EMBRACE the Future of Gay Denver—Community Building Weekend

Saturday September 18 & Sunday September 19

What does a thriving gay community look like to you? Do you have ideas and time you would like to contribute to gay Denver?

Join us on a journey into the gay men’s health movement where we will spend two days in a “heart centered” space exploring friendship, circles of support, networking, and leading our community into a vibrant future.

We will discover gay Denver and discuss how we can build, strengthen and maintain a vibrant, dynamic, and active gay community. Other areas we will touch on are:

Gay Spirituality
Gay Friendships
Gay Relationships
Gay Families
Intimacy
Self Care
HIV prevention and education

If you see yourself as a leader or a community organizer or have been looking for ways to strengthen these areas of your life, please contact Deryk at EMBRACE to sign up for this innovative community building weekend for gay men.

Call 303.997.2818 or email: deryk@sageriver.com

Held at Red and Jerry’s event Center (Oxford and Santa Fe)
Friday September 3rd, 2010
Doors Open at 8pm
Tickets are only $25
18+

(click graphic to enlarge)

As usual, our curated selection of things happening roundabouts Denver-Boulder and even Pueblo this weekend:

• The Colorado State Fair starts this weekend in Pueblo, www.coloradostatefair.com.

• This month’s Drama Drag show at Tracks is themed Madonna-ramma.  No special guest star is listed on the official flyer.  As usual doors open at 9pm and cover is $10 but I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again, drag shows at Tracks can take up to two and a half hours to start so be warned.

• Saturday night BCAP (Boulder County AIDS Project) is having their annual drag show fundraiser Absolute Fabulous Gorgeous.  Sure the name is kind of odd but the show is always spectacular and the money goes to a good cause.  Tickets are $18 and for $25 you can get “premiere seating.”  A pre-show reception is from 7-8 and the actual show is from 8-10, for tickets call (303) 444-7328. More info here.

• According to the OutFront calendar there’s a beer bust fundraiser Saturday night from 6-10pm at Compound to raise money for the annual Octobearfest in Denver every September.  The actual Octobearfest website has no mention of the event and the listing on OutFront’s site is pretty absent of additional details too so I dunno what’s up with that, so show up at your own risk.

• Sunday at the City Park softball fields is the 2nd annual Kickin for a Cause, that cause being Howard Dental which provides dental care to people with HIV/AIDS.  The kickball tournament begins at 10am and registration is $25 per person.  Not already part of a team?  No problem, just register as an individual and organizers will hook you up with one.  More info here.

• Colorado has seen at least a 13 percent increase in early syphilis cases reported in the first half of 2010 compared to the first half of 2009, and approximately 94 percent of those cases occurred among men who have sex with men, the majority of whom are gay identified.

• Approximately 48 percent of the gay men who were diagnosed with early syphilis in 2010 reported meeting sexual partners online.

• Over half of gay men diagnosed with syphilis are also living with HIV.

• In the first half of 2010, 1 percent of those diagnosed with early syphilis fell into the under 20 age bracket, 33 percent in the 20-29 age bracket, 25 percent in the 30-39 age bracket, 33 percent in the 40-49 age bracket and 8 percent over age 49.

Click here to read the rest of the full story on OutFront’s website.

You  may have gotten our emails but just a reminder our survey ends Friday at the end of business day so hop to it!

See ELEMENT’s leadership retreat is coming up and we’re doing some strategic planning and need to hear from you about the services we provide to the community.  We want to get an idea of our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (S.W.O.T., isn’t that cute?).  Also we want to get an idea of ELEMENT’s internal strengths and weaknesses; then from the outside we want to hear about opportunities and threats.

So no matter your role we want to hear from you, that includes people who’ve been to a single ELEMENT event, volunteers, local community leaders… whoever.

The survey is only one page long and totally anonymous.

Click here to take the survey.

In a relationship already?  Just dating around?  Want to sharpen your dating skills?  Virtually no matter what phase of a relationship you’re in Boyfriend University has something to offer.

RTD’s website has a map showing the proposed route, sorry for the low resolution, it was the biggest I could find on their site.

Porn super-star Mason Wyler has disclosed on his blog that is his HIV+.  His brief post in it’s entirety:

I have something to say. I spent the last few months waiting for the right time to tell you but it turns out that there is no right time… I wish I could put this off for a little while longer but information like this usually finds a way of coming out sooner than later. In fact, people have already begun to talk so I might as well just tell you now. I tested positive. I have only myself to blame. I have HIV and it kind of sucks.

Porn news blog TheSword.com reports scumbag porn webmaster Mark Wilson originally outted Mason’s.  Sometimes it boggles the mind the number of people who think it’s acceptable to disclose someone else’s status, including of all people Manhunt.net’s in-house advise columnist Michael Alvear.

I admit I’m fond of Mason’s work and I’m curious how this might affect his career.  Whereas contracting HIV means an end to a straight porn career (gee talk about stigmatizing), a recent anonymous survey of gay porn actors revealed a full 30% were either poz or unsure of their status and 52% of survey respondents either never or rarely discussed their status with scene partners.

But my question, how many of those people are OPEN and PUBLIC with their status and how does that affect their cast-ability in films?  Off the top of my head I couldn’t think of any mainstream (non-bareback) openly poz gay pornstars.  If you happen to know of any please post a comment below and include a source link.

Fortunately TheSword.com is already reporting the Raging Stallion network of porn sites has issued a common sense statement:

Raging Stallion practices safe sex on all of its video shoots–indeed we enjoy filming hot safe sex and showing other gay men how to have hot safe sex. HIV status should not be an issue when shooting porn if the actors are using condoms and using common sense. Raging Stallion would love to shoot Mason Wyler in an upcoming movie. He is a great actor and I have always wanted to work with him. Nothing has changed from my perspective.

God now if only the rest of the porn industry would adopt such a rational view.

images from Wyler’s porn site

(photo of Midtowne LA via flickr user DandyDanny, source)

Tonight is Midtowne Spa’s monthly “twink night” from 4-midnight.  Guys 18-25 get a free locker (if you’ve never been before and need a new membership that’ll cost ya a whopping $4).  More info on Midtowne’s website here.  As a side note I was google image searching “twink sauna” and such to find an image for this post and there is literally NOTHING that’s PG rated out there.  Pretty much every search involving “twink” returns filthy content.

Sunday night a man was stabbed to death in a bar fight in Broomfield and now the family is “hearing conflicting stories” about possible gay harassment at the bar.  The Denver Post really drops the ball with the story because they fail to elaborate on the “conflicting stories” or bother to ask the police or witnesses about it.  So yeah, if the Post gets their shit figured out and this starts shaping up like a bias motivated crime I’ll update y’all.

Curious what homo-bigot James Dobson has been up to since leaving Focus On The Family?  He’s got his own syndicated radio program called Family Talk and the CO Springs Gazette reports he’s starting his own political action non-profit, 501(c)4.  Much like Focus’ CitizenLink (anti-gay) and Gill Action (pro-gay) Dobson’s new group can engage in political lobbying and campaigning; donations to such groups are not tax deductible. It’s also worth noting that according to the Gazette Dobson’s program is only receiving about 25% of the money it needs to sustain itself and is currently being supported by a 1 million dollar initial donation from Focus.

ELEMENT’s weekly curated selection of weekend happenings…  I’m in Texas on business but all of youz in Denver have a busy weekend with three gay fundraisers to chose from:

• Regular Connexion users have no doubt seen the ads for H2OMO Saturday afternoon at the Boulder Reservoir.  The event is a fundraiser for BCAP and Boulder Pride and entertainment will include host Eda Bagel, live music, drag shows, DJ and volleyball.  The event is all-ages and there will be a beer garden and tickets are $20 but it’s unclear if that ticket is just for the beer garden or if everyone needs a ticket to get into the event regardless of age.  There’ll even be bus transportation provided between the Boulder Bus Station and the reservoir, more info about that here.  The main event website is here.

• Saturday night the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (the most kickasss of all gay rights groups) is having a fundraiser dance at Club M, the dancy half of Hamburger Mary’s.  Presale tickets are $25 or $30 at the door.  Curious what’s happening, have a look at the flyer below.  If you decide to go you can register online here.

• Sunday from 1-4PM is the LGBT wedding expo at the Magnolia Hotel downtown.  The event description says there will be 30 exhibitors present including “travel planners, gift companies and home & family-planning resources.”  Oh and it’s FREE to attend.  More info here. (via MHGG)

• Sunday night Vinyl is having their usual rooftop party but this week the them is White Party and big name DJ Keoki is spinning.  CafeVivid’s listing for the event claims an unspecified (I hate that) amount of the  proceeds go to UNO Colorado, a new LGBT Latino organization.  Here’s a flyer from the digital edition of gayzette: