Sean Strub


Sean O'Brien Strub is a writer and activist who is the director of , a national network of people with HIV combating stigma and injustice, the mayor of , and the owner of Milford's , a hotel and restaurant.
In the early 1990s, he founded POZ magazine and POZ en Español,, Mamm, Real Health and, from 2000 to 2008, he published Milford Magazine.
He is a long-term AIDS survivor and has been an outspoken advocate for the self-empowerment movement for people with HIV/AIDS. In 2009 he was president of Cable Positive, the cable and telecommunications' industry's AIDS response. From 2010 to 2012 he served on the board of directors of the Amsterdam-based Global Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS and co-chaired their North American regional affiliate. He has been a leader in combating HIV-related criminalization and in 2010 launched the Positive Justice Project with the Center for HIV Law & Policy.
In 1990, he ran for the House of Representatives to represent New York's 22nd congressional district. He was the first openly HIV+ candidate for federal office in the U.S. and received 46% of the Democratic primary vote. He was a long-time member of ACT UP New York and, in 1992, produced an off-Broadway play, The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me, written by and starring David Drake.
Strub is a pioneer expert in mass-marketed fundraising for LGBT equality.
He is owner of the Hotel Fauchere, a Relais & Châteaux boutique hotel in Milford, Pennsylvania, where he has been active in a community revitalization effort.
He is also the mayor of .
His memoir, Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS and Survival was published in January 2014. Strub co-authored Rating America's Corporate Conscience, a guide to corporate social responsibility, with Steve Lydenberg and Alice Tepper Marlin and Cracking the Corporate Closet with Daniel B. Baker and Bill Henning.
He is an inaugural member of the WikiQueer Global Advisory Board.

Miscellaneous

Strub was one of the first people on the scene of the murder of John Lennon in December 1980.
In 1981 Strub got playwright Tennessee Williams to sign the first fundraising letter for the Human Rights Campaign Fund, a then-newly formed political action committee which grew to become the largest organization in the U.S. advocating for LGBT equality.
In 1989 Strub asked pop artist Keith Haring to create a logo and poster to launch National Coming Out Day, now also a part of the Human Rights Campaign.
Strub was one of the AIDS activists who put a giant condom over then-US Senator Jesse Helms's suburban Washington home in 1991.