Tag: health care

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Memphis Gaydar News

CHOICES Receives Grant to Support LGBTQ Health Care

CREDIT: Facebook/CHOICES

Facebook/CHOICES

CHOICES’ main clinic on Poplar

CHOICES: Memphis Center for Reproductive Health is receiving a $5,000 grant to assist in its efforts to transform LGBTQ health equity in the South.

CHOICES, a non-profit that offers reproductive health care services here, including transgender healthcare, is one of four recipients of the community grant.

The Campaign for Southern Equality (CSE), an Asheville, North Carolina-based organization working to improve LGBTQ equality in all areas, also awarded grants to organizations in Asheville, Greenville, South Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia.

CSE awarded a total of $30,000 to CHOICES and the other three organizations in an effort to “promote innovations in providing health care to better serve LGBTQ Southerners.”

“The infusion of funding to organizations on the leading edge of serving LBGTQ Southerners is designed to support new models in the South that increase access to care and ensure that people are treated with dignity and respect in health care settings,” a statement from CSE reads.

More than one third of all LGBTQ Americans live in the South, where they experience “disproportionate health disparities,” according to the group.

“The South is the epicenter for the modern HIV crisis in the United States, particularly for transgender women of color and black men who have sex with men,” CSE’s statement continues. “Transgender and non-binary Southerners are frequently confronted with ignorance or discrimination while seeking care.”

Rev. Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, executive director of CSE said health care is a “human right that is fundamental to being able to survive and thrive.” The goal is for the grant recipients to use “innovation and grit to create new models to help Southern LGBTQ people access the care they need and deserve,” Beach-Ferrara adds.

With the grant, CHOICES plans to provide free sexually-transmitted infections (STI) testing, education, and referrals to LGBTQ patients through a pilot program in partnership with OUTMemphis.

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“With funds from the Southern Equality Fund, CHOICES is excited to work with our local partner to provide free STI testing and linkage to care for LGBTQ persons in Memphis,” Katy Leopard, assistant director of CHOICES, said.

Currently, CHOICES provides wellness exams to LGBTQ patients that include breast exams, birth control consultation, HIV testing, hormone management, and overall health evaluations.

Leopard said the clinic has nearly 200 transgender patients in the Mid-South area and that it can be difficult for those patients to find care elsewhere in Memphis.

“It’s very difficult for that population to find caring providers who ask questions in the right way and don’t ask unnecessary questions,” Leopard said. “A lot of our transgender patients have been wronged by the healthcare system. So they have a real wariness when coming to see a healthcare provider at all. So the fact that they see CHOICES as a place where they can come and be respected and valued is really big.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

MAD AS HELL: Bush Quacks On As Democrats Turn Tail

George Bush is no lame duck. You aren’t lame when you’re
getting your way on everything. At a press conference this week, instead of
quacking like a duck, he was strutting like a peacock, and warning the world
of how relevant he still is. The Decider Guy is dancing with the stars. A 24%
approval rating, a (still mostly) lapdog press and Orwellian delusions
continue to assure him that he can do as he damn well pleases. In other
words, he has another18 months to take this country farther down a rat hole.
And the one thing he knows for sure is the gutless opposition has no serious
plans to stop him.

Yesterday, the president and his party succeeded in
denying millions of poor American children healthcare by vetoing a bill to
expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Never mind that the
money spent on forty days in Iraq would have paid for at least ten million
poor kids to be insured for an entire year. We have the money for funding
perpetual wars, but not for our nation’s poor, sick children. This
administration, with the help of Congress, killed the bill.

Even more appalling, Bush and the Republicans fought to
get legal immunity for the telecommunications companies who helped this
government engage in spying and criminal phone tapping of innocent, private
citizens. Never mind that protecting the criminals who colluded with the
right-wingers will destroy the individual privacy and hitherto protected
freedoms of all Americans. So where did Congress line up on this despicable
piece of legislation? Right behind the Republicans, of course.

Most alarming, however, was another bizarre “Bring-It-On”
display when Bush seemed jacked up when alluding to a possible third world war
involving Iran. (Excuse me, “nukyuler armed Eye-ran.”) Jocularly chuckling at
questions regarding a potential engagement of war with another country in the
Middle East, he sounded more and more like a petulant, dangerous child.

While Bush was flipping off sick children, ripping up the
Constitution and rattling war sabers, where was the opposing party– the
majority party that was sent to Washington last year explicitly to stop Bush
from doing further damage? Pissing up the proverbial rope, as usual. Since
the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, declared impeachment of this president
to be off the table, it is the Democrats who are quickly making themselves
irrelevant. Bush and the Republicans control the agenda, determine the course
of action, and dictate the outcome. The Democrats continue to believe that
simply keeping their heads down will somehow propel them into an electoral
landslide in 2008! While Bush continues to gain relevancy by finding new and
novel ways to continue his campaign to expunge the planet of any life form
that disagrees with him, the congress merrily assumes the
earthworm-on-dry-pavement position.

In all this mess, it is the American people who seem to be
the least relevant to the politicians. Predictably, the president will continue
to carry on the Iraq war, but the one thing voters were counting on last year
when they elected a Democratic majority was having that majority use the
Constitutional powers available to them to stop the funding of the war.

And while Bush continues to destroy our Constitutional
freedoms, the Democrats astoundingly still cower in fear of being called
unpatriotic. This administration has flagrantly flouted the will of the people,
but the people figured out a long time ago not to expect anything different from
Bush. Congress, however, in its failure to confront the president, is also
ignoring the will of the people; so it is no surprise that they, not Bush, have
the lower approval rating.

-Make no mistake, Americans are sick and tired of Bush and
the Republicans, but they are more exasperated with and sickened by
Congressional Democrats who claim to be Bush’s adversaries, yet act like never
ending enablers. Like parents offering nothing more than repeated empty threats
to a destructive, out-of- control adolescent, the Democrats are the ones who are
becoming increasingly irrelevant and dare I say –lame? Perhaps they should heed
the words of the last Democratic President who said the American people would
rather support someone who is strong and wrong than someone who is right and
weak.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Corker Says Constituents and “Common Sense” Come Before Political Loyalties

CREDIT: jb

In a visit to Shelby County Wednesday, Bob Corker, the
Republican who was elected to the U.S. Senate last year over Democrat Harold
Ford Jr. in a tight race that drew ample national attention, made it clear that
partisan issues are the least of his concerns.

Both in a luncheon address to Rotarians at the Germantown
Country Club and in remarks to reporters afterward, former Chattanooga mayor
Corker emphasized a “common sense” approach in which “I strive to make sure that
everybody in the state is proud of the way I conduct myself…to understand issues
as they really are, devoid of some of the rhetoric that surrounds these
issues…[and] the political whims of the day.”

Take his response when asked whether embattled GOP senator
Larry Craig, busted in the infamous “wide stance” airport-restroom case, should
resign for the good of the Republican Party:

Corker said Craig’s predicament was a matter for the
“people of Idaho” and the Senate Ethics Committee. “I don’t try to get into all
the political ramifications of this or that. The way to get a whole lot more
done is to focus on issues.” Somewhat disdainfully, he added, “There are all
these messaging amendments that we do, all about making one side look bad and
the other side look good. Democrats do it, and Republicans do it. It’s a total
waste of time.”

Helping The Med

As to how that even-handed outlook affected his stand on
issues, Corker was explicit. He talked of applying pressure on the
Administration, especially on recent health-care issues he considered urgent for
his constituents. “I know for a fact that I played a huge role in this [latest]
TennCare waiver thing. I have to say I had to put a hold on the Bush
nominations to make it happen. I thought it was important for our state.”

And there was his vote and enthusiastic support recently to expand SChip (the
federal State Children’s Health
Insurance Program) so as to increase funding for Tennessee by $30
million and to permit Medicaid payments for patients at The Med from Arkansas
and Mississippi. Both Corker and Tennessee GOP colleague Lamar Alexander
strongly supported the bill, which passed but was vetoed last week by President
Bush.

“I was glad to have worked out these issues
that have plagued the Med for so long. It’s ridiculous that people from Arkansas
and Mississippi have used the facility for so long and don’t pay for it. What’s
the logic in that?” Corker said, vowing to try to get the Med-friendly
provisions re-established in a veto-proof compromise measure yet to be
fashioned.

Corker made a pitch for the Every American Insured Health Act,
a bill he has sponsored that, he said, would modify the tax code so as to
guarantee universal access to private health insurance “but would not add a
penny to the national deficit.”

Contending that “what I’m trying to do is to add to
the equation a real debate, a real solution,” the senator said his proposal had been
“slammed” on the same day by both a conservative columnist and a liberal
columnist, leading him to conclude, “I’m pretty sure we got it just about
right.”

Corker said that executives of key national corporations,
saddled with large health-care costs for their employees, were “waling the halls
of Congress trying to get us to move to a government-run system so they can
alleviate. that expense which makes them non-competitive.” Without some
alternative form of universal access, he said, such a government-run system was
inevitable.

With 800,000 Tennesseans and 47 million Americans lacking
health-care coverage, there was also a “moral obligation” to make coverage universal,
Corker stressed.

Relations with Iran and Syria

As a member of both the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee
and the body’s Armed Services committee, Corker says he is focusing hard on
issues relating to war-torn Iraq, a country he has visited twice, and
neighboring Iran, subject of much speculation these days concerning possible
future hostilities between that country and the U.S.

Here again, the senator stressed his determination to
maintain independence of judgment. “I’ve had some very tense moments with this
administration – in the first two months I was up there [in Washington]
especially. There were some underwhelming meetings.”

Corker is dubious about the current political leadership of
Iraq {“things cannot go on as they are”) but supportive for the time being of
the current military strategy of General David Petraeus, with whom he stays in
contact.

On Iran, Corker said there was “some concern in the
Senate that the president might take action” and emphasized that “he [Bush]would have
to have Senate authority to do that.” Corker reminded reporters that after his
election he had said on CBS’ Face the Nation that diplomatic negotiations
with both Syria and Iran were necessary.

“We don’t want to overplay our hand in Iran,” he said.
“There’s a group of people there who want to be our friends. If we move into
Iran unilaterally others [in the region] will step back from being our friends.”

Corker, who was a construction executive before entering
politics, related the current diplomatic situation to his experience in
labor-management negotiations in Tennessee. “If you don’t talk with your enemies
they remain your enemies. There’s a lot to be learned just to be in somebody’s
presence,” he said.