“When it rains, it pours,” Kevin Deese said, leaving a vet’s office in upstate New York with his sick dog in late July. Not only had he just lost the Democratic primary election for a State Assembly seat representing the Buffalo area; he recently lost his job, too.
But even though these setbacks have added undue burden for Deese, he’s never down for long.
When Deese witnessed the second Trump administration’s devastation of funding for HIV care and prevention, he decided to run for a seat at the table and do what he could to thwart federal overreach from degrading his home state of New York. However, this isn’t the first time Deese decided to take a stand against unjust federal policy.
Deese joined the Naval Academy in 2010 to follow in his brother’s footsteps. At the time, he considered a role in the military “the clearest picture of what it looked like to be of service.” Yet, he first became widely known for pushing back against the Navy’s efforts to prevent him from serving due to his HIV status. During that process, he developed a different idea of what it means to be of service: to protect vulnerable people when and where one can.
Called to action
In 2018, Deese, with the support of Lambda Legal and Modern Military Association of America (MMAA), sued the Pentagon for its discriminatory policy against people with HIV who are already in the military deploying or being commissioned as officers. The U.S. Department of Defense changed that policy in 2022, and Deese’s case was ultimately settled in 2024. He is currently serving in the Navy Reserves on commission.
However, on Feb. 18 of this year, the Fourth Circuit court reversed a ruling that had struck down the military’s ban on enlistment of people living with HIV. (The court did clarify that qualified people living with HIV can still join the armed forces while the case moves forward, according to The Advocate.)
Meanwhile, since Trump re-entered the presidency, defunding the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), more than 1,700 treatment clinics and related service sites have closed worldwide, leaving more than 16,000 health care workers unemployed.
While these changes have not yet affected Deese directly, he worried that his health care through the Navy Reserve Tricare could be taken from him at any moment due to the social and political stigma around his status. So, he took a shot at running for public office in New York State’s 149th district, in part to oppose the Trump administration’s efforts to weaponize HIV-related services and prevention efforts.
“I ran because I knew I was qualified for the job. I felt that I had a lot to bring to the table in that role and in a campaign. Win or lose, I just couldn’t stay on the sidelines,” Deese said. His journey of fighting to move ahead with his service in the Navy taught him a lot about what happens when broken systems fail the people who have to deal with the conditions of that system, who want a good life for themselves and their family, he added. (Deese requested that TheBody note that his views on HIV and military policy are personal opinions and not official positions of the Department of Defense or Department of the Navy.)
“You can’t legislate on our community without our community at the table with an active voice — an active role — in creating solutions” to ending the global HIV pandemic, Deese said.
The battle for health care
Weeks before the primary, Deese lost his job at a large regional bank, where he had been working for several years. Fortunately, he wasn’t reliant on his former employer for health insurance due to his military coverage.
“As someone living with HIV, I can’t really roll the dice when it comes to access to health insurance,” explained Deese. To simultaneously lose work and health insurance as a person living with HIV would have put him in a difficult position both medically and financially, he said. And it would be so for most people, too, which is why he ran on a platform of affordability, opportunity, and democracy.
“Running for office is not easy,” said Deese. “There are a lot of things in life that are difficult to do, but people have the potential to try, and a desire to try,” he continued. The extent to which health insurance depends on employment “holds people back,” he said.
This is why, even after his primary loss, Deese is still championing policies like the NY HEAT Act and the New York Health Act, which seek to reduce the costs of basic needs like energy and health care for state residents. The New York Health Act is the only bill currently in the New York state legislature that would guarantee comprehensive, high-quality health care for every New Yorker, according to the Campaign for New York Health.
This is especially notable given that, on July 1, nearly half a million New Yorkers were kicked off their essential coverage health insurance plans due to a $7.5 billion federal cut as a result of last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The Campaign for New York Health states that the New York Health Act would save New Yorkers money; expand care to include dental, hearing, vision, and long-term care; and cover prescriptions, while still allowing individuals to choose their doctors and hospitals.
These are crucial elements of health care often missing from long-term health care policy that would significantly benefit New Yorkers living with HIV, Richard N. Gottfried, the state assembly member who authored the New York Health Act, said in an email to TheBody. He stated that a universal single-payer health care system would provide people with health coverage without facing restricted provider networks or restricted drug formularies.
“There would be no prior authorization required for health care,” Gottfried said. “No deductibles, copays, or out-of-network charges. Providers would be paid more than Medicare and Medicaid now pay, and not have patients who can’t pay, so providers (especially those serving low- or moderate-income people) would have much more capacity and survivability. No one would go without care because of a deductible or copay or being uninsured. The scope of benefits would be as broad and broader than any existing health coverage, including covering long-term home care and nursing home care.”
Currently, Medicaid is the largest source of insurance coverage for people with HIV in the United States, covering an estimated 40% of nonelderly adults with HIV, compared to just 15% of the nonelderly adult population overall, according to KFF.
Adam Bojak, who defeated Deese in the Democratic primary for the 149th district and is the frontrunner in the general election, told TheBody that all of these political toplines are intertwined and deeply personal. “Our health care is related to our housing, which is related to our employment, which is related to our transportation. These things are inextricably linked,” he said. Like Deese, Bojak supports the New York Health Act.
The day after I interviewed Bojak, he went for coffee with Deese to discuss ways that they’d continue working together ahead of the general election. He recalled that the two “were in agreement on a lot of things, and certainly one of them is ensuring that every single person has the care they need no matter their background, no matter their income level, no matter what the care actually is.”
Continuing the fight
Deese explained that, by successfully challenging the Navy’s discriminatory anti-HIV policy, he received benefits that are inaccessible to many people. For example, he qualified for a VA Home Loan and health care coverage—which, in turn, gave him a level of financial stability that allowed him to run for public office.
Nobody should “have to wear a uniform or go through the rigamarole of suing the federal government” to have a stable home and accessible health care, Deese said. His loss to Bojak in the primary doesn’t change that; “I wanted him to know that I want to be here in any way I can be helpful,” Deese said.
“I think, in a sense, that those of us who are living with HIV who have the capacity to, and the desire to, strive to have a fulfilling life — whatever that looks like — we owe it not only to ourselves to do so, but also we owe it to those who came before us, who weren’t able to do that,” Deese added. In his work, he seeks to honor those prior advocates “for whom their sole purpose in life became advocating for their community, so that those who came after them — people like me — would have the opportunity to live a long, healthy, fulfilling life.”
Lana Leonard (they/them) is a freelance multimedia journalist and social justice activist based in New York City. This column is a project of TheBody, Plus, Positively Aware, POZ and Q Syndicate, the LGBTQ+ wire service.