World AIDS Day

I've tried to keep busy today but it hasn't helped much; my mind begins to wander to those pictures in my mind of those that I have lost from this disease. My grandmother died in 1984 before it was called AIDS. The technical term back then was GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency). I've thought of Gary McClain who was the organ player at our church, we lost him in 1985. Then there was 20 year old Darrell who committed suicide because of his infection, only to find out after his autopsy that his diagnosis was wrong. I remember the young gay man a friend of mine came across at work, he had committed suicide but not before mutilating his body first. In his suicide note he mentioned that he was gay and had only had sex one time. That's all it takes.

I have also been thinking of the many people who have had to suffer above what the disease did to them because of the people around them; especially the church and Christians, or so called Christians. The countless numbers of stories of gay men whose family threw them away upon learning of their disease. The men who had never even told their family that they were gay let alone HIV+, only to have their families not even claim their body from the morgue upon learning why they died.

I have tried to understand, but I just can't seem to. I didn't understand when it happened to me 19 years ago and I don't understand it now. Maybe one day I will. A guy can be a hardened serial killer, on death row and the night of his execution total strangers will hold a candle light vigil to protest the cruelty of putting another human being to .death. His mother will hold a picture telling all who'll listen just how wonderful he was. However, let a straight A student, dedicated, loves his family, loves God and people also. Kind, warm, caring, compassionate, intelligent, well mannered, well adjusted. But let that gay kid tell people that he's gay and he is disowned by his family, rejected by his church and harassed by total strangers and politicians alike; all in the name of God, to the point of doing horrible things to his mind and body and often destroying his life or out right taking of his life, and society doesn't blink an eye, his family forgets about him, and the church decries it as a victory.

God I just don't understand!