by Tuala Williams
For New Pittsburgh Courier
DALLAS (NNPA)—In March 1981, doctors and pharmacists began discovering a medical phenomenon. Eight young New Yorkers had developed red and purple lesions, which doctors would diagnose as an aggressive form of Kaposi’s Sarcoma, a rare form of benign cancer that occurred primarily in older people.
During that same period, doctors in New York and California diagnosed several cases of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia, a rare lung infection. A drug technician for the Centers for Disease Control, Sandra Ford, discovered that a doctor had placed a refill for Pentamine, a drug used for the treatment of the disease.
“This was unusual. Nobody ever asked for a refill. Patients usually were cured in one 10-day treatment or they died,” Ford told Newsweek.
In time, each group would develop the same symptoms as the other, leading the health care profession to realize that they were dealing with a new and unknown disease. This phenomenon would continue to increase. The CDC stated that there were as many as 452 reported cases in 23 states of infected homosexual or injected drug use by the beginning of July 1983.
While little was known about the transmission of this new, unnamed disease, one thing had become apparent, infection had only been discovered in gay white men, leading heterosexuals to believe they had little or no risk for infection. But by the end of the year, a new population of infected individuals would be discovered among injected drug users.
Despite the discovery of this new population of infected people, the disease continued to be linked to gay men, receiving the name, gay-related immune deficiency or GRID in 1982. The fact that the disease existed mostly in the gay community also suggested to many that this was a sexually transmitted disease, according to a report circulated in June 1982.
In the latter part of July, it was discovered that the disease had been contracted by non-homosexual men with no history of injected drug use prompting the name to be changed to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. And fear began to spread.
Little was known about how the disease was spread, but now most people knew that they could get it too. This was especially so when children and women not fitting the known risk factors began to get the disease.
Fear of contracting the disease caused a stigma to be attached to the victims. People became afraid of casual contact. Children with AIDS were expelled from school and not allowed to play with other children once their condition was discovered. Adult victims lost jobs. Like lepers, victims were considered to be, “unclean.”
In 1983, Dr. David Spencer, Commissioner of Health, New York City reported, “Landlords have evicted individuals with AIDS” and “the Social Security Administration is interviewing patients by phone rather than face to face.”
Time Magazine reported, “In 1985, at 13, Ryan White became a symbol of the intolerance that is inflicted on AIDS victims. Once it became known that White, a hemophiliac, had contracted the disease from a tainted blood transfusion, school officials banned him from classes.”
Believing themselves to be the victims of widespread discrimination and sensing growing apathy toward their plight, gay white men as well as those sympathetic to the crisis, formed The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power was founded in 1987 along with other gay rights and AIDS organization aimed at awareness and efforts to end the growing epidemic.
A media campaign was launched encouraging homosexuals to “ACTUP.” Seminars, forums and, a march on Washington were also held.
Although ultimately affective in changing public opinion about homosexuals and reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS in that population, the media attention also served to reinforce the belief that AIDS was a gay white disease.
According to the CDC, in 1990, gay Black men accounted for only 19 percent of all new HIV/AIDS cases, while gay white men accounted for 69 percent. But the new movement would soon bring a shift. In 1996, the number increased to 24 percent for gay Black men and 59 percent for gay white men, suggesting a trend. According to a CDC study of six large U.S. cities in 2000, 30 percent of young gay Black men were infected with HIV.
“When people think ‘gay’, they think ‘white’. But the people still at the greatest risk are sexually active gay men, and that cuts across all races,” said Helene Gayle of the CDC.
Despite the widespread fear of transmission and the report of AIDS among a wide demographic, Americans would continue to consider it primarily a disease of gay white men and drug addicts. This perspective allowed Blacks to believe it was not their problem and allowed many religious organizations to attach a judgment to the disease, believing that AIDS was caused by immoral behavior and the sufferers brought it on themselves. In essence, many believed it to be “their” problem. However, in reality, HIV/AIDS was rapidly becoming a Black problem.
In 2000, the number of new infections among African-Americans and Hispanics surpassed that of Whites for the first time, with African-Americans making up 57 percent of all new HIV/AIDS cases, despite the fact that Blacks only represented 13 percent of the population. Numbers grew among all demographics. According to the Black AIDS Institute, in 2004, 70 percent of teens testing HIV-positive were Black.
The rate senior citizens with HIV/AIDS began to increase twice as fast as it was among younger groups. In 2005, the number of new AIDS cases among those 50-59 was higher than that of those 29 and younger. However, the number of Black women with HIV/AIDS has grown at the highest rate.
“African-American women have the highest rate, 60 percent of all AIDS cases reported among women, 64 percent of new AIDS cases among women; three times more than the number of new cases reported among white women,” the CDC reported.
Today, the CDC reports, HIV/AIDS is the number one cause of death among African-American women aged 25-34. It is the second leading cause of death for African-American men ages 35 to 44. Many have asked why the numbers of new HIV/AIDS cases continue to grow among African-Americans despite the increase in prevention information and why the Black community seems so unmoved by this fact.
“If 100,000 Black people had been murdered by right-wing militias, Black America would have taken to the streets demanding retribution. If 100,000 Black people had been killed accidentally by the recklessness of a major American corporation, Blacks would have rallied to shut the company down,” Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal Constitution wrote in 1998. “But the Black death toll from AIDS - 100,000 and climbing - has met only apathy and denial from major black organizations,” she said.
Some blame the church for the failure of the Black community to address the increasing incidents of HIV/AIDS effectively.
“The Black church in America continues to be the most important, trusted, and influential institution in the African American community,” writes Pernessa C. Seele, founder of the Balm In Gilead. “Throughout history, the Black church has repeatedly demonstrated its effectiveness as a forum for addressing the health, social and ethical concerns of African-Americans. However, many African-American clergy and other church professionals have been reluctant to deliver messages about AIDS prevention and treatment. They are influenced by conservative theological teachings about sexuality and drug use, and often misunderstand the basic facts of HIV transmission and the nature of the epidemic within the African American community. The reluctance of the Black church to address HIV/AIDS is both a manifestation of and contributes to the widespread stigma associated with the disease and thus the AIDS epidemic continues to rage within our communities today.”
Dr. Pamela Foster, Director of the Rural Health Institute of the University of Alabama, understands the effect of the churches failure to deal with the issue of HIV/AIDS all too well.
“I was diagnosed with full blown AIDS. In ‘91, I found out that I was HIV positive. At the time, I had been in church all my life, all my life. I married a man that was in the Navy. We found out that in ‘91 he was HIV positive. ... Back in the ‘90s people didn’t talk about HIV/AIDS like we are now.
“And so, being in church all my life I remember us still attending church and I saw how his weight had rapidly... he lost a lot of weight quick. I saw that he went blind, and no one in the church, no one in the church, would even assist me with getting him out of the car or any of those things. And he passed away in Thanksgiving of ‘92. And I began to just take a look and I thought surely I couldn’t tell my story because I saw how they treated him and I just didn’t know how they were going to treat me.”
After being sent home to die with just 16 T Cells, Foster promised God if he would “raise her up,” she would tell everybody about HIV/AIDS. “I went straight to my church and went straight to my pastor and I said, ‘Listen, I am dying of AIDS and we must do something in the church.’ He said, ‘Pamela, go on and do what you need to do.’” Doing what Pamela needed to do included the promotion of condom use, a controversial issue in many churches.
“We preach fornication and adultery and anything that we want to preach, but the realty is that some people still go out there and have sex. If I can’t get you through the word then I will make sure that you have a condom. We don’t look at it from both sides.”
Dr. Randoph Bracy Jr., pastor of The New Covenant Baptist Church in Orlando, Fla., blames ignorance for the churches failure to respond appropriately to the HIV/AIDS crisis. Recalling his own experience with AIDS, he says, “Twenty-five years ago today, I had a situation where I was called by a person in my church to go and visit a young man who had this mysterious disease. Well I didn’t know anything about AIDS. I went in there and I heard he had HIV and the little that I knew was that it was a homosexually transmitted disease. That’s all I knew.
“I went in and I tried to make small talk.... and so ... he tried to make small talk. But he could feel my anguish, because I knew that he was dying, and he said, ‘Reverend, how do you think God’s going to deal with me after I made love to another man?’
Nothing, nothing, nothing had prepared me for that.”
Many believe it is not ignorance, but homophobia that prevents the church from dealing with HIV/AIDS.
“A lot of people will say God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Have you ever heard that? If God didn’t make Steve, who made Steve? Somebody had to make Steve,” said Pastor Dennis Wiley of Covenant Baptist Church in Washington, D. C. during his sermon. For Pastor Wiley, “Steve” represents the belief that some men are genetically predisposed to homosexuality, a position he and many others believe the church should recognize.
While many ministers disagreed with this position, ministers and religious leaders attending the 2007 Balm In Gilead Black Church Institute did agree that the issue of “Steve” and other issues of sexuality must be dealt with if the church is to address HIV/AIDS effectively.
“We cannot continue to hide our heads in the sand and pretend that it doesn’t exist. It does exist,’’ Bracy said. ‘’I think that so many of our preachers and pastors really do not have the wherewithal the knowledge of what this is all about.”
