On March 30th, 1997, my brother died from attacks on his auto immune system, attacks that, if he had just been strong enough to hold out one more year, developing antivirals might have thwarted. Even if he had held on for two more years, medical scientists were finally putting forth advances in antiviral studies to combat the dreaded Gay Plague. I write this today not as an expert on AIDS or medicine or even on what it means to be gay. I write today as a woman that lost her beloved brother to a preventable and tragic death.
Yes, my brother was gay; however, in my eyes, he was not gay, he was Donnie. And Donnie was a god, six years older than me, and although he became very difficult to be around as his disease progressed and he forced himself to swallow handfuls of a nauseating drug "cocktail," I loved him dearly. In fact, everyone loved Donnie. He was incredibly popular at school, unlike me, and went on to become a talented, working artist. His work was selling in the thousands for a single piece (perhaps the vultures aimed to profit). Alas, he succumbed on Easter Day. I didn't make it home from Virginia to his death bed where he wilted away penniless in the care of nuns in Cincinnati. I didn't see the last drying skin settling on his sunken eyes, his hollow cheeks.
No, it wasn't AIDS that killed my brother, it was hate, the hate that still surrounds us daily sixteen years later. It was hate that prevented the type of human movement we needed behind AIDS research to save more than a half a million reported by the CDC to have died from the epidemic that was believed to be a gay disease in the 80s when my brother was diagnosed with HIV. If you study the data readily provided by the CDC link above, you'll note that it's gay White men, then gay Black men, then gay Latino men, then straight Black men who are most affected. Note, mind you, that the rates of AIDS death to Blacks is disproportionate to their population: "Blacks represent approximately 12% of the U.S. population, but accounted for an estimated 44% of new HIV infections in 2010. They also accounted for 44% of people living with HIV infection in 2009 (CDC)." Black women are not far behind. Forgive me if I'm inclined to believe that it's xenophobia, the hatred of those different from ourselves, that prevented a more enthusiastic medical response to a disease that we now understand affects straight women and men of all ethnicities and sexual orientations.
While my brother was withering away to a slow and painful end, a couple of scientists were researching and compiling data that would bring HAART to millions of people with AIDS around the world. David Ho, MD, of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center, New York, NY, and George Shaw, MD, PhD, presented their findings in Vancouver in 1996, the result of which was "3-drug therapy [which] rapidly showed impressive benefit with a 60% to 80% decline in rates of AIDS, death, and hospitalization." It was too late for Donnie and many, many other beautiful people he knew, but we now have a cocktail that allows people to live well with HIV.
If only hate hadn't slowed down the research. If only people in our very family had advocated for AIDS research loudly. If only people that I love would recognize that no evil exists on this Earth except what people do to each other.
Someone I know is hiding behind religion today, hiding behind Jesus, of all things. Well, I don't believe in Jesus, and I'm sorry to tell you that on Easter. I stopped believing in Jesus when I was little when I saw people verbally ridiculing my brother for being gay. What kind of a god would put a little boy on this Earth to be so horribly treated by his own relatives and neighbors? No, if god exists, he skipped over our family; he assigned us straight to hell without possibility of redemption. Was I supposed to choose an unknown and cruel god over my brother, my blood and deepest connection in life? And now, today, I learned that it's not god, but Jesus himself who directs man to hate same sex couples. What kind of bastardization of religion is this? And please, prey tell, who does it serve? Did it serve god to kill with your hatred? Does Jesus now ask you to continue hating in his name?
Perhaps, if you're one of these people standing behind Jesus as your argument against gay marriage, you might look within yourself and ask yourself if you truly believe in your heart of hearts that Jesus would ask you to use his name in this way. I ask you this for my brother, who would look you straight in the eyes with this question if he were alive today.
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