July 11, 2005

The Wizard of POZ

Bible jewelry...Donatella Versace...and that Swedish underwear model, all up close and personal! It was a razzly-dazzly time for AIDS on life’s Yellow Brick Road this week—that is, till Dear Abby slipped up and the Bush administration got caught preaching to virgins. No fear—the Wizard is here:

FRIDAY, MAY 27, 2005

Bling was the thing when the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the feds for funding a Christian virginity-pledge program, charging that Reverend, er, President Bush had slammed his hard head right into that pesky church-state wall once again. Health and Human Services (HHS) stands accused of giving $1 million since 2003 to The Silver Ring Thing, a touring road show that hosts bonfires and luaus at which teens purchase $15 silver bands engraved with this admonition: “God wants you to be holy, so you should keep clear of all sexual sin.”
     During these three-hour hallelujahs, “you can leave the room for a certain amount of time if you don’t want religious content,” points out Lorraine Kenny of the ACLU Reproductive Freedom Project. “But then they come back in, and they get their Abstinence Study Bible and their ring.” Hmm…so they don’t strap you to your chair and pin your eyes open, like in Clockwork Orange? Praise the Lord! But the Wizard can’t help but wonder this: How do they know every participant is a 100-percent-confirmed virgin? What’s next, virtual virginity testing, which is said to be so popular among born-again Zulus in Southern Africa—and so enriched by the massive U.S. funds pouring in for abstinence-only work—that it is carried out en masse in stadiums like Saturday night baseball games?
     Similar ACLU lawsuits in ’82 and ’02 were supposed to have hammered down once and for all that Uncle Sam’s deep pockets can’t be used for the purposes of evangelism of any kind. And in this case, of course, it’s not just Jesus but life-threatening hooey being scattered across the land (for a real eyeful, see what Rep. Henry Waxman dug up about such “science” as the transmission of HIV through sweat and tears). HHS and the jewelers themselves declined the Wizard’s request for a comment on this latest trip to court. But Bill Smith at the sex-ed watchdog group SIECUS was frothing when we phoned. “We know that young people who participate in virginity pledges are less likely to use contraception when they do have sex,” he said, “and that they’re less likely to get tested for HIV and STDs.” What does the Wizard think? All the Abstinence Bibles and $15 holy trinkets in the world cannot stop the HIV virus as effectively as one 50-cent rubber—Satan’s plaything now under the Bush regime.

Bronze—not silver—was the metal (and medal) of choice at this year’s Peabody Awards in New York, where HIV positive muppet Kami canoodled with former CBS anchorman Dan Rather (pictured here mid-cuddle). Both alleged practioners of “liberal media bias” took home the prestigious prizes for excellence in broadcast media—Rather for his 60 Minutes uncovering of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and Kami’s South African outfit, Sesame Street affiliate Takalani Sesame, for Talk to Me, an HIV-awareness documentary meant to spark dialogue between South African kiddies and their moms and dads. So does this high-profile salute mean Kami will finally appear on U.S. Sesame Street? “We avoid attempts to create any ‘agenda’” says Horace Newcomb, Peabody Awards director. “We're not naive, however....” And neither is the Wizard, who—blog-addicted that s/he is—knows that Congress is stacking the Corporation for Public Broadcasting with liberal-bashers to push PBS to the right.

Just in case you were feeling like all those ACT UP demos and cold nights in jail were for nothing…. The surviving half of America’s most famous advice family has piped up in a column on different-status dating for HIVers. Last month, Dear Abby (left) advised a “slim, blonde” reader to spend a generous amount of time with her gentleman callers before introducing them to her virus. In other words: Come out when you put out. When some readers bitched that Abigail shouldn’t be advising readers to dodge the HIV positive elephant in the room, she responded this week with, “I don’t think a person’s illness should define her or him.” You tell it, Van Buren! But wait…later in the very same column, she says, “And by the way, dear readers, here are two online dating sites for people with herpes: www.h-date.com and www.hmates.com.” Um, the Wizard is all for same-virus dating, but Dear Abby: Aren’t you asking herpes folks to define themselves by their virus?

Finally, way over on the Continent, the Wizard was really jazzed to hear about Donatella Versace’s stylin’ wheelie at this year’s Life Ball charity gala in Vienna, where she drove a BMW Mini Cooper right up onto the red carpet. Meantime, Liza Minelli told reporters at the star-studded 13th annual ball, Europe’s largest AIDS fundraising event, “We’re all here because we want to make some noise…. When it gets quiet, [HIV] gets ignored”…. Speaking of noise, the Wizard isn’t sure if hot Calvin Klein underwear model Freddie Ljungberg (right) even knows what AIDS stands for (although gosh, cover girl Gia died from it 19 years ago!). But we were happy to hear a supermodel talking about HIV at all when Ljungberg told the UK tabloid Sunday Mail about a recent tattoo-related AIDS scare. “I was very worried,” says the bald and beautiful model about an inflamed lymphatic gland that he mistook for HIV infection. Lucky for him, it was just a side effect of the tattoo ink. So don’t expect to see him on POZ Personals anytime soon. You will, however, find 4,000 other hotties who have, as Oprah says, “lived a minute,” which is worth a lot more to the Wizard than being famous for 15.