In a five-to-four decision, U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that public universities may refuse financial support to religious student groups that ban gay members. The University of California’s Hastings College of Law has an anti-discrimination policy that includes sexual orientation. To receive official recognition, student groups must not fall afoul of this policy. But the non-denominational Christian Legal Society’s rules include a ban on anyone participating in “a sexually immoral lifestyle” involving “sexual conduct outside of marriage between a man and a woman.” Hastings therefore withdrew its recognition of the 30-member group, meaning that, though the group might remain on campus, it would not be eligible for funding for events and travel, nor granted office space or access to publications and bulletin boards. The Christian Legal Society filed suit on first amendment grounds of infringement on the free practice of their religion.

In the majority opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote that the Christian Legal Society had sought “a preferential exemption from Hastings’ policy,” when in fact, she wrote, the University “may reasonably draw a line in the sand permitting all organizations to express what they wish but no group to discriminate in membership.” Ultimately, she wrote, “in requiring the CLS—in common with all other student organizations—to choose between welcoming all students and forgoing the benefits of official recognition, we hold, Hastings did not transgress constitutional limitations.” Her opinion, joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, is expected to have implications for the relationship between public universities and many campus groups, including sororities and fraternities. These will now have allow gays into their groups if they want money from public universities with anti-discrimination policies, even if doing so is in opposition to their religious beliefs.

In primary and secondary schools in two states, the situation for gay students is also set to improve. In Illinois on Sunday, Governor Pat Quinn signed into law the Prevent School Violence Act, which updated and added specificity to the state’s existing mandates. Under this act, for the first time, bullying is clearly defined, and extended to include cyber-bullying. Protection is also offered to a specific list of categories, including LGBT students. The law also creates a task force to examine the origins and impact of bullying. The findings are likely to be pretty depressing—which is exactly why this law is needed. According to the ACLU of Illinois, “Students report that physical appearance (looks or body size), sexual orientation and gender expression are the most common reasons other students at their school are bullied.” The ACLU also reports that more than half of Illinois students that they have been verbally harassed and nearly a quarter report being physically assaulted in school in the last year.

Governor Quinn’s signature made Illinois the ninth state with an anti-bullying law that protects gay students, but gay activists have reason to hope that there will very soon be a tenth, New York. Last week, the New York state senate passed an anti-bullying law of its own, one that, like Illinois’, protects LGBT students. The Dignity for All Students Act had already passed the state assembly, and Governor David Paterson is expected to sign it. The bill was largely the work of gay Assemblyman Daniel J. O’Donnell, who was pushed to action by the experience of being bullied over his weight as a youth. O’Donnell, speaking to the New York Times, was dismissive of the dated “kids will be kids” attitude.” As O’Donnell said, “That leads to suicide and it leads to death. There was a case in California where a transgender kid was murdered. So clearly, bullying escalates. What we’re trying to do is nip bullying in the bud.”

As State Senator Thomas K. Duane, who shepherded the bill through New York’s Senate, said in a statement, “No child should be terrified to go to school simply because of who they are.”

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A study published in the American Journal of Public Health has been getting a lot of press for confirming an old stereotype—which has masked its more troubling implications. The study seems to indicate that gay men are somewhat slimmer than their straight counterparts, while lesbians are heavier than straight women. But the more important finding is a shared and unfortunate quality: gays, lesbians and bisexuals all face greater health risks than straight people of either gender.

The researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, and John Snow Inc., used a behavioral risk factor survey involving 67,000 Massachusetts residents, aged 18 to 64 and surveyed between 2001 and 2008. Here’s the much-vaunted weight difference that they found: 21 percent of straight men are obese, according to the survey, versus 14 percent of gay men; 26 percent of lesbians, on the other hand, are obese, versus 17 percent of straight women. But we should look at the rest of the study’s rather grimmer findings. The researchers found that gays and lesbians (who formed 2 percent of their sample) and bisexuals (who formed 1 percent) were, they write, “more likely to report activity limitation, tension or worry, smoking, drug use, asthma, lifetime sexual victimization, and HIV testing.”

Unlike previous studies that focused primarily on sexually transmitted diseases and mental health issues in the gay community, this study included measures of general health and chronic illness. And in these areas, things are not good: gay men smoke more, and are less likely to get prostate-specific antigen tests. Lesbians also smoke more, and have increased risk of heart disease. Bisexual men and women have the most troubling health profile, with the least access to health care, increased risk of suicide, and elevated heart disease risk. Overall, the LGBT community is at elevated health risk, a fact that the media focus on weight differences fails to capture.

The study’s lead author, Kerith Conron of Northeastern University and the Harvard School of Public Health, suggested that, “This may mean that we in the public health community need to come up with more tailored messages to reach these groups, just as car dealers do when they want to reach a specific target audience.” The choice of metaphor is perhaps unfortunate, but the idea is sound: a public health agenda that takes seriously the gay community’s specific needs.

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Diet math is simple: you have to burn more calories than you take in. But it’s how you go about trimming those calories that isn’t quite so simple…unless you know a few good tips. Lucky for you, we’ve culled a few ideas to keep D-I-E-T from being a foul four-letter word.

Pump Up the Volume
Dread a diet because you hate to be hungry? Maybe it’s time to change your approach. Instead of making choices that pack big calories in an unsatisfying little package, try the inverse: low calorie foods in a bigger package. Take, for example, raisins. At about 120 calories, a serving of raisins is only a handful, ¼ cup to be exact. However, a larger one cup serving of grapes also has about the same amount of calories as the handful of raisins—that’s four times the volume for nearly the same amount of calories! Along the same lines, a one ounce serving of potato chips (and who really eats just one ounce? That’s only about ten chips!) will set you back just as many calories as an apple paired with one ounce of reduced fat cheese. At least with the latter you’ll be getting a healthy dose of filling fiber and some satiety-packed protein from the cheese. Get the picture? Aim for more food and less calories.

For a solid hunger-trumping weight loss strategy, fill your day with low calorie, high fiber foods. Try simple choices like adding a big salad to your lunch and dinner, choosing whole grain breads and crackers, and taking in at least five fruits and vegetables a day. Fill up on fiber and you’ll be doing a lot more than reducing your girth: a 2008 Danish study concluded that a diet low in fat, but high in fiber and reduced-calorie carbohydrates like fruits, vegetables and whole grains is a sure bet to combat not only weight gain, but also, type 2 diabetes.

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By L.K. Regan
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) has completed its annual survey of U.S. healthcare facilities, assessing their protections (and lack thereof) for LGBT patients. Mere weeks after President Obama ordered Medicare recipient hospitals to implement anti-discrimination policies for LGBT patients and their families, the HRC finds much improvement—and a lot more that could be done.

The HRC’s Healthcare Equality Index is, as they describe it, “an annual survey of healthcare policies and practices related to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender patients and their families.” The new report assesses data from 178 healthcare facilities located in 21 states and the District of Columbia. This included 13 healthcare networks as well as 37 individual, non-network facilities. The study identifies the hospitals and networks that have made the most improvement, and those that still have a long way to go.

The individual facilities attaining “Top Performer” status for 2010 were those that “ensure LGBT patients and their families are welcomed, respected and given culturally competent care;” in particular, these were facilities that instituted policies protecting patients from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The winners: Baystate Medical Center (Springfield, Ma.); Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (Boston, Ma.); and, lest you think it’s only Massachusetts that is making progress, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (Houston, Tx.).

The biggest movement overall was in the Kaiser Permanente Network in northern California, which received the first ever perfect score on the Healthcare Equality Index. That’s because Kaiser has just this week implemented a complete non-discrimination policy for LGBT patients at all of its 36 hospitals (31 that were included in the HEI). These policies cover both sexual orientation and gender identity. Kaiser is the first hospital network to implement such a comprehensive policy. “Kaiser Permanente is deeply committed to providing equitable, compassionate and high-quality care to our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender patients and their families, a level of care that is standard across our diverse patient population,” said George Halvorson, Kaiser Permanente chairman and chief executive officer. “In the Healthcare Equality Index report, we are proud to be able to highlight our commitment to these high standards of care, as well as our efforts to promote a supportive work environment for all our employees.”

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By L.K. Regan

Many times you’ve walked past a yoga class, glanced in, and thought, “Yeah, right.” You’re a gym guy. You don’t do that stretchy stuff. But there are very good reasons why men going for muscle may want to work on stretching—and there’s no better way to stretch than yoga. Check out the six compelling reasons why you should try yoga below. Then try it out yourself, using some starter yoga poses courtesy of Jamila Dunn, an experienced yoga instructor at the University of California at Berkeley.

Yoga for Muscle Guys—and Everyone Else
Why do even the biggest guys need to do yoga? Dunn and her colleague Devin Wicks, UC Berkeley fitness director and premier strength coach to some of the university’s teams, narrowed down the list to these six primary benefits:

1. Increase Your Range of Motion: Stretching increases the range of motion through which you can move a muscle. If you load that muscle across that larger range, as when you’re lifting, you ask the muscle to do more work—and thus can add size. If you’ve hit a plateau, doing yoga and increasing your range of motion may give you that little edge you’re looking for.
2. Strengthen Your Stabilizers: Yoga focuses on your stabilizer muscles, not just the large muscle groups. So yoga can help to strengthen the muscle complexes you need to support the development of bulk. Too often, muscle guys focus exclusively on the big, “pretty” muscles like the pecs and biceps—but you need your stabilizing muscles to strengthen alongside them.
3. Develop Core Strength: Yoga develops core strength, which is neglected in many weight-lifting programs, but which is absolutely crucial to sustaining big lifting programs. All of your lifting should be stabilized through your core—but if your core isn’t strong, you may have trouble managing big weights.
4. Reduce Risk of Injury: Stretching helps to prevent injury by increasing elasticity.
5. Reduce Your Resting Heart Rate (And Your Stress Levels): Yoga can help to lower your resting heart rate, a goal often talked about for performance athletes but important for us all. Plus, the practice further reduces stress. A study out of Yale suggests that a regular program of yoga and meditation has a positive effect on both stress and the deleterious effects of stress on the body.
6. Loosen Up and Motivate: Yoga stretches are a great way to warm up before an intense workout. While you don’t want to do a full-on yoga class and then immediately hit the weights, a simple few poses before you strength train can help you prepare physically and motivate mentally.

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Clemens Ruland, 45 (the right-hand figure in the accompanying photo), who works with troubled youth in Amsterdam and was diagnosed with HIV in 1997, arrived on a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight to NYC on Thursday afternoon at about 4:30 pm. He was accompanied by his partner, Hugo Bausch, who is HIV-negative. Ruland won their free trip to NYC by entering a poem into a contest held by the Dutch AIDS service organization SOAAIDS in celebration of President Obama’s November decision to lift the ban. For Ruland, who used to travel to the U.S. frequently, this was a historic moment. “I feel proud to be here without the need to hide my status,” Ruland said. “I also feel very humble.” And, he went on, “This is not about me, but about the thousands of others who were afraid to disclose their HIV status.”

As Ruland said in his interview with reporters after arriving in New York, he, along with many other HIV-positive people, travelled to the U.S. during the ban—but this could be a risky choice. “I know a lot of people who were deported when they got caught—deported for life,” he said. “I had to put my medicine in different containers and put someone else’s name on them, just in case I got caught.” It is worth remembering that the ban also prevented long-term foreign residents of the U.S. from obtaining legal residence status, keeping them in an endlessly precarious social position.

When he lifted the ban, President Obama described his decision as, “a step that will encourage people to get tested and get treatment. It’s a step that will keep families together, and it’s a step that will save lives.” Moreover, the U.S. has not hosted an HIV/AIDS conference in over two decades, since many interested parties would not have been able to attend. Now the 2010 World AIDS Conference is planned for Washington, D.C. As President Obama said in November, “If we want to be the global leader in combating HIV/AIDS, we need to act like it.”

It looks like we’re finally acting like it. Here’s to Mr. Ruland being the first of many welcome visitors!

You see them all over, guys lying on the grass, at the beach, in the park, on the rocks, wearing skimpy suits and shamelessly working on their tans. “Not exactly working,” joked Jeremy Hilborn, lying on Chicago’s beautiful Kathy Osterman Beach midday on a recent summer Sunday. “And it’s better than lying on the sofa all day.”

“Or washing windows,” added his friend Steve Smith.

Even after all the media blitzing about the dangers of tanning—one person an hour dies of skin cancer in the US—there were Hilborn and Smith, lying there, amid a beach full of bodies, waiting for trouble. Why? Because, let’s face it, many of us look better with a tan. It’s why French fries look so much tastier than naked Idaho spuds.

“When patients tell me about bronzing themselves to look good, I tell them a scar across the face doesn’t look so good either,” says Dr. Brooke Jackson, medical director of Chicago’s Skin Wellness Center. “You’ll never hear a dermatologist say it’s OK to get a tan— unless it’s from a bottle.” She should know. Dr. Jackson is a clinical assistant professor at Northwestern University Medical School, a medical ambassador for the American Cancer Society, and an avid runner. She spends a fair amount of time out in the sun herself. “I am vigilant about sun screen and have been for years. I put on a broad-spectrum block 15 minutes before I go outside. Sunburning is your body’s alarm system going off. You need to listen to your body.”

Of course, a lot of the people you see out there in the sun are also the ones still smoking. So fear of getting cancer is not necessarily much of a deterrent. The US Centers for Disease Control put it this way: “Although most Americans are aware of the dangers of UV exposure, only about one third take measures to protect their skin from the sun.” Cancer, from relatively simple basal cell carcinomas to scary melanomas, is not the only danger lurking in the idea of a sexy tan. There is an increased risk of cataracts and plain old premature aging of the skin.

“I saw a patient a few days ago,” Dr. Jackson relates, “she is 25 but looks like a leather purse. The number one, two, and three reasons for premature aging of the skin is the sun.” Dr. Jackson raises an interesting point: If one spends a lot of time in the gym getting in shape, why squander the hard work’s benefits in the sun?

But fundamentally, sun tanning, whether at the beach or in a tanning salon, is all about absorbing ultraviolet radiation, which cooks your skin cells and creates the pigment known as melanin. Melanin makes the skin look dark. Unprotected skin can be harmed by UV rays in as little as 15 minutes. And sun damage is cumulative. “If you are Irish, have fair skin and blue eyes and burn when you stick your finger outdoors,” says Dr. Jackson, “you need to understand who you are. You can’t change it. There is no way to make somebody who is fair into someone who can handle the sun well. If you don’t listen to your body, you will be the one to get skin cancer.”

But what about darker-skinned people? “Brown skin does not let you off the hook,” Dr. Jackson says. “I ask my patients if they know what Bob Marley died from? Melanoma. The idea that your dark skin will protect you is a false sense of security.” What darker skin does give you is a little more initial protection against burning. To better understand the relative dangers for people, dermatologists have created a scale of six types of skin

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Hands-down, food, not pills, is the best way to get the vitamins and minerals your body needs. In fact, scientists have found that something called food synergy, the interaction that occurs between nutrients in food, has yet to be reproduced by simply popping a pill. Realistically, however, eating a perfectly well-balanced and healthy diet (including at least nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day, as well as whole grains, low-fat dairy, and lean meat, poultry, or fish) on a day-to-day basis is not always possible.

Taking a multivitamin and mineral supplement is a sensible insurance policy to help you fill in the nutrition gaps. But the question remains, which pill to take?

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The fundamental principle of periodization is to be unusual. It forces the exerciser to challenge muscles in new ways, ideally at new levels of intensity. But are the new exercises just too weird for your gym?

Whether or not a periodized fitness approach fits the vibe of your club is pretty easy to figure out. Is it a place where bear walks, plyometric jumps and crazy stuff involving balls, bands and Bosus are perfectly acceptable behavior? Or do those things violate your gym’s “code of cool”?

Muscle confusion works—when you do it correctly
Washington, DC-based trainer Vionna R. Jones says her trainees only feel comfortable with some exercise modalities when training with her. “They often feel weird because it includes things that other people in the gym just are not going to do when working out by themselves,” she says. But, “they like the cardio blast that these give them. They feel self-conscious, but do it anyway.”

Fitness center consultant and retailer Jeff Thomsen, based in Hoboken, NJ, suggests it’s a matter of know-how and self-confidence. “The educated gym culture, especially men, always are trying new things to confuse the muscles with the hope of tear down and growth,” he says. But programs like P90X require close adherence to diet and proper exercise form. “Some of the individuals who perform it violate the cool rule by their terrible form,” he notes.

Cool or not, strength and size gains can be achieved when you apply constantly changing stress to the neuromuscular system, as it happens with periodization. Your muscles have no time to develop muscle memory, which is the “cheating” your body does to find the easier way to exercise. By breaking away from standard paths of motion (think machines or other single-plane movements such as a preacher curl), you build a better-rounded, more balanced body.

If you know what you’re doing and are unconcerned with what it looks like to others, count yourself lucky. You might just have a health club where unusual exercises are accepted, encouraged and facilitated with the right equipment.

Periodized workouts
Ultimately, periodization should be mapped out in macrocycles, a period spanning six to 12 months. Within that, microcycles can involve a build of intensity over three weeks, with an intermediate light week, followed by another three weeks of intensity. Clearly, the full breadth of a program will require study beyond this article, but two sample workouts are provided here as a starting point.

Note also that a weird, mixed-up workout has to take into account your exercise frequency. If you exercise four or more days per week, clearly you will have consecutive-day workouts and should be concerned about taxing the same muscles two days in a row (recovery typically requires 48 hours).

By Joe Weston
Published Apr 27, 2010

Welcome to “Ask Joe,” RealJock’s advice column, written by contributor, Joe Weston. Joe is a life coach, workshop facilitator, lecturer and peace advocate with a deep commitment to the possibility of individual personal fulfillment. Looking for some clarity on tricky issues in your life? Share what’s on your mind with Joe—concerning work, personal awareness, love and romance, meditation and spiritual exploration, or just about anything else that’s getting between you and your life goals.

Write to Joe:
Reaching Joe couldn’t be simpler: just email your question to joe@realjock.com. Your identity will be kept anonymous, but do note that questions may be edited for length and clarity.

I really felt for this guy and I miss him so much. I feel I am stuck on him and that I can’t forget about him. I guess his sending the package was his closure, but what about mine? Please, what can I do? I want to get my life back.
—Left Behind

Dear Behind,
I’m sorry to hear you are feeling hurt from this encounter. It never feels pleasant and we all wish we never have to go through it. But unfortunately, in the realm of human relationships and love, break ups and broken hearts are all part of it. There is nothing I can “say” that will make you feel better. The quickest way to get over these feelings is to feel them fully. Get it all out. And while you are crying, and throwing pillows, and writing sad poems and pining for your lost love, you can also celebrate! Celebrate that you can feel so deeply, celebrate that you can love so much, celebrate that you found someone who moved you in such a deep way and know that if you did it once, you will definitely do it again.

The beauty of breaks-ups is that the next time you will know better. You don’t need to close your heart to other men, but you surely can be more careful how quickly you go forward; let the other guy work a bit harder to win your trust and love. By doing this, you combine love and wisdom—the perfect ingredient for long-lasting supportive, nurturing relationships.

You can decide what you need to do to help you find closure. Write him a letter letting him know how you feel and letting him know how gateful you are for the good times and the lessons he has taught you. You don’t even have to send the letter. Just writing it and deleting it is enough for you to get out your feelings and thoughts. (Although you might discover you have a talent for writing and end up publishing a book of love poems, who knows?) Go alone to the woods and yell as hard as you can how you feel until it is all out of you, take his gifts and create some kind of ritual to let him go, or throw yourself a party as a way to officially end your connection to this guy and remind you how fabulous you are.

So, it’s time to end feeling left behind and start moving ahead!
—Joe

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