World AIDS Day is Friday, December 1.By coincidence, the recent weeks leading to this year’s World AIDS Day have witnessed much household discussion about the AIDS pandemic, owing primarily to Mrs. Confidential’s current University of Louisville grad school class project. She’s been studying the decade of the 1980’s and analyzing attitudes at the time toward America’s gay community, both in societal and cultural terms, and specifically pertaining to her chosen career of social work.
Our many open-ended conversations about these and related topics have unexpectedly succeeded in exposing a great deal of repressed anger and indignation on my part.
Imagine that.
There are numerous references I might cite that would help explain my lingering outrage, but this guest opinion piece, published in San Francisco in 2004 on the occasion of President Reagan’s death, serves nicely.
Reagan's AIDS Legacy: Silence equals death, by Allen White.
A significant source of Reagan's support came from the newly identified religious right and the Moral Majority, a political-action group founded by the Rev. Jerry Falwell. AIDS became the tool, and gay men the target, for the politics of fear, hate and discrimination. Falwell said "AIDS is the wrath of God upon homosexuals." Reagan's communications director Pat Buchanan argued that AIDS is "nature's revenge on gay men."
It’s true that the phenomenon of self-serving bigotry, thinly veiled hatred and crass stupidity routinely spewing from the well-fed mouths of those imagining themselves as paragons of morality isn’t exactly new in the historical experience, but perhaps my witnessing it during impressionable youth provides a deeper, more indelible impression within the consciousness.
I can think of no single occurrence that better illustrates the mean-spirited poverty of compassion, the flaunting of insensibility and an alarming absence of basic human decency on the part of “God-fearing American Conservatives” than the reaction of Falwell, Buchanan and so many others of the bilious ilk to the advent of the AIDS pandemic during the 1980’s.
My disgust with this reaction is a very large part of why I am a humanist, why I am an atheist, why I am a liberal, why I am a contrarian, and why I am implacably opposed to whatever mystically religious or basely political forces that connive and fester in the diseased heart of such institutionalized and calculating callousness, and it is why that incredibly tired bromide about the liberalism of youth yielding to the conservatism of advancing years doesn’t apply to me and never shall.
As though to say that as one grows older, the imperatives of human and civil rights fade into an appreciation of nothing so much as money and personal comfort. Quite frankly, the notion makes me want to retch.
Gay, straight, red, pink, black, white – too many people died then, and too many suffer now. We’re a quarter century into AIDS, and there remain people – right here, in this community – who are more concerned with the haughty assertion of their own “moral” superiority than with tending to and healing the sick, and more importantly, than upholding the dignity and equality of all men and women, whether under the watchful gaze of a supreme being or that of the Blue Speckled Hungadunga.
World AIDS Day is Friday, December 1. Kindly take note.
7 comments:
Ceece, I understand that we go around and around with this matter. The article above is the latest in a series of thoughts that attempt to convey the extent to which I've been influenced in coming to hold certain views. Insofar as these ruminations inspire healthy thought and dialogue, I'm pleased. In the final analysis, though, it's my forum, and I express myself in it.
There's an entirely political sidebar to the above that you've ignored. And, I certainly have pointed to the specific Christian (of the Falwellian persuasion) that I associate with intolerance. Glutton? I don't think so, but perhaps a tad overly sensitive. The object is not to take offense, but to come back with a reasoned and logical argument ... and take me down. Rest assured, it's happened.
I'm 46. When I was growing up hereabouts, there were very few challenges to the prevailing orthodoxy, whether that accepted way of thinking had to do with religion, beer, sports or any other manifestation of human culture that is taken for granted as true absent examination.
It's been a long and inexact process for me, but the gist of it is that I believe orthodoxy should be challenged, refuted and criticized. The parts of it that are genuinely useful will easily survive such a dialogue. The parts that aren't useful will be exposed as gibberish.
If just one person read a letter I wrote to the newspaper back in 1985 and thought, gee, I didn't stop to think about that, then I've accomplished the mission I've set out to achieve.
It may strike you as strange, but you will find no stronger advocate of free religious expression than yours truly. That's because I take seriously what history has taught us and what the Founders offered on the topic.
At the same time, I'll be the first to snarl when religionists step onto my autonomous turf and attempt to foist unprovable beliefs onto me as public policy. Why? Same reason -- I take the Founders seriously on the topic.
I've no doubt that there are powerful elements within Christianity that are at war with the homophobic Falwells of the world. I'm always happy to hear their voices. But it isn't at all unrealistic to suggest that it's a good idea to reserve vigor to fight against the biggest threat, and the biggest threat comes from zealous religionists of any nature.
ceece is exactly correct. I take care of many patients who choose a different lifestyle and I have a handful of HIV positive patients. I respect them as individuals and care for them as patients.
Not agreeing with their lifestyle choices is not being a homophobe.
You disagreeing with Christian's lifestyles and beliefs is no less tolerant. We understand your stance on the issue and you have never been rude, disrespectful or hateful towards Christians even though you adamantly disagree with them.
We can have mutual respect, yet still disagree.
This is a really, really difficult and complex issue to debate/discuss in a forum like this.
About 10 years ago, maybe a bit longer, I was serving a church in a rural region in Ohio. A man in the church asked me to visit his son who had the "HIV thing." Mom and Dad were long divorced and the son lived with Mom. I called to set up a visit and Mom was very hesitant for me to come. She was afraid that I would scold them.
I visited and the young man didn't have the "HIV thing." He was in late stages of full blown AIDS. He was gay and was living in Florida. However, when he was too ill he basically came home to die. He and Mom lived in fear that if people found out that he had AIDS people would come and burn the house down. I'd like to say that we made a long journey together but it was only several months long. He was dying and the poor man suffered so horribly. He was one of the kindest people I have ever met and thanked me for one thing. I was kind to him when he least expected it.
He least expected it because Christians were, in his experience, universally unkind to him because he was gay.
I was and still am troubled by that. I've come to have certain conclusions to things.
First, Christianity is not a homogenious block of people who live and move in the say way. I loved Ceece's comment about the DNA of a Disciple of Christ. The UCC and the Disciples do a lot together and very very comparable DNA's. Christians don't all have the same DNA. I think it's really crucial to recognize this.
Secondly, sadly, Christianity has not treated the gay community well. In recent years it has improved in some says and gotten worse in other ways. Recently the Roman Catholic Church gave new pronouncements on homosexuality and homosexuality in the priesthood. I attended Roman Catholic seminaries from 1973-1980, back when, if you were becoming a priest, you did college in seminayr as well. We, in our meatball observations (Okay, I'm Italian) came to the conclusion that anywhere from 25 - 50% of the student body was gay. Recent studies have concluded that 24%-55% of RC priests are gay. The Roman Catholic Church is busily blaming a homosexual orientation on clergy abusing children. To say that this makes my blood boil is an understatement. It is, however, somewhat representative of the fact that large swaths of Christianity aren't very kind to the gay community and attempt to demonize them.
Thirdly, people need to get past the myth that homosexuality is a choice. I firmly believe that sexual orientation is very much based on a continuum with people leaning strongly, moderately, or slightly in one direction of another. Some churches offer to 'cure' people of being gay but they are merely deceiving themselves and others in saying this. They may move some people from slightly this way to slightly that way. I've met several 'graduates' from this class at a church in the region, who are gay, and who said, if nothing else, it affirmed that they were gay. To them. The teachers were appalled and surprise. We need to get past the myth that homosexuality is a choice.
Lastly, AIDS is not a gay disease. In the United States AIDS is highest amongst gay men and lowest among gay women. I would guess that there are 'body fluid' issues which come into play, but also, as a rule, I think it may be reasonably safe to say that a large portion of the time men tend to be more promiscuous than women. If this is true than the most promiscuous in the country would be gay men. But, AIDS is high amongst promiscuous people. Perhaps the issue, if we want to discuss morality is the issue of promiscuity more than homosexuality.
In Africa a large portion of the continent is being wiped out by AIDS. It is not seen as a gay issue there---it's an epidemic.
What bothered me about the Reagan era was that he was influenced by Falwell and Robertson away from dealing with this issue. No one has ever accused Falwell or Robertson of kindness or an ability to allow facts to get in the way of their opinions.
Okay, at this point, I can't even remember where I started, so I'll stop. :-)
And, Roger, whether I agree with you or not in every subject, I am always delighted with this forum. An open, honest discussion is truly worthwhile.
Sure thing about La Rosita's -- we'll be there. This is a big treat for me given the restrictions of my weight loss program.
Do you know what time it starts tonight?
John, thanks for the observations.
Thanks much. We're there.
If we are to continue to grow progressivly as a community and a nation, then this and other such matters should not be an agenda that has to have a disclaimer.
As in election time topics of other such related topics, that have nothing to do with politics, this topic of said post should be left alone.
Living and respecting others, for what people chose, rather it be a choice of lifestyle or religion should by now be excepted in this nation after 200+ years. Hopefully one day we can honestly live as one.
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