Blacks need serious discussion about AIDS

Nearly 50 percent of black gay and bisexual men in some American cities are estimated to be infected with HIV.

Black women account for nearly 70 percent of newly infected cases.

Black youth represent nearly 56 percent of the new AIDS cases.

Of the 1 million people who are living with HIV/AIDS, nearly half of them are black

— U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Where do you go in Rockford if you are black and gay or bisexual to discuss this scourge called AIDS that is ravishing black communities? If you are a heterosexual female who finds out her man has been living a double life and engaging in risky sexual behavior, where do you go and who do you talk to?

One of the reasons AIDS has spread so fast in black communities around the country is that in general they fail to deal with the issue of homosexuality. Rockford is not Chicago, but it is a microcosm for black communities in America. In the black community, homosexuality is tolerated but not accepted.

Homosexuality is recognized but still viewed by the majority in the black community as a Biblical sin. Gay men and women who are open about their sexuality are not given the same status in the black community as some one who is straight.

When I was young in the 1960s, gay black men felt the pressure to stay in the closet and carry on masquerades with women. Sometimes these men married and had children. This behavior is still going on in the black community. No one in the past wanted to talk about it, and no one now wants to talk about it.

In the present time male/female relationships built on this deception have put black women unknowingly at risk. Condoms, one of the major ways to stop the spread of AIDS, are laughed at and seen as unmanly to too many black hetero and homosexual men.

To stop this black death, the black community here and others across the land need to look squarely at the issue of homosexuality in their own areas. The black church, the only institution supported entirely by black people, must step up and deal with this issue in the community and, yes, deal with the issue of homosexuality in the black church.

It is not God’s will that so many otherwise healthy black people are dying of this disease. It is our will. It is our stubbornness; it is our ignorance. It is our fear that facing the behaviors that spread this disease will tear an already fragile community further apart.

Meanwhile the disease spreads, and the people keep dying. Black people have to start serious discussions about sexual behaviors that are killing them. We have to talk about AIDS, homosexuality, and male/female relationships.

News Courtesy : Rockford Register Star

Tags: HIV