Let’s cut to the chase: World AIDS Day—launched on December 1, 1988—wasn’t born from some kumbaya moment. It came from two World Health Organization public information officers, James W. Bunn and Thomas Netter, and the visionary Dr. Jonathan Mann. Their goal? Carve out a date,December 1 that’d get airtime long after U.S. elections and before holiday TV specials drown everything else out.

By Mark S. King Originally Published in POZ Magazine August 2025 My therapist, Aaron, always leans forward as he sits with his hands neatly folded, indicating openness and interest. His posture may also convey patience, because I am on the sofa across from him doing everything but getting to the topic at hand. I talk nervously about my choice of beard dye, pick at my shoelaces and tell his dog lying on a mat nearby that he is a very, very good boy. Aaron gently nudges me towa

By Bridgette Picou, LVN HIV criminalization is an amalgamation of a lot of things. It is ignorance overlaid with fear and underpinned by the need to exert power over the same people who are being feared. The parochialism of HIV—and therefore the outlawing of things otherwise considered normal and healthy outside the context of HIV—is infuriating. Much of what I feel about criminalization is tied to my intersecting identities. My Blackness is always a reminder of the potential