Is it Time to reconnect AIDS and Non AIDS Communities?

There was a post on The washingtonblade.com  By WBadmin about a bothersome truth I’ve learned from listening to both negative and positive gay men. Bothersome because I’ve seen a disconnect with the two. This is not well known or well known and never spoken about it.

  It’s how both groups feel and interact with each other. The truth is been that after the 90’s there has been a wall of disconnect between these two groups. It’s like if you belong to one or the other you were not the same type of gay.  All it took for a gay person to have an immediate wall of separation was to say he was HIV+.  Everything  changed, But actually if no information was exchanged nothing changed. 
As a consequence of this occurrence either information stop flowing and as a consequence the separation became even deeper. The gay person who was HIV+ and not disclosed knew that if there was any type of sexual contact, nothing would come out of it because he knew that rejection , quilt and in some cases prosecution would happen. So if new attraction was strong, seldom did it go further. Even if there was not information interchanged between the two,  meaning that the other part of the couple could have been HIV or not caring, still the HIV+ person knew that just the information given to another person that might even be HIV because of the partners they had without being tested often enough or not tested at all will freak him out. Weird but the whole thing of HIV and AIDs is weird and it was something that was made by us to separate from us. It’s like all the miss givings gay people had of themselves, all the bad things we were always told we were, now it was being officially certified by the government, health authorities including your doctor other gays and finally ourselves. 

Even in the 90’s when strong antiviral therapy was developed and HIV’er’s starting living longer and getting sicker less this wall grew even stronger because now HIV’ers were looking like everybody else and you could no longer guess. He no longer looked like he was dying with spots on his body or too skinny to be normal. The only way was for the sharing of medical information.  Many Hiv’er’s that went out, for the same reason as everybody else.  They worked  Mon-fri, come the weekend and being young, single and full of testosterone they wanted a partner to enjoy some of that free time. 

 Some learned to take the rejection early because it was easier, meaning that they would give out the health information too early killing all chances of any relationship even as a casual friend to drink with or see a movie with. If told too late, then the rejection became unbearable because now there were feelings involved on both sides. The rejection for someone already depressed was enough to jump into something.  That’s why suicide among gays and methadone addiction became as popular as rock and roll. All of these remain unchanged today. The only thing that would make gays become united again would be information. Information is not something that just happens.  Information is proactive, you have tom seek it. I don’t see this changing in my life time.  

This publication of The washingtonblade.com which is many times bigger than mine is addressing by a smart author what I call the inn’s of being gay. it’s the catacombs and the crannies that are known to be there but are never seen.  I have not totally read the article on purpose because I wanted to write about it but also by fast reading it and skipping a lot I wanted it to share the article. Now I will read it as some of you are reading both. I usually don’t operate this way but I wanted both articles out.
Adam Gonzalez, Publisher( article typed live, no proof reading. Please bear with me if any mistakes were made)

Last April I attended a White House LGBT Conference on HIV and AIDS, held at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta. Following the meeting I posed a question to two leaders responsible for AIDS and LGBT issues in the White House:  “When did the gay community separate from the AIDS community?” At first, I think they were surprised. After all, the gay community created the AIDS community. But now they are going in different directions.

I asked a second question: “Do you think if the gay and AIDS communities worked as one, as they did in the ‘80s and early ‘90s during the height of the U.S. epidemic, we would improve the chances of winning the war against this dreaded disease?”

“Absolutely,” they replied.

What happened and when did the separation occur? And how can we bring them together again?

First, a little history. On Jan. 4, 1982, following the Centers for Disease Control’s confirmation that the “new disease” is an epidemic, six gay men met in the Manhattan apartment of Larry Kramer, the author and playwright, to discuss “gay cancer,” now known as Kaposi’s Sarcoma. That day they created the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), the world’s first AIDS organization.

In a few years, GMHC was also supporting straight men and women, children, hemophiliacs, drug users and blood transfusion recipients. Kramer also helped establish another entity, ACT UP, to generate and build support for the rights of AIDS patients through political protest. As GMHC continued its work, I remember talking with people who actually wanted GMHC to remove the word “gay” from its name.

Prior to AIDS, there was GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency). It was the Centers for Disease Control that changed the name to AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome), a more accurate description of the disease. Of course, we all knew retaining the word “gay” could hold down funding, research and support.

In the early days of the disease, hospital rules and state laws commonly denied gay men visits with their partners; in many cases, the families prevented contact, as well. Thus, thousands of AIDS-infected gay men died alone and many never received a proper burial.

It’s time to link gay and AIDS again. It was the gay community that created the AIDS community and, in many cases, it was the AIDS community that helped support and raise awareness of the gay community.

One example is GLAAD (the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), established in 1985 specifically to fight the stigma of AIDS and sensationalized reporting in the media. But will you find the word AIDS on the GLAAD website today? Rarely, as is the case for a number of our largest gay organizations.

The words gay and AIDS have been synonymous. Being a gay man and living with HIV in the United States definitely has its challenges, but they’re nothing compared with being gay and HIV positive in other parts of the world. In some countries, it’s common to be banished from your village or town, ostracized, or beaten and, in many cases, killed. Throughout the world, gay men with HIV are dying, not killed by AIDS, but murdered.

Before the 19th International AIDS Conference I discussed this separation of communities with staffers connected to one of the largest LGBT organizations. In addition to other issues, their responsibility includes HIV. When I asked how and when the separation occurred, they denied there was a problem. The gays have their issues and organizations, they pointed out, and those living with HIV and AIDS have theirs – it’s all covered.

Covered? Really? According to the CDC, young gay men and MSM account for 69 percent of all new HIV infections among persons aged 13–29. Also, the number of new infections in this country has never decreased. Never.

Every AIDS organization should have a division and point person whose sole focus is gay-related issues, and every gay organization should have an AIDS division and expert. That way, resources, ideas, and strategies can be shared, benefitting both communities, which could lead to the kind of power that could end AIDS and homophobia forever.

Dave Purdy is founder and CEO of the World AIDS Institute. Reach him atdpurdy@worldaidsinstitute.org.