A Decade of Pandemic Waste:
Dubious Prevention Interventions:
Gay Life    Workshops — Part II

Thirty-one Frivolous Workshops Fail to Prevent HIV (Continued)			Part I: Return to Part I of Story Part II: More Ads 11 Workshops Detailed: • HIV Is Getting in the Way   of My Life! • Beyond Muscle and Fat:   Body Choices • Inhabiting the Body   of Love • Couples Workshop • Life Transformations   Support Group • Happiness • Maximum Potential:   Creating a New Life Vision • Exploring Gay   Relationships • Touching the Heart • Days of Our Gay Lives:   The Workshop • Days of Our Gay Lives:   The Video Another 11 Workshops … A Penny for Your Thoughts!
This page describes 22 additional workshops, and one “focus group.”  There are other workshops that have been rolled out in various years that TheLastWatch has not yet chronicled here. But if more frivolous and dubious workshops continue to be introduced in the Gay Life workshop series, we will continue to update these pages.

Another 11 Useless Gay Life Workshops (presented in no particular order) …   

March 20, 2002	HIV Is Getting in the Way of My Life!   March 20, 2002 Facilitator:  Tim Teeter, BSN (a nurse and associate director of treatment support at SFAF) and Scott Moore (the then-manager of the Gay Life program at SFAF) Ad Narrative: “ ‘I’ve lunched with the grim reaper, so why is paying my bills so hard?’  ‘Am I sill gay if I’m not having sex?’  Do HIV and HIV treatment create barriers to your happiness and connections with other gay men?  Join other positive men in safe and honest discussion about being HIV positive in San Francisco, 2002.  Whether you became positive yesterday, this four-part workshop will explore issues such as sex, dating, HIV and HIV treatment.” Number of Ad Versions:  1 Commentary:  Sex and dating.  Sex and dating.  Over and over and over, SFAF’s workshops focus on sex and dating, as if having had lunch with the grim reaper would place sex and dating higher on people’s radar screens than paying their bills, treatment adherence, housing issues.  Are some gay men so lost that they can’t even decide for themselves whether they are still gay in the absence of having sex that they need public health funds to conduct this workshop to answer this most-pressing question from SFAF’s staff, which is riddled with heterosexuals?    And where are SFAF’s workshops for women titled “Breast Cancer Is Getting in the Way of My Life!,” or workshops for the 90 year old crowd titled “Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Are Getting in the Way of My Life!”? Top
January 29, 2003	Beyond Muscle and Fat:  Body Choices   January 29, 2003 Facilitator: Michael MacDonald, Wellness Coach Ad Narrative: “We are individual gay men with unique bodies and personalities.  In this four-part course you will learn how to think and act positively toward your body.  We will explore how the culture influences your body perception, examine your own feelings about your body, and learn tools and techniques to help you promote a better self-image and develop a wellness program that is right for you.  Come celebrate the unique you.” Number of Ad Versions:  1 Commentary:  Do gay men really need to attend a four-part course to learn to think positively about their bodies?  To be fair, where is the course that teaches lesbians how to act positively to their bodies, and is another course required for heterosexuals, too? Or aren’t lesbians and straight people unique enough to have a publicly-funded program to teach them how to “think and act positively”? Top
March 17, 2003	Inhabiting the Body of Love   March 17, 2003 Facilitator:  Jamie McHugh, Registered Somatic Movement Therapist Ad Narrative: “The body of fear diminishes the body of love and contributes to our isolation.  Conscious attention to our bodies from the inside out makes it easier to soften our tensions so we can open up to one another.  In this experiential evening the technology of somatics will be introduced (breath, sound, touch, movement and stillness) as a way to re-vision how we inhabit our bodies and what may be possible.” Number of Ad Versions:  1 Commentary:  Now I get it:  Learning “stillness” and knowing how to breathe will keep me from getting AIDS!  Why had my doctor not told me earlier that what I needed was a somatic movement therapist?  Here he and I thought that I’d been inhabiting my body quite nicely for 50-plus years, and I now learn that I haven’t been breathing, touching, and moving correctly?  I’m [not so] convinced that somatic movement therapy will prevent anyone from contracting HIV or progressing to AIDS! Top
November 3, 2003	Couples Workshop   November 3, 2003 Facilitator:  Patrick Barresi, MPH, Men’s Health Instructor and his partner, Jerry Maynard Ad Narrative: “Gay relationships experience the same joys and challenges as other relationships.  But who is out there supporting our Gay couples?  We [SFAF] are.  This 4 part series for couples will examine how to keep your relationship vibrant and healthy, in and out of the bedroom.  The workshop will be highly interactive and will give each couple an opportunity to improve their communication skills, deepen their intimacy, and learn new techniques to achieve the relationship of their desire.” Number of Ad Versions:  1 Commentary:  After first sponsoring the “Sex on the Net” workshop to locate sexual partners, why is SFAF then trying to push couple-dom on a gay culture that is not allowed to marry? And, again, when did having a “vibrant” relationship prevent people from acquiring HIV/AIDS? Top
February 26, 2003 Appeared February 6 February 26, 2003 Appeared February 20	Life Transformations Support Group   February 26, 2003 Facilitator:  Michael MacDonald, Wellness Coach Ad Narrative: “Take your life to the next level.  Join other men in this safe and supportive six week workshop series.  Find out what energizes and drains you.  Get support to achieve your personal best in all areas of your life.  Topics include self care, clearing clutter, personal wellness, and creating life energy.” Number of Ad Versions: 2 Commentary:  When was the last time that you heard that “clearing clutter” or acquiring “life energy” would stop anybody from acquiring any disease, let alone AIDS?  And was it really necessary to have two different versions of ads for the same workshop date appearing just two weeks apart?  Which cost more: Redesigning the ad for a smaller space, or the larger ad space in the newspaper? Top
Ad Not Displayed For Web Space Reasons	Happiness   November 28, 2001 Ad Narrative: “It’s a Holly, Jolly Season; It’s the best time of the year.  Well, not always for everyone.  Join Gay Life in a special version of this workshop, designed to help gay men explore ways of creating happier lives and a warm holiday season.” Number of Ad Versions:  1 Commentary:  Oh brother!  TheLastWatch wonders whether this workshop used Martha Stewart as a facilitator to teach these gay men how to have a warm holiday season by knowing how to decorate for the holidays.  So does this mean that if you’re just able to be happy you won’t contract HIV? What has this workshop got to do with science-based prevention? Top
Ad Not Displayed For Web Space Reasons	Maximum Potential:  Creating a New Life Vision   January 22, 2003 Facilitator:  Frank Burgoyne, Corporate Trainer and Life Coach Ad Narrative: “Explore the possibilities for creating a new life vision that allows you to be in the driver’s seat.  Find out what drains us and keeps us stuck.  And, in a safe and supportive environment make connections with other guys who are ready to achieve their maximum potential.” Number of Ad Versions:  1 Commentary:  What expertise does a corporate trainer bring to the prevention table that other public health authorities do not already possess?  And what is the “making connections” portion of this workshop all about:  Was this a match-making, introduction service, or an HIV prevention workshop? Top
Ad Not Displayed For Web Space Reasons	Exploring Gay Relationships   March 14, 2002 Facilitator:  John Olesen, MA, a Psychodramatist and a Gay Life Counselor at SFAF Ad Narrative: “Gladly, there are no firm and fast blueprints for gay relationships.  Let’s map and explore the path to finding the type of relationship that best meets your needs.  This interactive four-part workshop focuses on letting go of past love mistakes, meeting Mr. Right vs. Mr. Right-now, and dropping the roadblocks to finding him.” Number of Ad Versions:  1 Commentary:  So gay men need a government-funded class to learn how to get over their past love mistakes.  Lovely!  Another match-making workshop designed to teach gay men how to find the “right” kind of gay relationship — that is, the kind of relationship that the AIDS Foundation defines as right, vs wrong. Aren’t we fortunate that we have psychodrama resources in San Francisco to help solve this centuries-old riddle!  TheLastWatch wonders if there is a sufficient supply of psychodramatists in the rest of the homeland to make sure each jurisdiction has equitable access to the public health benefits afforded by psychodrama. Top
Ad Not Displayed For Web Space Reasons	Touching the Heart   January 22, 2002 Facilitator:  Christopher Love, MA, Spiritual Counselor, Yoga Instructor and Rebirthing Instructor Ad Narrative:  “Many gay men are quite familiar with touch, yet many struggle with feeling disconnected.  Together we will experiment and explore the power of conscious touch in relation to each other and, most importantly, to ourselves.” Number of Ad Versions:  1 Commentary:  So all we need to do to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS is to find ourselves a rebirthing instructor who is also a Yoga instructor, and problems with feeling disconnected will be cured? Are there enough rebirthing instructors in other parts of the country who can also lead this workshop, say in Peoria?  What about Africa?  Can SFAF export this workshop to Africa via the Pangaea Global AIDS foundation?       As with other of the ads, readers should note that many of these workshops are “experiments,” not proven science-based prevention interventions.  And SFAF has never been forthcoming over which of these “experiments” prove efficacious — by way of showing us actual HIV infections that have been prevented — and which ones are a total waste of taxpayer and charity-donating public funds.  It is as if SFAF is using public health funds in order to conduct a vast experiment with these useless workshops.    Readers should also note that in 2002, SFAF changed the tag line of its advertisements to read: “Gay Life, promoting gay men’s sexual health, and emotional well-being.”  The tag line, when the Gay Life program was introduced in 1998, had first read “The Gay Life program offers all gay men the chance to gather in a variety of forums to discuss the challenges they face in achieving balance in their lives.”     Great.  We’ve gone from needing to “achieve balance” to needing “sexual health and emotional well-being.”  Or so SFAF would have us believe. Top
	Days of Our Gay Lives: The Workshop   February 26, 2002 Facilitator:  Scott Moore, one of the writers and producers of “Days of Our Gay Lives,” and manager of the Gay Life Program Ad Narrative: “The laughter.  The tears.  The witty banter.  The sexy repartee.  It’s ‘Days of Our Gay Lives,’ the soap opera that delves into the trials and tribulations of five gay fabulists living the gay life in San Francisco.  This six-part workshop lets you share the story and the issues — like one-night stands, HIV and gay families — with other devotees. Don’t you dare miss a single second.” Number of Ad Versions: 1 Commentary:  The Gay Life program has had, at a minimum, at least three separate “managers” in as many years.  One manager — after TheLastWatch questioned SFAF’s Board of Directors about the lack of oversight of a potentially $1.4 million media campaign called Assumptions — Joe Headlee, disappeared from SFAF’s staff, almost overnight.  It’s too bad the other managers haven’t disappeared, too, since the so-called “programming” bringing these Gay Life workshops to life has been all but useless. Top
Ad Not Displayed For Web Space Reasons	Days of Our Gay Lives: The Video (Part 7)   October 11, 1999 Ad Narrative: “Drama Drama Drama.  Days of our Gay Lives, the on-going video soap opera ripped from the lives of actual gay men.  Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Screening Room. The Gay Life program offers all gay men the chance to gather in a variety of forums to discuss the challenges they face in achieving balance in their lives.” Number of Ad Versions:  Unknown, although there were at least eight parts to the video series. Commentary:  Reasonable people wonder how much it cost SFAF to rent the screening room at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, where several episodes of the soap opera were shown. Top

Another 11 Workshops …
	So if the twenty workshops described above haven’t been enough to convince you of the senseless content that the Gay Life events have revealed themselves to be, how about these additional 11 offerings: Intimacy, The Final Frontier  “Emotional closeness, sex and love can be integrated. This dynamic six-part workshop will examine distinctive ways to increase and keep intimacy in gay men’s lives.”  January 18, 2001 and also in 2002. Facilitator Fees: $10,800  (Each year: $5,400 for 18 sessions, at $150.00 per hour). Food:  $720  (Each year: $2 per each of 10 attendees at the 18 sessions: $360. Gay Culture: Tours of Your Gay Life  “A touch of leather, a feather boa, vintage porn, and the poems of Walt Whitman.  Meet other gay men and share the riches of our own gay history, our gay culture, and our gay lives.  A seven-part workshop.”  February 22, 2001 and also in 2002.   Facilitator Fees:  $3,600  (Each year: $1,800 for 6 sessions, at $150.00 per hour). Food:   $720  (Each year: $2 per each of 10 attendees at the 18 sessions: $360). Admission to Activities, Clubs:  $1,800  (Each year: “$3 per each of 10 attendees at the 18 sessions: $900). Note:  The contract specified for the facilitators that there would be 3 groups meeting for 2 sessions each for a total of 6 sessions; elsewhere, the contract stipulated the need food and admission fees for 3 groups each having 6 sessions, for a total of 18 sessions.  Ostensibly, SFAF may have either picked up the expenses for facilitators for the other 12 sessions out of their own so-called “private funds,” or licensed mental health professionals may not have been used for the 12 additional sessions. Sexuality and Spirituality:  Experience the Connection  “Your sexual side.  Your spiritual side.  The bond may be stronger than you might expect.  Join Tom Moon and other gay men in exploring the connection between sexuality and spirituality — and discover how to find support, compassion, humor and healing in both.”  February 14, 2002 and also in 2001.   Facilitator’s Fees: $14,400 (Each year: $7,200 for 12 sessions, using two facilitators at each session at $150.00 per hour). Food:   $480  (Each year: $2 per each of 10 attendees at the 12 sessions: $240). Fag Art  [Have not yet located the workshop ad to obtain the narrative]  Held in 2001 and 2002 per SF DPH contract.   Facilitator Fees:  Unknown; not budgeted for in SF DPH contract. Food:   $240  (Each year: $2 per each of 10 attendees at 6 sessions: $120). Admission to Galleries, Exhibitions:  $960  (Each year: “$8 per each of 10 attendees at 6 sessions: $480). Meditation Workshop  “We often get so wrapped up in the fast pace of life today that we can miss the little details that enrich our daily lives.  Meditation is a tool that can help us learn to stay present despite all the chaos around us.  In this class you will learn: – Two healing meditation/grounding techniques to energize and clear your body – How to energize yourself anytime, anywhere – A simple practice you can do every morning that will take you 5 minutes to start your day grounded and connected. No prior meditation experience is required.”  February 13, 2003. Relationships:  I Need a Man  “This interactive four-part workshop focuses on letting go of past love mistakes , meeting Mr. Right vs. Mr. Right-now, and how to nurture and sustain relationships that will work for you.”  April 2, 2001. Touching the Lonely Heart   Same course content as “Touching the Heart” listed above, which had dropped the word “Lonely” by the time it was presented in 2002.  April 3, 2001. [Aside:  Could it be that the “lonely hearts club” metaphor had been noticed, and roundly rejected even by lonely gay men, so SFAF simply repackaged the seminar with a new title?] Finding Happiness  “Discover a personal definition of happiness, and to bring it fully into one’s life.  This short two-session workshop will explore how we can create happier lives.”  April 12, 2001.  [Note:  This course had a name change in November 2001 dropping the word “Finding.”] “A Few Gay Men” A Video Adaptation of the Ronnie Larsen Play  “Playwright Ronnie Larsen pulls no punches in ‘A Few Gay Men,’ a gritty chronicles [sic] of urban gay men’s sex lives.  From coming to just cumming, this frank look at gay sex and gay life played to sold out audiences in San Francisco last summer.  And now Gay Life brings Larsen’s conversational tour de force, formatted for the silver screen, to the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.  It’s men on men — and Gay Life invites you to be one of them.  Get caught up in the intimacy of ‘A Few Gay Men.’ ”  February 11, 2002.  [Note:  TheLastWatch wonders how much it cost to re-stage this play in order to be able to capture it on videotape, how much it cost to again rent out the screening room at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, and how much of a stipend was paid — and to whom — to the video producer and to the playwright.”] The Soul Beneath the Skin:  Gay Men Finding New Ways to Be With and For Each Other  “Gay life proudly presents an evening with the founder of Manifest Love, Dave Nimmons, a gay leader in New York City since 1983 and author of the Soul Beneath the Skin.  Manifest Love encourages gay men to understand and embody the best, most powerful and transformative values we bring to culture.  Manifest Love embodies a vision that different kinds of queer men, working together, can shape a more loving, affectionate, and affirming world, for ourselves and others. ”  Seminar 7:00–9:00 PM, Reception/Book Signing 9:00–10:00 PM, March 22, 2002, at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center.  [Note:  TheLastWatch wonders how much it cost to rent space at the LGBT Center for this event, and also wonders about the propriety of a book signing, with its implied book sales to workshop attendees and how much Mr. Nimmons may have pocketed from book sales at a workshop potentially funded by government contracts.]  May 22, 2002 Is It Time to Talk? We’re Here to Listen and to Help? “Gay Life Counseling provides up to 16 sessions of free individual and couples’ counseling to Gay men who have unprotected sect in the last 6 months.  [No date given, but ad appeared in the Bay Area Reporter on May 17, 2001.] TheLastWatch will continue to pore through old issues of the Bay Area Reporter and the now-defunct San Francisco Frontiers News Magazine to chronicle the evolving history of workshops sponsored by SFAF’s misguided Gay Life program. Top
A Penny For Your Thoughts! [2,500 Pennies, to Be Precise]
	Desperate for new ideas (that it appears unable to fathom of its own accord), SFAF’s newest ad — in the November 27, 2003 issue of the Bay Area Reporter — is offering 2,500 pennies (“in dollars, of course,” which translates to a mere $25) in order to pick the gay community’s collective brain about “about what issues you and other gay men are facing today.”   Duplicitiously, there is no mention in the ad that it is the San Francisco AIDS Foundation wanting to pick gay men’s brains yet again, probably to steer it’s program development” (finally?) in the right direction.  There is no SFAF logo in this ad, and no mention of which organization had placed and paid for the advertisement.  Instead, the only clue that SFAF is behind the 2,500 penny give away is the e-mail address directed to one Mark Rumpler at SFAF.org.  You’ll remember Mr. Rumpler as having been one of the two facilitators used for SFAF’s “Sex on the Net” Gay Life workshop that had raised the ire of citizen watchdog groups troubled by SFAF’s penchant for teaching gay men how to locate sex partners on the Internet.  It now seems that as a result of having been a facilitator — possibly at the $150 per hour going rate — for one of SFAF’s “Sex on the Net” workshops, Mr. Rumpler has now potentially been rewarded by being hired as an SFAF employee. Is SFAF that clueless, that it needs to bribe — OK, pay “incentives” to — gay men to tell them what is on our minds?  [Aside:  If the organization weren’t staffed so top heavy with rabid heterosexuals, they might have a clue in its vapid organizational mind about what issues gay men currently face.  As it is, they are so clueless they have to offer up incentives in order to get people to join a focus group to tell SFAF what our issues are, which it appears unable to fathom itself.]   Forgetting for a moment that they are required contractually to conduct program evaluation survey’s before Gay Life participants are paid any form of “incentive” for attending the 31 workshops noted above, a reasonable person would assume that feedback gleaned during the workshops would have provided clues — without the need for additional 2,500 pennies incentives — about what’s on gay men’s radar screens, and what isn’t.  Are these so-called workshop “facilitators” so inept that they can’t “data mine” conversation occurring in the workshops to gain some clue of what current issues are? By offering this “incentive,” how will the results of this newest focus group have been skewed?  Will SFAF truthfully acknowledge that the results were twisted by the very dire straights in which gay men trying to make ends meet in order to pay rent, buy medications and food, and otherwise survive in this town that drove them into prostituting their time in order to pocket a pocketful of pennies? And just why is SFAF limiting this new focus group to only participants who are between 25 and 40 years of age?  What about the 15 to 24 year old cohort, or the 41 to 70 years of age cohort?  Aren’t the 15–24 crowd, or the 41–70 group also deserving of a $25 stipend to supplement to their incomes?   [Another aside:  This is reminiscent of a so-called “distance healing” scientific research project conducted in San Francisco in the past three years that limited enrollment (and may have lead to flawed and skewed results) by excluding certain age groups from earning a $25 incentive to learn how long-distance prayer could halt AIDS, and further excluded people whose primary language was not English, as if faith-based distance healing emanating from prayer was presumed not to work for our Spanish-speaking brothers and sisters, and prayer would definitely not work for people in their 80’s much closer to death who presumably pray more than cohorts of other age groups.]   Could it be that SFAF is trying to position itself to win another government contact, having the benefit of focus group input prior to crafting another grant application? Or is shelling out 2,500 pennies per participant — for God only knows how many already misguided gay men will show up for this focus group, desperate to make ends meet by allowing their brains to be picked clean — simply an act of desperation by an organization so clueless that it doesn’t have any idea whatsoever that its failed Gay Life workshops have not stemmed the rise in HIV/AIDS, and which workshops have likely not prevented a single new seroconversion in the five years we’ve endured this Gay Life farce, which is often billed as the “best” HIV prevention intervention San Francisco prevention wonks can dream up? Top

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Copyright (c) 2004 by Patrick Monette-Shaw.  All rights reserved.  This work may not be reposted anywhere on the Web, or reprinted in any print media, without express written permission of the author.  E-mail him at pmonette-shaw@earthlink.net.