AIDS or Anthropoid’s Indifference to Divergent’s Suffering

In the throes of national grief over the downing of MH17 there was mention in particular of the loss of several AIDs conference delegates, one of whom had been a leading HIV expert and activist, all due to meet in Melbourne this week. In this vein,  ABC News 24 interviewed Chris Beyrer, Director, Johns Hopkins Training Program in HIV Epidemiology and Prevention Science to garner his take on the impact to international studies regarding the loss of these people.

Beyrer was heartbreakingly frank as he discussed his past and how many friends and lovers had been  lost to the disease in the days before there was any drug therapy or hopes of anything other than a palliated death. To me it was moving, it was sad and then suddenly it became something completely shameful; something that rent my heart.

Human Immunodeficiency Virus is commonly called HIV and affects the immune system through the destruction of white blood cells which are responsible for combating disease. This catastrophic attack of the white blood cells results in the body’s inability to fight infection and it this rather than the virus that takes lives. There is currently no cure but it can be quite effectively controlled with a range of medical treatments.

HIV is the virus that causes AIDS, and AIDS is the condition diagnosed with a positive test result and with the development of infection or a severely compromised immune system. It is spread when body fluids enter the bloodstream of someone uninfected, primarily through sexual intercourse, sharing of unclean syringes and pregnancy.

The origin of the disease can be pinpointed to somewhere in Africa and evolved from simian immunodeficiency viruses (SIVs) sometime in the late 1800’s. The exact location, following the HIV strain present in gorillas and other primates, is uncertain and found in Congo, Cameroon, Ivory Coast as well as Liberia and Sierra Leone. It is supposed that the practice of consuming bush meat which is butchered in unhygienic conditions spread the disease from animals to humans.

We know this now. However when it first emerged in the general population of the US in the 1980’s, it was sadly reported as being prevalent among the homosexual community. I remember because I was there. I was travelling through Europe and like my other white, middle-class, Christian compatriots thought it confined to ‘that’ population.

I remember the outcries from the far right in general and the Christians in particular gleefully announcing that the wrath of God was upon the unholy heathens who practiced the unnatural and demonic among their own gender; in Australian parlance, ‘poofters’ were getting their comeuppance. Manly men didn’t want to be approached in public toilets anymore and were glad that God had finally heard their cries of anguish and done something about it; He was killing off the great pansies.

The fact that I was having a whale of a time in 80’s Europe, overindulging in booze and promiscuity and could quite easily have contracted the virus myself, was irrelevant. It was fornication, sure, but with a wriggle and a squirm of conscience, at least it was a God-condoned type of sex that could lead (God forbid) to procreation and so God wasn’t as wrathful with the heterosexual fornicators as He was with the gays.

And you know what I realised as I listened to Dr Beyrer? Of course you do, because you aren’t a close-minded, bigoted hypocrite. I realised that for all the Christian condemnation of the evil lifestyle that lead to the appearance and horrific escalation of the disease, not one Christian thing was done to alleviate the suffering of those poor initial casualties, by the mainstream at least.

As Dr Beyrer and his lover and his dearest friends were standing helplessly by each other, heartbroken and tormented, wracked with pain and dragged to death too soon, the righteous were crowing at worst or ignoring it all ‘as someone else’s problem’ at best.

My God, the arrogance and the pure hatred to have wantonly scorned their agony. Yes my dear Christians, we were those thoughtless soldiers happily throwing dice over who’d get the guy’s clothes when he died up there on the cross. Because he didn’t conform to our view of a God-fearing lifestyle and we adhered to the Bible of a wrathful and judgemental God. Even Jesus himself only selected those passages of a loving and merciful God from the Bible. He taught nothing but love. Yet at every point in history we can see our complete and utter failure to follow His words.

There was no love for the homosexuals. There was nothing but snickering judgement.

And to further the damage, because few of any consequence championed the cause, scientific and medical research was not funded or approved with much drive and a cure or the drugs to alleviate the disease were not sought with much enthusiasm.

But then we found that not just gay men, or druggies died of the disease, but women and more abominably, children.

Had it been white children affected by the virus the hue and cry would have awakened a behemoth of Christian virtue and fervour and manic lobbying for new research funding and drugs trials.

I do not intend to belittle the valiant efforts of those who have worked tirelessly for years in this fight. I condemn myself and those like me who stood idly by, judging from the sidelines and doing nothing.

Why do we always have to be indifferent to those that are ‘different’, divergent, unlike ourselves. Where is our humanity? Where is our sense of wonder at the miracle of life being here at all in this universe, yet alone the amazement at our being here together to share it in whatever way we choose to live our lives?

When will we be mature and courageous enough to love those who have different sexual practices, skin colour, religious observation, language or hair styles? We do not have to like them. Jesus asked us to love each other, not like each other. Like or approval has nothing to do with the simple respect due of love. To do all in our power to care for each other and champion a cause for those in their direst moment.

I’m sorry to all the AIDS sufferers for the stigma I helped perpetuate, the judgements I made and the pain I exerted by my silence and ignorance.