After 14 years of effort, the New York City AIDS Monument was dedicated yesterday in Hudson River Park. From 1985 to 2002, over 81,000 AIDS deaths were reported in New York City and the monument, a 42-foot long, 2-foot tall, 12-inch deep curved granite bench, is meant to be a place to quietly reflect the lives lost . An inscription on the side facing the river says, "I can sail without wind, I can row without oars, but I cannot part from my friend without tears."

A march and rally in the Haitian city of St. Marc yesterday, was called by organizers the first of its kind, as gay men and HIV-positive people called for better AIDS treatment and prevention. A dozen men marched in the parade wearing t-shirts reading "I am Gay" or "I Am Living With HIV". According to the AP:

"Organizers said they hoped the march will break barriers to reach more HIV-positive people and gay men with programs that have helped decrease the country's infection rate by two-thirds in the last decade.

"They suffer double the stigma and double the discrimination," said Esther Boucicault Stanislas, a leading activist known as the first person in Haiti to publicly declare that she was HIV-positive after her husband died of AIDS in the early 1990s."

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Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota will the Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services Secretary according to Democratic officials. The department is responsible for a national strategy on AIDS research and prevention.

Daschle has an excellent record on combating HIV/AIDS. He's the co-chair of the ONE Foundation and in July led a delegation of policymakers to Rwanda, where he visited with HIV patients in clinics to highlight the suffering caused by AIDS in that country and some of the efforts being made to combat it. At the time he told reporters:

“We have a moral obligation to assist those suffering from abject poverty and disease. Investments in the development of our world’s poorest nations must be a pillar of our foreign policy going forward, no matter who is leading the next administration.  I am encouraged by the tremendous impact that these programs have had in fighting the spread of disease across Africa. Over the last four years, two million more people living with AIDS now have access to lifesaving medication."

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President-Elect Barack Obama has posted his plan for LGBT Rights on the Change.gov website and it's pretty comprehensive. It is by far, the most far-ranging civil rights agenda for the gay community ever offered by a President. Because the page is swathed in a combination of hopey vagueness and legislation you may have never heard of, here's a translation of the plan from Obamican to English:

Expand Hate Crimes Legislation
Obama supports the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act

In a separate section of the site, Obama offers support for the Matthew Shepard Act, which would significantly expand the 1969 Hate Crime law, give $10 million to law enforcement to investigate hate crimes and direct the FBI to track crimes made against LGBT people. The bill passed the House and the Senate in 2007 and was attatched to a defense spending bill as an ammendment. When Bush threatened a veto, the bill was dropped. The bill has widespread support in Congress and at the state-level, so with Obama's support, this bill will most likely pass.

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Could a genetically selected bone marrow transplant have cured an American living in Berlin of AIDS? Dr. Gero Huetter of Berlin's Charite Hospital says that 20 months later, his patient no longer shows signs of carrying the virus.

"Huetter's patient was under treatment at Charite for both AIDS and leukemia, which developed unrelated to HIV.

As Huetter - who is a hematologist, not an HIV specialist - prepared to treat the patient's leukemia with a bone marrow transplant, he recalled that some people carry a genetic mutation that seems to make them resistant to HIV infection. If the mutation, called Delta 32, is inherited from both parents, it prevents HIV from attaching itself to cells by blocking CCR5, a receptor that acts as a kind of gateway.

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A new landmark Australian Study shows that circumcision can protect against HIV in gay men who are tops. "We have shown for the first time that men who predominantly take on the insertive role in sex are less likely to contract HIV if they've been circumcised," said Dr David Templeton. Men who were mostly tops had an 85% reduced risk of getting HIV if they were circumcised.

The study followed 1,400 HIV-negative guys (two-thirds were circumcised) for fours years and tracked their HIV status. 53 Developed HIV. Of those 53, only 7 were tops. The results of the study suggest 5 could have been avoided if they had been cut.

Gay educators worry that the results will lead gay men to "throw out their condoms if they've had the snip, wrongly believing they are naturally protected." That seems unlikely, we're not that stupid.

On Monday, we told you that at least 15 percent – still a significant portion – of reported AIDS-related deaths were from contracting HIV through gay sex.

On Tuesday, we told you U.N. officials reported that "despite a stepped up global battle against AIDS, the numbers of people newly infected with HIV are far and away outpacing the numbers beginning antiretroviral drug treatments."

Today, it's time for a little more school. The web video series HIV is Still a Big Deal, debuting today, is an attempt to bring HIV/AIDS education to the web. The hope? That the only thing spreading virally is the video. More about the series below:

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When it comes to gays and Hollywood, what needs to change? With Fox News' John Gibson making it clear that not everybody is okay with gay plotlines, let alone gay actors, Queerty editorial director David Hauslaib sat down with BigThink.com to discuss that issue.

Also touched upon, in the clip below: what David believes to be the most important issues facing the gay community today, as well as the responsibility gay men and women have toward the younger generation.

The Republicans' actions and words at this weekend's Values Voter Summit prove one thing: the party simply refuses to evolve. Editor Andrew Belonsky explains why the Grand Old Party needs to embrace change, look beyond the walls of social conservatism and expand its definition of family values.

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If there’s one adversary gays must not ignore, it’s stagnation: the paralysis of motion and progression. With new queer headlines daily, it may seem that we’re in no threat of slowing down, but visibility and advancement are not necessarily the same thing. That’s one thing gay filmmaker Matt Wolf (seen here in a picture we lifted from his website. If you think he's a cute kid, you should see him now!) knows all too well.

Considering the political undertones of his short films, it comes as no surprise that Wolf once considered a career in politics. Coming out at the tender age of 14, Wolf threw himself into gay activism in his hometown of San Jose, CA, where he joined the burgeoning Gay-Straight Alliance Movement and pushed for anti-discrimination law to further the LGBT cause. It wasn’t until a few years later that he had another sort of coming out. “In high school, I decided that I didn’t want to work in politics. I wanted to be an artist.”

With a scholarship to New York University, Wolf packed up and headed east, where his activist roots and artistic dreams coalesced into something new entirely: the fictional documentary. Merging actual people and fabricated characters, Wolf's movies explore gay issues to shed light on our at times unsettling reality.

Join us after the jump as we examine Wolf’s earlier works and learn that while his media stays the same, his ideas evolve as fast as the world changes.

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• As new shots from Justin Timberlake Alpha Dog emerge, there's new reason to resurrect his "Trousersnake" monicker. [Towleroad]

• Do you have your signed Anderson Cooper headshot? [Jossip]

• Black gay bloggers are calling for the boycott of homophobic raggae artists Beenie Man and TOK's concert to raise HIV awareness next week. [Keith Boykin]

• Now that gay marriage in Massachusetts is legal, some employees better get hitched or face the loss of domestic parternship benefits. [AHN]

Kooky France and their big ideas: Disallowing headwraps and yarmulkes in public schools, banning U.S. hormone-fed beef, and now taxing airlines tickets for the benefit of those suffering with AIDS in poor countries.

The tax will result in tickets for flights departing from France costing anywhere from $1.27 to $51 more than usual depending on the destination and class of ticket. That means most normal people will hardly feel it, and the net money raised will be in the neighborhood of $256 million each year.

However, if you think your $1.27 will go to help AIDS victims the next time you fly, think again unless you're departing from France. Every U.S. airline is opposed to the tax along with the Bush administration.

HIV airline tax begins in France [The Advocate]