On World AIDS Day, Let’s Not Forget the Living

World AIDS Day, obviously, tends to be a very somber day.  We remember the millions who have had their lives cut short, both in the United States and around the globe.  We promote awareness of the disease and how it is transmitted, and encourage safe sex practices so as to curtail its spread.

But as we rightly take heed of the tragedies and the very real dangers that have resulted from this epidemic, we should also keep in mind the living.  Thousands of Americans, and millions around the world, are living with HIV – and they are not all victims wasting away in hospital beds, but human beings living full and active lives.

That’s why it’s so important that the magazine Positively Aware has launched a project to send this message.  Its pictorial feature, A Day With HIV In America, contains over a hundred photos of Americans (of which 26 were featured in the magazine’s print edition) of all races, ages, genders, sexual orientations, and walks of life, answering the question: “What does it mean to live with HIV?”

As the pictorial’s title implies, every one of these photos was taken on the same day: September 21 of this year.   And the stories they tell prove that HIV-positive people cannot be easily put under any label or filed into any box.

These photos feature people such as:

• Evany Turk, a Chicago mother who is photographed with her two sons.  She explains that “this is why I live a healthy life with HIV.”
• Chuck Panozzo, the openly gay bassist and co-founder of the band Styx, who is photographed before his guest presentation at the Virginia Organizations Responding to AIDS.
• Martin Mace, an HIV-positive tourist from the UK, who was finally able to visit San Francisco following the recent lifting of the US’ longtime travel ban on HIV-positive people.
• Robert Breining, an AIDS activist and blogger, who runs the site http://poziam.com.
• John from Texas, who is photographed holding an insurance statement for the AIDS medication Atripla.  The retail cost of the drug: $5763.08.

These people, and the others photographed in “A Day With HIV,” send a powerful message: AIDS is a grave and serious disease, but it is not a death sentence, and those who have it are not merely waiting to die.  On the day that we remember what has been lost from this disease, we should also remember to celebrate life – because HIV-positive people are living it, rich and full.

Photo (by Eric Draper, via Wikimedia Commons): A red ribbon adorns the White House in honor of World Aids Day 2007

Author's note: Positively Aware is one of Renna Communications' clients.

Nathan Tabak is an LGBT rights activist who currently works for Renna Communications.