World AIDS Day

Do you remember the world before AIDS? before GRID? before "gay cancer"? I do. I remember the chaos and fearmongering when the disease was first recognized as an epidemic, when the transmission method was not yet understood, and people were panicking. I remember getting my first solid information about AIDS in 1985, in my college Microbiology class. I remember a full-day training for teachers in 1987, an attempt to help Catholic high school teachers in that diocese understand the reality of AIDS/HIV and break down the stereotypes and misunderstandings.

Twenty-one years later, there are still many people who don't understand that this is an equal-opportunity disease. It is not only about gay men, although they were the first community to be hit with it. It is not only about IV drug users, although in the early days, they were a large proportion of the cases. It is about men who have sex with men and then go home and have sex with their women, infecting the woman, who then infect the children they bear. It is about women being powerless about their own sexual lives. It is about religious institutions that claim to be "pro-life" and then condemn millions to die because they refuse to educate about condoms. It is about governments who, because of institutional racism or the leaders' own racism, cut funding to social programs designed to educate the poorest people of the world about safe sex.

It is about 65 million people infected since 1981.

It is about 25 million dead since 1981.

It is about 2.9 million dead in 2006 alone.

It is about 2.3 million children who are infected.

It's about my friend Tom Halsted, who lost his partner to AIDS in 1992, and lost his own life to AIDS in 1995.

It's about courage.

It's about my friend Carl, who, because of his public position and job in a religious organization, told everyone he had pancreatic cancer and then lived another 2 1/2 years before dying in 1993. Most of my friends who had known Carl over the years believe, with me, that he actually died of AIDS.

It's about stigma.

It's about the world losing gifted, talented minds every day to a disease that is preventable and treatable.

It's about finding a cure, and finding a vaccine to prevent it.

It's about being honest with your sexual partners, getting tested, and protecting yourself and others by following safe sex practices.

What will you do to educate yourself?

What will you do to help stop AIDS?