MyOutSpirit.com Gay Spirituality Blog

A Positive Perspective on AIDS

{by Shokti Lovestar, London, England}

On WORLD AIDS DAY 2012 in the UK we heard that the rate of infection amongst gay men is at an all time high.  

Bars around the country bizarrely offered WAD ‘celebrations’ and it was even possible to pop down to the GAY bar in Soho to get an on the spot test. So I guess if the result is positive there was plenty of booze on hand to help drown the sorrows and deplete your immune system further.  (I hear there were 2 positive results on the day, and - shockingly - no counselling or support advice on hand.)

The message of World AIDS Day was that HIV is not going away, but will we wait until December 1, 2013 before we talk about it again?  The gay community is not discussing the reasons so many are exposing themselves through risky sex.

To treat HIV as a minor problem that can be managed by medications is missing the point entirely. HIV changes lives and challenges on every level possible, it affects us mentally and emotionally as well as physically – perhaps it will not go away until we understand what it is trying to teach us, and what it is telling us about ourselves.

Lazarus Sunday to Raise HIV/AIDS Treatment Awareness

ONE.org is sponsoring LAZARUS SUNDAY on April 10, 2011. From their website:

Bring the story of the Lazarus Effect and fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa to your congregation; receive a free DVD of the documentary, The Lazarus Effect.

The Fight against HIV/AIDS 
What happens when people dying from AIDS get access to life-saving treatments? People who were once dying from AIDS bounce back from death's door and are able to go back to work and school within 40 days. And the ripple effect is enormous: families and communities are transformed. A sort of resurrection happens. We call it the "Lazarus Effect."

Join the Movement against HIV/AIDS
Join the movement on Sunday, April 10 to witness a modern-day resurrection in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa. Show your group or congregation how this work against HIV/AIDS is successful because of the action of people like you who support saving millions of lives in Africa.

REGISTER HERE

 

 

 

Watch the 90 second clip from The Lazarus Effect and learn how life-saving anti-retroviral treatments are bringing life back to Africa.

Gay artist censored by Smithsonian for ants on crucifix video

{Kittredge Cherry, JesusInLove.org}

In an outrageous and unprecedented act of censorship, the Smithsonian Institution recently removed a video by gay artist David Wojnarowicz from exhibition after a few hours of pressure from religious and political conservatives.

Titled “A Fire in My Belly,” the video combines various images of loss, pain and death as a metaphor for the suffering caused by AIDS.  The four-minute video was denounced as anti-Christian “hate speech” by the Catholic League because it includes a scene of ants crawling over Jesus on a crucifix.  Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), the incoming House speaker, called it a misuse of taxpayer dollars. 

The video had been on display at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC since Oct. 30 as part of the LGBT-themed show “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” the first national art exhibit about sexual orientation and gender identity in American art.  Smithsonian president Wayne Clough decided to pull the video on Nov. 30, claiming that he didn’t want controversy to distract people from the rest of the exhibit.

A Smithsonian spokesperson said that this was the first time that the gallery has pulled an artwork from an exhibit because of complaints from the public.  About 100 people protested the removal with a silent march to the Smithsonian on Dec. 2 organized by Washington’s Transformer Gallery.

The Body of Christ has AIDS

{Inspiration for World AIDS Day, December 1, from Rev. Megan Rohrer, LivingLutheran.com}

If we are all a part of the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:12) and some are feet, some are ears, some are elbows (Romans 12:4), then if any one of Christ’s parts is infected with HIV or AIDS, the blood that runs through Christ’s veins is also infected and affects all the parts of the body.

And while we don’t think of communion wine as literally transformed into Christ’s blood, certainly the infected bits of Christ are in, with and under the bread and wine we ingest into our body. If only for this reason, we should care about AIDS as if we ourselves are infected.

For those who think I’m being overly dramatic, or have gone too far with my biblical and liturgical metaphors, I remind you that the taboo in Jewish culture about drinking blood (Genesis 9:4-5; Leviticus 7:26-27; 17:10-12, 14; 19:26; Deuteronomy 12:16, 23-24; 15:23; and Acts 15:19-20) made Jesus’ comments about consuming flesh and blood just as provocative.

I’ve been thinking about how communion has lost its sense of danger ever since Richard Swanson, my religion professor when I was a student at Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.D. (an ELCA college), pointed out that he believed that the disciples were probably so disgusted by Jesus’ request that they eat his flesh, that they probably refused. He believed this was probably why Christ waited to tell the disciples that the wine was his blood until after everyone had taken a drink (Mark 14:22-24).

Because communion is radical, it leads to radical grace, undeserved forgiveness and creates a kinship with all who worship with us. Being a part of the same bloodline with those in our community helps us to be like family to each other. And if we are not ourselves infected, then many, many members of our family are. If only for this reason, we ought to care about AIDS as if our own mother, child or partner were infected.

Even if it is only within our spiritual imagination, thinking about Jesus and communion this way adds health status to the Galatians list (Galatians 3:28) of things that do not separate us from God or our neighbor. It helps us to remember that in God’s eyes there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, positive nor negative.

At St. Francis Lutheran Church in San Francisco’s Castro district (one of the five churches where I’m called as a pastor), during the midst of the AIDS crisis when little was known about the disease, members were deeply afraid of sharing communion with each other. Much scarier than concerns about sharing a common cup during cold and flu season, this community not only had to learn how to educate each other about how HIV and AIDS is spread but to savor life as they walked with those who were dying.

Their communion liturgy took on new meaning, because the congregation knew each week that it would be the last time some of their members heard those words. If you were to worship at St. Francis this Sunday, you would notice some of the changes to their communion liturgy that stem from the AIDS crisis.

You’d notice that the pastor still takes the last drink from the common cup to show the community that it is safe and that there is a special time of prayer to give a special blessing for even the smallest moments of joy, thanksgiving or celebration in a worshiper’s life. This may include celebrating an anniversary, thanksgiving for a month without smoking cigarettes or a blessing of a bicycle before the AIDS ride.

This past year, I was able to bless a member of St. Francis who was celebrating 15 years of life since he had been diagnosed with HIV. We celebrated his health, luck and the advancements in medications that have been developed since the early days of the AIDS crisis.

We lamented the years and bottles upon bottles of pills that he has had to take, constantly reminding him of how fragile his body is. We acknowledged the fear that comes with wondering when someone sneezes if it will cause him to be sick for months. We wished him freedom from the guilt that comes from surviving what took away the lives of so many. And together we thanked God, who created our fragile bodies and despite all we have done or left undone, names us, claims us and calls us good.

My words of blessing were an echo of the thousands of times, since the AIDS crisis began, that after communion one of the pastors of St. Francis has said: “May the blessing of Christ strengthen and preserve you. Live forgiven, claim your wholeness and go in peace.”

 

SILENCE=DEATH

{by Rev. Paul M. Turner, Gentle Spirit Christian Church of Atlanta}

A couple of weeks ago, a person in our community received the news at the age of 26 they were HIV positive. This young mans life has taken a turn that sadly was preventable.

As I write tonight I am worried…I am scared…I am deeply disturbed. For you see for the last 30 years or so I have seen this before and this is reality come home again, for there are no fairy tale endings.

Yes, there are miracles, yes there are new discoveries and yes there is hope…for with the unconditional love of God there is always hope, always miracles, and always-new discoveries.

So here we are half way through 2010 and I find myself once again climbing up on a soapbox. I want to sound a warning, ring an alarm, rise up and shout from the mountaintop to my brothers and sisters in the gay, bi and straight community…ENOUGH ALREADY…STOP IT…HAVE YOU LOST YOUR MINDS?

This is 2010 not 1994 nor 1982. We know for a fact how HIV keeps it’s bloody record of death going. We really know this is not a manageable disease, but rather a killer that does unbelievable harm to untold millions of people. We know that the medications used to fight off this virus have horrible side effects and in the long run lose their effectiveness. We know that whole generations of humanity will never see their 21st birthday.

Yet, many gay men, bi men and straight men still behave as if HIV is an after thought, as if the magic pill will arrive just in time for Christmas. While I dare say it is not a majority, it is significant enough to cause untold misery and destruction for millions of people.

This is 2010 and we know we have the weapons that can stop this disease in its tracks. The weapons are so simple. One is an object and the other a program.

The object is called a condom and the program is called “needle exchange” or harm reduction (needle exchange and harm reduction is another blog).

Yet when you talk to folks in the community you would think I was “Henny-Penny and crying the sky is falling…think I am kidding? Take a look at this: (not for the squeamish) Some samples from Craigslist:

“I'm into a lot of different things such as public sex, fisting, bareback, bondage, w/s, group fun, Master/slave type "relationships"... and yes, that is meant to mean "strings". I expect that anyone who wants to get to know me should at least be open minded and adventurous, even if they haven't done it all. I live a polyamorous lifestyle. I hope this stuff here sums me up well.”

“I need to suck a **** and eat a large load of ***. I also get into rimming, body contact, J/O and whatever else you can think of. If you are negative I am bb friendly.”

“Yeah, bb btm loves to get plowed hard by raw ****
Into it? like seeding a hot, horny, furry hole?”

There are places in the fair city of Atlanta where one can go and have any number of sex partners in an evening and there are no condoms in sight or asked for. Before the straight folks reading this say ah hah it is you gays…let me be clear there are plenty of these clubs for straight folks as well and the men who are picking up women while out of town are not using condoms either. In fact go to any straight party club and well you get the idea.

I had a person in pastoral counseling who is now a recovering sexual addict tell me how he would go to a local hotel here in town…place an ad on Craig’s list giving his location and room number. He would invite anyone who wanted sex to his room to find the door unlocked and him blindfolded with his butt in the air waiting to receive all the bareback sex he could.

Or how about these websites that have thousands of subscribers for both gay and straight people:

Bare-back-central

Gay Bareback Sex and Hairy Masculine Men

Bareback Resources


The porn industry is a multi billion-dollar empire whose hottest films involve sex without condoms. If people are spending that kind of money you cannot convince me they are not doing what they see in film.

This is not a blog to sound a moral cry about how sexually loose society is, nor is it to start an ethics debate on adultery and or fornication.

Rather it is about admitting and recognizing people regardless of morals, ethics, or the churches teachings are going to have sex. They have been doing the “deed” since the beginning of time.

I will save the sexual ethics discussion for another time. Right now I am concerned about stopping the bleeding. For you see when a person is wounded, 9 times out of 10 before you do anything else you have got to stop the bleeding.

Stopping the bleeding in this case means if you are going to have sex be safe about it. Use a condom!

Believe me, I know they are easy to use, easy to dispose of and can save one from any number of life threatening or life ending diseases. My partner and I have been together 28 plus years and have never had sex without condom use.

My friends don’t we have a moral obligation to not put others at risk for our sexual enjoyment?

For those who call themselves Christian can you really in good conscience put your partner or yourself at risk of a shorten or messed up life for a night of taking care of a “sexual itch”?

Do not those who consider themselves tops have an obligation to say no to bare backing?

Do not those who consider themselves bottoms have an obligation to say no to letting someone inside them without a condom.

How about straight folks…unless you are making a child and you both have tested negative, don’t you have an obligation to keep each other safe? I know all about the marriage vows of fidelity, however it is what it is…I mean really…do you want to find out your partner cheated on you when you come up with a positive test?

If you are going to cheat on your partner or even if you have an open relationship do you really want to introduce HIV or God knows what other disease to the one you say you love?

Isn’t the whole relationship thing difficult enough without adding a premature death sentence to it?

The moral police will tell me the answer is abstinence and then only sex in wedlock.

Well that has really worked well hasn't it? Read the court dockets and the reasons for divorce. Look at the record levels of teen pregnancy. HIV rates of infection are up not down. STD’s are on the rise rather then declining.

People committing adultery in the State of Georgia can go to jail…but that is of little good to the one they infect and I might add too little too late. People who do not disclose their status if positive can face jail time...of course this is a little late isn't it. Kinda like closing the barn door after the horse is long gone.

Gay folk are denied marriage, so their only answer is no sex? Right-so now convince me that a healthy 20 something man is not going to have sex regardless of the marriage laws.

I was talking to a Pastor who works with folks who are HIV positive and he told me about an informal survey that was done for men in prison. People going into prison are given an HIV test. Of those who tested negative when they went into prison, 54% of them tested positive when they came out. Of course you don’t give prisoners condoms because that would be approving sex and the wrong kind of sex at that. What kind of screwed up thinking is that?

I want with all my heart to have conversations around long-term monogamous relationships.

I want to teach values, respect and commitment as a part of our sexual relations.

My faith walk encourages and even demands me to support and model that kind of sexual responsibility.

However, we are left with the reality people are going “sow their oats”, they are going to experiment, they are going to be wild, they are going to be stupid and do sexual things out of a lack of judgment.

Like it or not that is the condition of the human race, it is the way we live and learn.

Yet if I can convince folks who are going to have sex regardless of some moral authority, to use a condom they might live long enough to learn a sense of responsibility.

If I can convince folks that if you have sex without a condom you are either suicidal or are a totally self-absorbed selfish person they might live long enough to learn there is other peoples lives at stake.

So to those men in the gay, bi and straight community…I am begging you, pleading with you, save a life and use a condom.

For those who would blast me for writing this blog, thinking this is the wrong subject for a minister to write about or it was just too graphic please remember:

Silence=Death and my friends we have been silent far too long in the matters of safe sex and the use of the condom.

   

Who do you serve on World AIDS Day?

Who do you serve? So often we go about our days, doing our work, engaging with the news (or refusing to engage), never pausing to reflect on this basic question. Tomorrow, the first of December, let us ask whether our efforts to eliminate AIDS-related suffering are truly serving the World.

So this post is to those of us whose consciousness is already raised about HIV/AIDS and are committed to its eradication. We know that there is neither a cure nor a vaccine to prevent its transmission. We know that despite decades of education, ignorance about the disease remains high and risky behaviors unacceptably high. We know people continue to die by the millions each year.

On World AIDS Day, we may ask: am I serving myself? If I am HIV negative, am I taking good care of my immune system and taking appropriate precautions with every risky situation? Do I know enough to not get AIDS? If I am HIV positive, am I keeping the virus in my body under control and keeping my emotional and spiritual health high enough so that I recognize my own inherent worth?

We should also ask: am I serving my community? How many people living with HIV are on your street, in your neighborhood, and in your city? What needs and challenges do they face? In this time of budget shortfalls and health insurance belt tightening, do not assume they have what they need. Find out who helps them, and if those organizations are healthy enough to do their work. What can you do?

Then we may whether we serve our country. Are we supporting leaders who back up their words about the need to combat AIDS with intelligent strategies that use methodologies proven effective by scientific research or driven by ideology? Do our leaders understand the connections between HIV, poverty, education, drug abuse, and crime—and do they see the big picture?

Do you serve the world? Among 33 million HIV positive people in the world, only about 4 million are getting the medicine they need. If UNAIDS and WHO statistics suggest that the global epidemic may be slowing, where are the hardest-hit countries who are lagging behind? What do millions upon millions of people need? If you do not know, this is a good day to educate yourself.

Imagine a world without AIDS, and act as if that vision were already true. God's compassion reaches into the suffering depths of world through my hands and yours. Those hands can only reach as far as you let them, only as far as you let Spirit work through you. Compassion and love know no limits except those illusions and delusions that stop us from being who we truly are. Be who you are, let us all be who we are, and the suffering associated with HIV will vanish.

---

Spiritual mentor, author, poet, and scholar. Joe is best known for his 2007 book Soulfully Gay. one of the first memoirs in the tradition of World Spirituality based on Integral principles. Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for World Spirituality, where he works with Director Marc Gafni in providing leadership to the think tank. He also blogs at Gay Spirituality. Arctophile and ailurophile. A little bit country and a little bit "part and whole." Follow Joe Perez Facebook and Joe Perez Twitter.

Art honors AIDS martyrs on World AIDS Day

The agony of AIDS and its treatment is expressed in “El Martir” (The Martyr) by Armando Lopez.  It is posted here today for World AIDS Day.

Lopez reinterprets St. Sebastian as an AIDS patient suffering under harrowing modern health-care procedures. Lopez, a New Mexico folk artist, painted it as a tribute to all those who died from AIDS in the early years of experimentation by the medical profession.

St. Sebastian, a third-century Christian saint, is traditionally presented as a near-naked martyr shot with arrows.  Lopez’s martyr is punctured not by arrows, but by the many needles used for medical treatment. 

Read more about “El Martir” at the Jesus in Love Blog

Image credit: El Martir (The Martyr) by Armando Lopez

Around the blogosphere: HIV positive bloggers rise up

Regan's HIV Blog- "Sisters Rise":

I think the formula for helping women rise above HIV is simple. We can borrow from the old Breck shampoo commerical from the '70s (the young women at UPenn will have no idea what I'm talking about). It goes like this: A woman with luxuriously shiny hair (she just washed it with Breck) flips her cascading mane around while claiming that she "told two friends, who told two friends, who told two friends and so on and so on" until the whole world of women with access to a grocery store knew about the wonderous nature of Breck shampoo.

Sean's HIV Blog - "The Return of the Living GRID"

Return of the Living Dead not only entertained the most morbid corner of my humanity, the movie also inspired my first post-diagnosis inner-dialogue of resurrection. Maybe, just maybe, if AIDS struck me down I too could come back from beyond the grave to extract a little revenge on those who were free to live a life of debauchery. As my teenaged peers dreamt of making sweet love to the Playmate of the Year after a hot date, I fantasized about eating her brains after a brisk chase through an eerie, decrepit cemetery.

HIV and AIDS News - "Research Finds No Advantages In 4 Drug Regimen"

Adding a fourth drug to the existing three drug antiretroviral treatment, for the initial stages of HIV has not shown any benefits, according to a U.S. study that covered some 765 patients for three years.

Joe's HIV Blog - "How Much Are You Willing to Pay?"

Until you really take a hard look, you will not know just how much you are already sacrificing. Once you slow down, you will be amazed at how much energy you expend in dealing with day-to-day living, add to that dealing with your infection and you can be on verge of mental meltdown. If you think you can ignore major issues and not pay a price for that, you are sadly mistaken. Stress can and does kill and its effect on pozzies health is well known.