIDS who might be interested in coming to the campout.

 

 

 

These are some photos from past campouts.

 

 

[meteor_slideshow slideshow="pwa-campout"]

Back to the Basics

It's been over 28 years since the first AIDS cases hit America. HIV infections in this country continue to rise. Nationwide, black men and women represent the greatest rate of increase in new infections, yet here in Austin, Texas that is currently held by young gay men 24 years old and younger.

With Texas being a deep red state, and our Governor, George W. Bush II (oops, that's Rick Perry), standing firm on so-called "Christian" values by not allowing proper sex education to be taught to the children of this state, things can only get worse.

Me and a few others have been tossing around an idea of late. We are planning to start an Austin area HIV Speakers Bureau. It will be comprised of men and women living openly with HIV/AIDS who want to put faces on this disease. By being honest about our status, we hope to educate, raise awareness, encourage safer sex, put out a message of prevention while also standing up to the stigma which has surrounded this illness from the beginning.

We already have a heterosexual man who was infected through a cut in his hand while rescuing an HIV-positive woman from a car accident. Soon we will start recruiting a diverse group of people to join us.

In advance of our actually going forward, a preliminary website has been built. Feel free to visit and bookmark it, especially if you are in the Austin, Texas area. We hope to have a good group of speakers who can talk at public schools, colleges & universities, businesses, community events and more.

http://austin-hiv-speakers.us/

Keep Religion Out of Texas Government

"When the Federal Republican Constitution of their country, which they have sworn to support, no longer has a substantial existence, and the whole nature of their government has been forcibly changed, without their consent, from a restricted federative republic, composed of sovereign states, to a consolidated central military despotism, in which every interest is disregarded but that of the army and the priesthood, both the eternal enemies of civil liberty, the everready minions of power, and the usual instruments of tyrants."

So reads the second sentence of the Texas Declaration of Independence, ratified unanimously on March 2, 1836 while the Alamo was under siege by Santa Ana's armies. They are the words of true Texans (and Texians and Tejanos). They are the true voice of Texas.

Being a native-born Texan, I've been ashamed of my home state ever since George W. Bush was elected Governor. Perry has added to the disaster that Texas has become.

When Perry announced support for the unethical and unconstitutional (both state and federal) amendment to deny gay Texans equality in marriage, he did so in front of a church. He played the Christian voters like a harp, just as George W. Bush has been doing.

"The instruments of tyrants" indeed.

With the adding of the words "under God" to the state Pledge of Allegiance, Perry has further played the religion card. Many people seem to believe that those words had always existed in the federal pledge, but they have not. That pledge had been written by northern Baptist minister Francis Bellamy on September 7, 1892. Bellamy strongly agreed with our nation's founders of the importance and necessity of separation of church and state.

In 1954, the words were unconstitutionally added to our nation's pledge, forever blurring the boundaries, and our nation's liberties continue to suffer from this

The question now is, do I stay or do I leave? The answer is written in the blood of the fallen defenders of the Alamo. I am a Texan, a Texan am I. I will stay, and fight, for I shall never forget the Alamo, nor the sacrifice which it represents in the name of liberty for all.

In the immortal words of William Barrett Travis, "Victory or Death!"

Texas Declaration of Independence