Marc.Lawrence@asuvax.asu.edu (Marc Lawrence) (05/25/89)
Several of you, within the past couple of days, have probably read an article
in here which speculates whether or not it is proper to refer to AIDS as a Gay
disease. Several events have occurred in my life in the last 48 hours which
causes me to rethink the semantics of this question, which I believe I need to
now call a mere play on words.
Any of you who read this conference on a regular basis will already know I am
an HIV- Gay male; and one who keeps harping on that fact that I believe this
echo to a place for ALL people to share with us their thoughts, and also to
learn from and be educated through other people's sharing. That is the very
basis on which I moderate this echo. I have no preferences and I don't
believe my own sexual orientation is what is being discussed here.
Yes, many Gay people have contracted the HIV virus, many have died, many are
still sick with it, many more will die, and also there are MANY Gay and
Lesbian people who WILL and DO continue to educate other people about this
disease, AND there are OTHER PEOPLE who are not Gay who are also giving of
their time (and I'm awfully damned proud of each and every one of them too) as
evidenced by:
I know some of you have read my friend Mike (a former sysop, who just happened
to be Gay) died because of AIDS four weeks ago. Mike was my friend, and he
was also a friend of other people, both Gay and Non-Gay. Mike touched each of
our lives, and I felt it was important that Mike be remembered for the short
30 years he was here. I have spent the past four weeks making a Panel for The
Quilt, which is part of The Names Project which goes on national tour...which
I'm sure many of you are familiar with. The Quilt happens to be on display in
my home city (San Jose, CA) this weekend and in essence The Names Project
(home based in San Francisco) is allowing San Jose's AIDS/ARC organization,
ARIS, to handle the display this weekend.
ARIS is a composition of both Gay and Non-Gay people who give up of their time
so as to make other people (irregardless of what area of interest they might
have with AIDS/ARC) more comfortable with the subject. When I walked up to
the desk where ARIS was accepting new Panels yesterday, I was greeted by, what
I would suspect, to be a Heterosexual Woman. I told here I had a new Panel I
wanted to give to The Names Project and the first thing she did was to hug me
and say "bless you." I had to fill out a form which identified my Panel and
one of the questions was: "What was the purpose for the Panel." My response
was: "To honor my friend Mike who died because of AIDS." The lady opened up
the Panel and she and her surrounding colleagues congratulated me for the job
I had done. And finally, the lady took me in her arms and held me and we
shared a few tears together.
There's one other event which occurred which caused me to rethink the
aforementioned question of who's disease this was. As I walked in and among
the more than 200 Panels on display, I came across a Panel prepared for a
little girl who had died from AIDS. The Panel had a picture of the little
girl. She was a Black little girl and the Panel also had a pair of her
booties and a knit baby outfit she must have once worn; and from the dates on
the Panel I read that she had only been with us for two years. As I looked
down at the little girl's panel I said to myself: "This little girl didn't
know who's disease this was as she never had the time to be told to try to
understand anything different."
Marc...
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