Then remember this: you reap what you sow.

by Nikki Serapio, Manager, New Media Strategies

If you didn't catch Rock the Vote's take on the midterms (we posted the RTV analysis earlier today), be sure to check it out — a lot of insights therein about what Congress and the Obama administration MUST do over the next few years in order to engage and re-engage young people.

So where are we? When I dug through the election postmortems this morning, I was surprised (perhaps I should not have been?) by the number of knee-jerk and evidence-flimsy news articles and blog posts about the youth vote. Some pundits will never cease scapegoating young people, but nevertheless it was frustrating to see one particularly specious argument making the rounds today: look here...there was a decline in under 30-year-old turnout in yesterday's election versus the 2008 election...and therefore young people are to blame for the Democratic Party's losses yesterday.

Never mind the fact that it's unfair to compare a midterm election to a presidential election. When you take an honest look at the numbers for this cycle, you see one bare truth amidst the spin.

In a time when young people account for 1 out of every 4 new HIV infections, Congress is close to eliminating the only dedicated federal funding stream for school-based HIV prevention — $40 million in funding that states and large urban school districts need in order to carry out their vital youth HIV prevention programs.

Follow this link to take action now!

The Elton John AIDS Foundation (EJAF) is a proud partner of Greater Than AIDS, a national movement that brings together some of the country’s largest media companies and other corporate partners, private foundations, local health departments, and AIDS service organizations. Through a national media campaign and targeted community outreach, Greater Than AIDS aims to increase knowledge and understanding about HIV/AIDS and confront the stigma surrounding the disease, with a particular emphasis on reaching Black Americans.

You can hear more from the inspiring individuals featured in the campaign, in their own words, here.  

by Jaclyn Friedman

There’s only one kind of sex scandal worthy of discussing, and that’s the kind in which one or more participants in the scandal are acting like hypocrites. Think Eliot Spitzer, crusading against the sex trade and frequenting a prostitute. Think any of the “family values” politicians getting caught cheating, or the homophobic preachers who are actually on the DL. Think Tiger Woods selling himself as the ultimate family man. Even still, you’ll notice that hypocrisy alone isn’t enough to make a valid sex scandal - the hypocrite must be someone with influence over culture or policy. If your next-door neighbor is cheating on her wife, it’s not a sex scandal for anyone outside of your neighborhood. And even if the person is a powerful influencer, it’s the fact of their hypocrisy that matters, not the minutia of their bedroom behavior.

I mention this because people seem confused lately.