GMHC panel tackles issues affecting HIV-positive black men

Volume 2, Number 9 | The Weekly Newspaper of Chelsea | December 7 - 13, 2007

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THE DOWNTOWN ALLIANCE

WORLD AIDS DAY 2007

By Kathryn Lurie

A sense of urgency pulsed through a large meeting room at Gay Men’s Health Crisis in Chelsea last Wednesday night. Dozens of men of color were seated in a semi-circle to face a table at which six panelists sat, discussing issues facing gay men of color who are HIV positive.

The event was part of a discussion series sponsored by GMHC called Lives at Stake. This installment focused on black gay men and HIV in New York and around the world, and it was held in conjunction with World AIDS Day 2007, which was commemorated on Saturday.

The panelists took turns broaching difficult topics with a candidness that seemed much appreciated among the fervent crowd, who listened attentively to every word spoken.

Robert Miller, a black HIV-positive man who is on the faculty at the University at Albany, talked about spirituality and what it means for gay men, and how it can help them cope with an HIV-positive status. He said that spirituality helps people reconnect.

“Connection gets at the individual and their community,” he said. Though the notion of God means different things to different people, the work, he explained, is figuring out for oneself what spirituality and God means, and how that can potentially help one to better manage his personal challenges.

Besides Miller, panelists included Sam Avrett, from the MSM Initiative and American Foundation for AIDS Research; Anthony Morgan, from the New York State Black Gay Network; Francisco Roque, from the Institute for Gay Men’s Health at GMHC; and Durrell Knights, of Many Men, Many Voices at GMHC.

Other issues that were brought up during the talk by both panelists and audience members included supportive social networking, drug-intervention programs, safe-sex education and mental health. One audience member called the HIV-AIDS epidemic “a socioeconomic institution that we need to deconstruct.”

Odell Mays, chair of the board of directors at GMHC, moderated the discussion.

“World AIDS Day is a misnomer,” Mays said after the panel ended. “We could have World AIDS Month. Every day is World AIDS Day for those of us who are really knee-deep into the work. Every day we’re all impacted by it.”

Dr. Marjorie Hill, chief executive officer at GMHC, has been doing HIV work since the mid-’80s, when she worked at King’s County Hospital. hoped that people would recognize this year’s World AIDS Day in three ways, the first being at the personal level.

“Everyone should know their status,” she said. “There are 1.2 million people in the United States who are HIV positive, and the [Center for Disease Control and Prevention] estimates that 25 percent are HIV positive and don’t know.”

She said that World AIDS Day provided a great opportunity for everyone to get tested and to step up to that “personal level of accountability and information.”

The second way Hill wanted the day to be acknowledged is for society to recognize that HIV/AIDS is anything but over, and that it still continues to be a pressing public-health and social-justice issue.

Hill’s third point involves political activism.

“We released today a report about where the presidential candidates stand on HIV and AIDS,” she said. “We feel that individuals need to know where the candidates stand. When we go into the voting booth next November, we want to take that information. It’s a non-partisan document; we list all the Democrat candidates’ responses and records.” (Though every Democratic candidate answered the questionnaire, none of the Republican candidates did.)

Hill said that some of the biggest challenges that face black gay men revolve around stigma. “Black gay men have the stigma of being men of color,” she said, “they have the stigma of being gay, and then they have the stigma, if they are, of being HIV-positive, or being at-risk for HIV.”

Both Hill and Mays called the event a success and said that they look forward to more events like this one to promote unity in the black gay community.

“Anyone in this room who is living with HIV,” Hill said as audience members milled around her, chatting, “I hope would leave feeling a little more supported, a little more connected to community, a little more sense of empathy around the challenges that they face.”

That seemed the case for many members of the audience. One participant praised the discussion as he walked out, but he voice one regret: “I wish we could have had more time,” he said.

For more information on Gay Men’s Health Crisis, visit their Web site at gmhc.org or call (800) AIDS-NYC.