Octogenarian bastion of hate Pat Robertson has lost his fight to keep his "Gays Aids Ring" comments off the Internet. Guess the world will have to live with his theory that gay people spread AIDS by cutting people with special rings.

Note to Pat Robertson: When your batshit crazy ravings have gotten too batshit crazy for your very own television network, it may be time to dial down the batshit.

It starts with a nosebleed and ends with a dead guy. Three dead guys, actually, and one of them is Ed Koch.

Nothing brings 'em out like public hearings on the topic of same-sex marriage, and today's legislative committee hearings in Minnesota were no exceptions.

Researchers at a major AIDS conference in Atlanta announced today that a 2½ year child in Mississippi born with HIV has been cured of the virus after taking an aggressive regimen of drugs since birth. The child, whose mother had stopped giving her medication, is the second confirmed case of a human being cured of HIV, after a man was cured in 2010 when he received a bone marrow transplant.

C. Everett Koop, who died today in New Hampshire, did a lot throughout the course of his 96 years, including play football at Dartmouth, help put into motion the war against second-hand smoke, and launch an ultimately failed medical website, DrKoop.com, in the primeval internet age of 1997. But Koop, who also moonlighted as a spokesperson for the Life Alert company, will perhaps be most remembered for introducing millions of Americans to—and destroying stereotypes about—AIDS, the deadly disease that started to rear its head in America the year before he took office in 1982.

The results of a huge, seven-year study in rural South Africa are in, and god damn: by giving antiretroviral drugs daily to 100,000 people in Kwazulu-Natal, researchers were able to raise the entire region's life expectancy by more than a decade. From the LA Times:

Welcome to our science-like weekly feature, "Hey, Science," in which we will have our most provocative scientific questions answered by real live scientists (or related experts). No question is too smart for us to tackle, theoretically speaking. This week, experts address a Gawker reader's wacky theory: Can massive blood transfusions be used to treat AIDS?

When former mayor Ed Koch died early yesterday morning, the accolades were quick to descend: he was a "a great man," who "did good," ebulliently pulling his city out of the worst financial disaster it had ever faced. Still, his incredibly long tenure also coincided with both the crack and AIDS epidemic, the latter of which, activist and documentarian David France writes in a piece for New York, he turned a blind eye to:

Earlier this week, the key AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP)/Treatment Action Group (TAG) activist Spencer Cox died in New York of AIDS-related causes. He was 44 years old. Cox and his colleagues essentially made the current, life-extending treatment of AIDS what it is through their knowledge, force and will. As one person in David France's How to Survive a Plague documentary puts it, "Activists created a system that was able to do everything faster, better, cheaper, more ethically and more effectively." Gay men (with the help of crucial allies) essentially saved themselves, though the documentary warns that people with AIDS are not yet out of the woods. Cox's death is a very sad reminder of just that.

Activists from several national AIDS organizations stormed House Speaker John Boehner's office earlier today to protest budget cuts to anti-HIV/AIDS programs.

Author-turned-internet troll Bret Easton Ellis took to Twitter once again to offer his unsolicited opinion on the latest offense to the LGBT community.

The most satisfying cinematic moment I've experienced all year occurs during the last 15 minutes of David France's documentary How To Survive a Plague. I don't even want to hint at what it is because it could risk depriving you of the rush it gave me. What works like a movie twist feels like an epiphany in this chronicle of the first nine years of the AIDS advocacy group ACT UP. Just know that if you care about social justice and gay rights, you should see this film. And if you don't know much about ACT UP's history, you will be wowed.

Here's Paris Hilton's inevitable apology for getting caught saying that gays are "disgusting" and "probably have AIDS", via GLAAD:

Noted dimwitted bigot and frequent star of recordings she didn't know she was starring in Paris Hilton has said something stupid again. Imagine. And it was during New York Fashion Week. Double imagine.

Bryan Kutner is an HIV counselor who shared his knowledge and experience with us for last week's "Please Don't Infect Me, I'm Sorry" story. However, Kutner has taken exception to the overall tone of the piece, so we invited him for a discussion (slash debate?) on HIV risk, prevention, stigma and what all else you want to ask him about.

The first guy I ever turned down on Grindr for having HIV, my patient zero if you will, is all kinds of hot: hot in the face, hot in the body and hotheaded. In May, he asked me to come over and make out. We chatted a little bit more, he told me about his status and I slipped out of the conversation, just like that. Randomly in July, I noticed him at a movie theater: On Grindr and online, people lie with pictures all the time, choosing ones that distort their appearance in a captured second, but I was able to pick Miguel right out of a crowd. His picture is a symbol of habitual honesty, maybe, but also because he's so attractive, he has no reason to lie.

David France's ACT UP doc, How to Survive a Plague, is brilliant. It's out September 21. Here's the trailer.

For more than 20 years, Magic Johnson has been HIV positive—but it's never been revealed who he contracted it from. Last night on PBS's Frontline documentary, "AIDS in Black America," Magic disclosed the same vague answer he's given the press since 1991: "Sleeping with a lot of women."

A team of researchers working out of the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario, have received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin clinical trials of an HIV vaccine on humans beginning in January. What makes this vaccine different from the handful of others in development around the world is that it uses dead HIV-1 virus, in a similar methodology that led to vaccines for polio, rabies and hepatitis A.