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is Picketed in Buenos Aires In U.K., Education Affects One's HIV Status |
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By Rex Wockner International News Report Prince Charles is Picketed in Buenos Aires
Gays and transvestites picketed Britain's Prince Charles in
Buenos Aires March 9 demanding political asylum in the U.K. based
on anti-gay persecution in Argentina.
The demonstration, outside the British Embassy, turned violent when several participants broke through the compound's gates and police tackled and beat them. The protesters -- who say local police target gays and transvestites with vagrancy and prostitution laws -- chanted "Murderers! Murderers!" A petition for asylum, signed by 67 people, was received by embassy officials. It states: "As gay, lesbian, transvestite, transsexual and bisexual people we are systematically arrested, beaten and even killed by the police. ... We have come to seek political asylum because they deny us the right to work and live, and beat and repress us, as documented in the annual report of the Argentine Homosexual Community." In U.K.. Education Affects One's HIV Status A new British study has found that gay men who are more educated are less likely to be HIV-positive. The survey questioned more than 4,000 men who attended gay-pride festivals in London, Brighton, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds in 1997. Among men who stayed in school through age 22, 7.6 percent were HIV-positive. Those who went to school through age 20 had a 9.7 percent positivity rate. The rate was 11 percent for those who finished schooling at age 18, 11.9 percent for those who finished at 16, and 19 percent for those who quit school before 16. "I was gobsmacked when we got those results," said Ford Hickson of Sigma Research, which conducted the survey. "Education gives you things," Hickson said in an interview with Gay Times. "And the more you have, the fewer needs you have. Education supplies you with choices. It increases your ability to pursue the choices that are available, it increases your competence in pursuing those choices, it increases the interpersonal and economic resources you can call on, and it eases your uptake of information." |
