John-Manuel Andriote

Common sense suggests that in a time of wringing blood from turnips, every member of the U.S. Congress would leap at the chance to save the nation billions of dollars.

Yet Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the most commonsensical man on Capitol Hill, was the only member of the subcommittee on...

There's an old saw in my hometown, the place I fled at 18 and returned to at 48, that perfectly illustrates the way too many people I see around me here view themselves as powerless victims: As a crab tries to claw its way out of a bucket of crabs,...

Living in a 353-year-old city (with a long and storied Native American history even before its 1659 settlement by Puritans), there's no shortage of people who cling to nostalgia for the "old days," the glory days, when the city's many big textile mills were humming rather than crumbling, and the...

Getting an email from Larry Kramer saying he's disappointed in you is like having your own personal Judgment Day, and God is not amused.

What got Mount Kramer rumbling was my online comments about New York Times columnist Frank Bruni's recent article on AIDS reporter David France's forthcoming...

Public health officials recommended early in the AIDS epidemic that HIV-prevention education be targeted and explicit, using language and images familiar to those it is intended to reach. Controversy has swirled ever since over what, exactly, is meant by "explicit" prevention education and who should pay for it.

Prevention educators...

It only makes sense that the Human Rights Campaign's new president, Chad Griffin, played a leading role in trying to overturn California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage.

HRC has had its sights set on same-sex marriage for some time. In fact, even longtime activists say HRC has a case...

Pornographers are aroused and growling over a new Los Angeles law that will require adult film actors to wear condoms in sex acts well known to be high-risk for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

The filmmakers call the new law "government overreach." They argue that monthly HIV tests should...

When I was a lad of 26, in the winter of 1985, I was a regular at Carol's Speakeasy and Paradise in Chicago, when I wasn't working on my master's degree at Northwestern. Of course, it was in the clubs that we heard Whitney Houston's 1985 dance hit "How Will...

For National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, I want to recall how one man's insistence on openness and honesty about AIDS in the black community generated support and saved lives in Los Angeles and beyond.

The numbers make it clear: AIDS has devastated black America. Nearly half of all Americans living...

My antenna perked up when I read a gay man's comment that HIV infection is essentially no big deal anymore. "It's like diabetes these days," he said. As an HIV-positive 53-year-old, familiar with the health details of some near and dear diabetics, and having just written an article about the...

Can you imagine what it's like to have all your friends die?

Too many of us can not only imagine it but have lived to tell about the experience. Too many of us are still in shock from the horrors we witnessed, the young men we danced with and loved...

I've spent 25 years -- about half my life -- reporting and documenting what I call "gay America's heroic legacy in the AIDS plague."

But since doing dozens of interviews to update my book Victory Deferred: How AIDS Changed Gay Life in America, I've been concerned by how...

The four little words "home for the holidays" pack worlds of meaning and sentiment. They may evoke warm memories of dazzling decorations, family gatherings, gift exchanges, holiday parties, and way too much food. But for too many LGBT people, "home for the holidays" means anxiety, drama, and stress from families...