Living Out Loud with Darian

If you live in Miami or any city in Southern Florida then be on the lookout for a new magazine focused specifically on SGL men of Color. MPOWER Magazine is an extension of Miami Men's MPOWERMENT Project, a unique organization created to inform, educate, and promote healthier lifestyles among young men who engage or may engage in risky sexual behaviors that make them susceptible to contracting STD's and HIV.


Yours truly is a staff writer for the magazine and I've contributed three articles in the current issue. I've posted a few scans and excerpts from the articles below since the magazine isn't online yet.





Diamond Taylor: Agent of Change: 25 year-old STD Prevention Researcher


An openly gay man, Taylor himself has felt the sting of judgement and rejection, placing him in a unique position to offer
compassion to those individuals' society has rendered unworthy.


At 21 he was kicked out of his family home after he revealed his sexual orientation to his conservative Bahamian family. "I was actually homeless for two months and I lived out of my car. It took a lot of time and a lot of tears {for his parents} to accept me for who I am and to realize that being gay is definitely not a choice," he says.


What got him through those difficult emotional days he says was "a lot of prayer and a lot of hope and belief that God would pull me through."





Life After Noah's Arc:


Our fascination with the groundbreaking black gay television series Noah's Arc didn't end after the abrupt cancellation of the hit show during it's second season nor after fans were extended invitations to witness Noah and Wade jump the broom during the 2008 theatrical release, for some their love and admiration of the men who brought our favorite characters to life only intensified. With DVD's of the original series becoming a staple in black same-gender loving households on par with Ebony and JET Magazines, and frequent reruns on LOGO, it came as no surprise that fans were curious to find out the "da-ga-ga" on the men behind the one name characters we fell in love with.





PrEp: A New Era in HIV Prevention?


PrEp is the latest strategy being used to prevent new HIV infections by the use of anti-retroviral drugs Viread and Truvada in negative individuals prior to sexual contact and possible exposure.


According to the Center for Disease Control the Botswana, Thailand, and Uganda trials are all assessing the effects of taking a daily pill on HIV risk behaviors, adherence to and acceptability of the regimen, and in cases where participants become HIV-infected, the resistance characteristics of the acquired virus.


More info at cdc.gov