The Inspirational Story of My Grandfather
Throughout my grandfather’s life, he has traveled long and far helping people. Early in his life, he worked as a field artillery officer with the US Military during the Vietnam War. After coming home from Germany, he went to seminary and became a reverend. This was paid for by the GI Bill. Since then, he has been a reverend in five different churches across California. In his time at the churches, he spent a lot of time speaking about HIV and AIDS awareness on panels, and preaching acceptance. He consistently pushed for AIDS related education in the towns’ high schools. He “endorsed AIDS education and an informed presentation about homosexuality while [another local priest] took another view which involved therapy to help folks deal with their disorder, AIDS being the result of their sin.” The local priest was Ed Moore. Moore was an E Free pastor, meaning he was an evangelical pastor. E Free pastors tend to lean towards more conservative view points. Together, with a few others, my grandfather and Moore were on a panel that advised sexual education for students. Moore’s beliefs threatened the education of students, and taught hate rather than love and acceptance. This was a problem that schools across the states dealt with. How did they teach AIDS awareness?
When AIDS surfaced as a new, incurable disease, people labeled it as the gay disease. During this time, the country was in a large phase of discovery. “AIDS started as a ‘gay’ disease, so we had to both come to learn about the nature of homosexuality and deal with an incurable disease.” The ‘gay’ disease phenomenon came about because of learning in two separate fields that were then bonded together by time. In 1982, the name of AIDS then informally morphed into GRID, meaning gay-related immune deficiency. This lead to programs popping up across America, aiming to educate people about AIDS and homosexuality/sexual identity as two separate entities. Oasis, an educational program at the time, came into my grandfather’s church to teach about AIDS. A large issue that faced congregations was the avoidance of taking communion and drinking from the cup of salvation. People didn’t yet understand how AIDS was spread, therefore people did not want to drink from the same cup and run the risk of contracting the disease. When Oasis came into the church, my grandfather recalls “in one session a member stood up and literally wailed in terror at what she heard, ran out of the room pulling her hair. I followed her home, spoke to her for a while, she couldn’t begin to deal with what was being offered. She experienced it as the work of the devil.” Acceptance of this sexuality came with the understanding that homosexuality had always been around. People were just forced to become educated on the subject because of a disease that had been linked to it.
We had just recently accepted sex in our culture, abortion had been decriminalized nationwide and STI treatments were made more available. This had already shaken people in our world. In New York City, people of the LGBTQ+ community found that people were more accepting and open. “New York seemed either frightening or risible to the rest of the nation. To us, however, it represented the only free port on the entire continent. Only in New York could we walk hand in hand with a member of the same sex,” recalls Edmund White, a famous gay memoirist.
The hysteria surrounding the AIDS epidemic that happened in the late 1970s and early 1980s eventually ended, but 1.1 million people still die from HIV/AIDS every year. By 2001, only 41% of men who died of AIDS contracted the disease during sex with someone of the same gender, but people continue to struggle with the notion that AIDS is not a gay-related immune deficiency. According to statitistics from GHMC in 2009, “There are an estimated 34 million people living with HIV/AIDS and 2.5 million children are living with HIV/AIDS. About 2.7 million people were newly infected with HIV. Women account for an estimated 17 million of all adults living with HIV/AIDS.”
Around the world, countries still refuse to acknowledge that HIV/AIDS affects millions of people every year, men, women and children. The fight for treatment and acceptance is still very real and very dangerous. This fight will be made even harder if the Trump administration’s recent funding cutbacks are pushed through. Said funding cutbacks would cut the federal budget for global health programs by nearly a fifth. This would greatly restrict access to healthcare globally, especially surrounding sexual health.
We go to school in Greenwich Village, historically considered the epicenter of the the fight against HIV/AIDS. This makes HIV/AIDS something we need to be even more aware about than most. As citizens of the world, and young innovators, it is our responsibility to make sure that people in other parts of the world understand that AIDS is a deadly disease – one that anyone of any sexuality can contract. The work of people like my grandfather is still very relevant and important today. Living in and going to school in New York City opens us up to many resources and ways to raise awareness about HIV/AIDS. We have a responsibility to make sure accurate information is available and that the scourge of HIV/AIDS is not forgotten, underfunded and neglected.