What words, what story can I offer to refute the losses and, in the same moment, celebrate the indomitable spirits of people living with and affected by HIV and AIDS?
Only the story I really know. My own. My brother, Patrick, died of complications of HIV in 1988 in Abilene, Texas, one of the top three most conservative cities in America (LA Times). There was no real treatment then, just AZT. There was no real protection under the law to defend his health insurance or to provide disability payments. His employer fired him. He lost all of his assets and our family brought him home to die. We were blessed by the care of an extraordinary physician, Dr. Hirsch and his team of nurses at Hendricks Hospital. They treated Patrick with great respect and did their best, but in those days, most people with AIDS did not last long. Patrick died in less than a year.
His move back home was a catalytic event in our family made even more combustable by the fact that we desperately tried to keep Patrick's entire life in a dark closet of our own making. My mother and father wrestled with their fundamentalist and evangelical beliefs that seemed to condemn him even while they could not. My mother never fully reconciled the depth of her love for him and her understanding of the good person he was with what the Church said about him. Sadly, our attempts to hide his diagnosis meant that we also hid him and ourselves, cutting ourselves off from support that we all needed. In many ways, Patrick became a prisoner in chains that we fashioned out of fear.
Soon after he died, breast cancer killed my mother. I continue to believe that her unresolved grief really killed her and cancer was just the vehicle. Soon after she died, her mother died. In the South we sometimes say, "she gave up the ghost" and I think the expression fits in this case. She gave up the ghost that haunted us all -- the specter of our own internalized homophobia and AIDS phobia. My grandmother didn't know how to cope with her feelings of loss and the deeply held beliefs about sexuality that had been engrained in her. So, she exited as well. Her attending physician said complications of pneumonia killed her. I think she just could not breathe the air anymore. It was too thick with the cloud of shame and blame dispensed by our religious authorities and swallowed by us without question.
During the time that our family was struggling with the domino effect of these our losses, my children were watching. My son knew he was gay. And, being a really smart kid, he realized that there was no healthy place for him to reside with us. So, he exited as well.
Quit school. Moved out of Abilene. Joined the National Coming Out Day office as a volunteer (then in Santa Fe, New Mexico), learned how to live with integrity about his sexuality, went to college and got a job. He had some really rocky times, yet he held tight to the boundary that he set about the crazy-making religious orientation of our family.
He insisted that we really look at what the Bible says about homosexuality and not just blindly accept what our church said was true. Eventually he finished his Masters in Divinity at Episcopal Divinity School and wrote a book entitled "Uncommon Hope" and has founded a church by the same name in San Francisco. Perhaps you have guessed that his ministry is all about helping people in churches and communities eliminate stigma that separates us from one another.
Over time, all of our family has evolved in our understanding of what AIDS is and is not. And, thankfully, we evolved in our understanding of love and grace. Things are a bit smoother for all of us now.
We had to find ways to be spiritually healthy. I like to think that we were, in no small part, inspired by the courage of my brother. The part of the story that I did not reveal early in this posting was that my brother was outrageously honest about who he was and his sexual orientation. When we tried our best to push him into the closet, he kicked it open and came out tap dancing. He never made excuses to any of us for being gay, in fact, he told us that we needed to stop making excuses because he had known he was gay since he was five. He also believed that God made him that way and, perhaps even more important, he believed that even if God did not make him gay, God loved him and chose him beyond any choices, predispositions or behaviors.
He had this really queer and wonderful theology that informs us all even now -- he understood that what animates each of us is both unique to each of us and absolutely the same -- a spiritual DNA that cannot be destroyed by us no matter how hard we try, a gift of life that resides beyond our cellular configurations and beyond labels and stigma -- the ones we put on ourselves and the ones others put on us.
Patrick imparted a gift to all of us by refusing to give up the gift he knew had been given to him by a Greater Power than any of us can grasp. On World AIDS Day 2011, I want to honor him and thank him for being everything he was -- proud, living out loud and full of grace. It is because of him that the rest of us have a chance to get it right.
Follow Rev. Dr. Cindi Love on Twitter: www.twitter.com/SoulforceLove
John Polly: World AIDS Day, 9/11 and Miss Fire Island
I'm remember Falwell interviewed in 1983, smugly claiming that AIDS was god's judgment. This was in San Francisco channel. Outraged. I called and wrote the station. "This is not a moral matter, this is a medical matter. This man knows absolutely nothing about either. Why is he here?"
These days, only Fundelibangelistas parrot nonsense about AIDS being god's punishment. The less unhinged call it God's judgment for sexual immorality. Normal, decent people understand it is a disease. There are no rewards or punishments, only consequences. Reality has informed their compassion. Religion moved from ignorance to grace-- mostly.
Let's look at a bigger picture. There has been a 1700 year jihad by religion against our right to exist and live our lives as full members of society. All based upon some badly mistranslated and misapplied passages that have give a very thin veneer of respectability to otherwise hugely damaging, vicious, wholly unwarranted prejudice.
One need only read the comments here to see how ignorance, stupidty, hate, fear, moral myopia, and wholly imaginary superiority are displayed as honorable in God's name. These antigays will even tell us they love us.
A great many believers and their churches have moved in the direction from religious ignorance to grace. My questions are:
1) when will the rest of the churches admit to their ignorance and move to grace?
2) when those that have done so already start insisting that the others do NOT represent Christianity?
Story: in her 20s my best friend for a time worked in an industry full of gay men, she really enjoyed their company and saw them as no different to any other person. Fast forward 15 years and she's become a born again Christian and has become terribly homophobic with her circle of friends shrunk to only those 'who share her faith'. We remain good friends because we shared so much of our youth together and have that firm foundation for our friendship but it's sad to see how her religion has made her LESS tolerant and always fearful and suspicious because she's had it drilled into her that the 'devil comes in very seductive guises'.
Rather than helping to find a solution for the unchecked spread of AIDS world wide, the RCC turned a blind eye to the problem, and in fact, made it much worse with their out-dated, hate-filled, fear-mongering dogma.
The church falls down on its obligation to help save lives, because they act like you can't talk about certain things. Why not encourage breast cancer screenings in the churchs' women's group, prostate and men's issues with the mens group, healthy eating options (food is the only thing the church doesn't scream is a burn in hell sin, does anyone see the correlation between that and obesity??), and why not anonymous testing held right there at the church by an outside group?? You have a captive audience, that listens to the person in the pulpit, seems to me that that peron has a bigger moral obligation to protect people he/she sees every week as opposed to filling their heads with hateful vitriol that won't get any of them into their heavens.
I wouldn't call your brother's theology queer, it's a central theme in almost all religions if a person can get past the dogma. What is an oddity is the interpretation of Christ's message by fundamentalist bigots, it's difficult to comprehend the irrational fear and hate.
"Deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow ME"
"Do what ever you want, just put 10% onto the collection plate.
Are you Flesh of the Carnal world OR are you Spirit that has no sex, sexual relationsips, wants or desires, emotions, sense pleasure. Groups and Chruches do not take you there. Take yourself.
Pickup your cross just don't ask me to carry it for you.
I think it's quite possible for our actions to be guided by spirit as we embrace the 'carnal' world with all of its beauty and ugliness. It's preferable to an attempt to transcend it completely in my view, an unattainable goal and perhaps pointless in this incarnation, 20 years of meditation brought me to this conclusion. We will detach down the road, there's really no choice.
Simon of Cyrene, you're not.
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I'm calling BULLSPIT on this nonsense.
We've already gathered enough scientific evidence to know what this blogger relates anecdotally: gender attraction typically manifests way before puberty - often as young as 4 or 5 - as it did with the blogger's late brother.
Only someone who has their head planted firmly in the sand would be in denial of what science has discoverd by observation: Homosexuality ls no more perverse and no more of a moral issue than being left-handed. Sociological studies show that it is a constant 5-10% in various populations across time and space. It's just part of the normal human condition - like being a ginger.
Of course, it wasn't all that long ago that ignorant christians thought that being left-handed or being a ginger or having a skin discoloration was some sort of mark of moral turpitude. Idiot dependence on their flawed and ancient text tends to knock off quite a few IQ points.
The statement that your brother "understood that what animates each of us is both unique to each of us and absolutely the same" resonates in my UU heart.