On World AIDS Day: REMEMBER, REMIND, INFORM

Dec 1 is World AIDS Day. I've posted this every year, for a few years, now.

The way so many in this country seem to have already forgotten so much: about the Holocaust, about the civil rights movement of the 60s, about the fact this land was stolen from Natives and turned into a country of immigrants.....it seems more important than ever to keep reposting this.

Remember.

Remind those who have forgotten.

Inform those who were not yet around for the very worst days of this plague:


If you're roughly my age, or older, you lost someone to HIV/AIDS during the earliest and worst days of the plague. You may not even know it, because you think you lost them to pneumonia or cancer or the flu, or even suicide. Maybe they knew they had the virus, and were afraid to let anyone know. Maybe it was a gay man you lost - a gay man who you had no idea was gay, because that, too, was something it was not safe to share even with one's loved ones. Maybe it was a woman or a child or a heterosexual man. Maybe it was someone in your life who you had no idea had dabbled in the world of IV drugs, or who had received a blood transfusion. Maybe it was a very old person. But be sure of this: if you were alive and aware around 1984 or so, there is someone you knew, someone who was in your life, someone you maybe even loved, who is not here, anymore, because of this disease. Be sure, too, that you don't forget how shamefully the world responded to this disease during those earliest days, and for years after. Don't forget that people who were known to have this disease were treated like garbage. Don't forget we had a president who chose to ignore this plague, because gay men and drug addicts had lives which were considered to have no value. Don't forget that, when mainstream America did nothing, gay men and lesbians pooled their resources and did EVERYTHING. DON'T forget that mainstream America was largely part of the problem, while the LGBT community basically invented the idea that there could be solutions. It's World AIDS Day. Remember all of this and, if you have young people in your life, tell them all about it, in every ugly detail, because the ugly parts are the most important.