tip your waiter. » Another Patch For the Quilt

December 1, 2009

Another Patch For the Quilt

Filed by Trevor at 11:25 pm under Activism, Catholicism, Gay Agenda, Humanism, Love, Sex Ed

This evening I attended Chicago Opera Vanguard’s second annual AIDS Quilt Songbook, which not only functions as a valuable fundraiser for outreach programs in the city, but is also a fantastic exhibition of local composers and performers. To boot, this year’s concert was held at Center on Halsted, which was an even more appropriate venue and didn’t require schlepping down to Hyde Park again. Bonus.

The concert itself, consisting primarily of new works, alternated fairly regularly between decidedly somber selections and gallows humor, my favorites being Atripla, in which the entire fine print of an antiviral medication is set to circus music, and You’re So Gay, which…well, you figure it out. In the lobby, attendees were given the opportunity to write a reflection or a message of hope upon squares of red fabric, but I hesitated before grabbing a pen. HIV/AIDS is not something that has affected me directly in any way just yet and I wished to save such a gesture for those who had lived through it, either through their own diagnosis or vicariously through a loved one. And to do so otherwise felt hollow.

I will say, though, that as a gay man, the AIDS issue affects me in a really stupid way. In particular, the prevailing misconception that having sex with another man automatically makes a person more susceptible to contracting HIV. But rather than dissecting all of the various and sundry ways our society abuses the misinformation regarding HIV/AIDS, I will simply reiterate Bil’s post from earlier this evening: Knowledge is Good.

We must educate the public that all unprotected sex greatly increases the risk of infection, and thus must not only instruct our nation’s youth regarding responsible sexual behavior, but also promote a healthier and more realistic attitude toward sex in general.

We must do away with medieval ways of thinking and castigate those who promote HIV/AIDS as a plague from God, starting with the removal of their tax-exempt status.

We must put pressure upon the Catholic Church to recant its harmful message against the use of condoms — on a continent wherein fully two-thirds of the worldwide population of those currently living with AIDS resides, no less — and to formally apologize for being instrumental in exacerbating an already seemingly uncontainable epidemic.

We must remove the stigma against those who are HIV+ and must ensure that the rights of these individuals are upheld.

Above all, we must remind the public that this disease cannot be spread by casual contact and that those who suffer with it are as much in need of physical contact, if not more so, as the rest of us.

As for me, I think I need to install wheels on my soapbox and ride down to the Center on Halsted to volunteer my time.