Today AIDS is 25 years old - according to record keepers. It hardly seems possible. I remember the night I started to worry I was driving back into Yuma with Peggy and Danny from the Foothills. The radio was announcing that a mysterious diesease was affecting gay men... I wasn't 'OUT' yet apparently I didn't need to be. Danny remarked he was sure they'd find a cure, with empathy directed towards me. Did they know? I wondered, and let the disease slip from my mind as I worried about being found out. Pretty stupid. That was 1982. I would sero-convert in 1991.
As of today I have been battling this disease for 15 years. I have had numerous days of good health - and just as many bad in that time. I have been down to two (2) T-cells and off the chart viral load, with opportunistic infections out the ying-yang, and I have had my numbers high enough to almost forget the disease - except for the miriad of pills and injections I take daily to fight. And I'm very lucky. I live in the West where the determination of the Gay community and our activism means that I have support for obtaining drugs, medical treatment and a miriad of services that are mostly NOT available to the worlds largest AIDS populations: Africa, India and the rest of what we call the 'Third World'. There, AIDS is still so stigmatized that countries like South Africa have even denied their citizens the importation of AIDS medications. (Think about that for a minute - we're not talking just 'tribes in the bush', but huge British built cities, similar to London or New York, with Western educated populations, denied all HIV/AIDS medications). Unbelievable in the 21st century. But, then we look at the present U.S. administrations policy of teaching abstinence only - the same negligent way that I was raised - and I realize that millions more are still going to be infected. Here. Today. In America. Because it is apparently too immoral to teach our young people about their bodies, their sexuality and how to protect themselves from a a viral infection that will kill them. Yes, it is a virus, not a bibical plague - a virus which can be prevented with a little medical science eduaction. Teaching abstinence only as a governmental policy is a deliberate misuse and disservice to millions of young people who deserve to have all the information available about active sexual behavior and the consequences of disease, without the trappings of a moralistic and judgemental Faith based education. our government is responsible to all citizens, not simply those of Christian belief and practice.
Today the statistics of AIDS infection remain alarming. Twenty-five miliion people are infected worldwide. 25,000,000! It seems that teaching abstinence does not stop young people form having sex - it only means they are ignorant of the deadly peril before them.
I have linked the title of this blog to the San Francisco Chronicle's special section of articles about AIDS and the disease's impact on communities around the world. Take some time. Read through the articles. Think about your children. Then act. Write your Congress persons and demand that that our communities be responsible to the science of health, not the morals.
If sex, and homosexuality, had been discussed in my home growing up would I be without the disease today? I can't know. But I do know that the relentless message, both spoken and unspoken, that premarital and homosexual sex was a sin so devesating as to separate me from God and my families love, completely prevented me from being able to talk about my sexuality, my lonliness, and my despair at being different - and started me on a clear path of secrecy and self-destruction that I must still battle some 37 years on... So, today, if you or I speak up and prevent one young woman or one young man from acquiring AIDS we will have made a start in stopping this virus from having one more life to destroy.
As of today I have been battling this disease for 15 years. I have had numerous days of good health - and just as many bad in that time. I have been down to two (2) T-cells and off the chart viral load, with opportunistic infections out the ying-yang, and I have had my numbers high enough to almost forget the disease - except for the miriad of pills and injections I take daily to fight. And I'm very lucky. I live in the West where the determination of the Gay community and our activism means that I have support for obtaining drugs, medical treatment and a miriad of services that are mostly NOT available to the worlds largest AIDS populations: Africa, India and the rest of what we call the 'Third World'. There, AIDS is still so stigmatized that countries like South Africa have even denied their citizens the importation of AIDS medications. (Think about that for a minute - we're not talking just 'tribes in the bush', but huge British built cities, similar to London or New York, with Western educated populations, denied all HIV/AIDS medications). Unbelievable in the 21st century. But, then we look at the present U.S. administrations policy of teaching abstinence only - the same negligent way that I was raised - and I realize that millions more are still going to be infected. Here. Today. In America. Because it is apparently too immoral to teach our young people about their bodies, their sexuality and how to protect themselves from a a viral infection that will kill them. Yes, it is a virus, not a bibical plague - a virus which can be prevented with a little medical science eduaction. Teaching abstinence only as a governmental policy is a deliberate misuse and disservice to millions of young people who deserve to have all the information available about active sexual behavior and the consequences of disease, without the trappings of a moralistic and judgemental Faith based education. our government is responsible to all citizens, not simply those of Christian belief and practice.
Today the statistics of AIDS infection remain alarming. Twenty-five miliion people are infected worldwide. 25,000,000! It seems that teaching abstinence does not stop young people form having sex - it only means they are ignorant of the deadly peril before them.
I have linked the title of this blog to the San Francisco Chronicle's special section of articles about AIDS and the disease's impact on communities around the world. Take some time. Read through the articles. Think about your children. Then act. Write your Congress persons and demand that that our communities be responsible to the science of health, not the morals.
If sex, and homosexuality, had been discussed in my home growing up would I be without the disease today? I can't know. But I do know that the relentless message, both spoken and unspoken, that premarital and homosexual sex was a sin so devesating as to separate me from God and my families love, completely prevented me from being able to talk about my sexuality, my lonliness, and my despair at being different - and started me on a clear path of secrecy and self-destruction that I must still battle some 37 years on... So, today, if you or I speak up and prevent one young woman or one young man from acquiring AIDS we will have made a start in stopping this virus from having one more life to destroy.
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