Removing the stigma from HIV

Most adults today came to sexual fruition at a time when HIV had exactly one inevitable and relatively prompt result — death.

It would have been impossible to keep that kind of message from causing stigmatization, undeserved though it may have been, of individuals with the virus.

But the time has come for us to reject the black dot of HIV and stop treating HIV-positive individuals as tainted or irresponsible.

At the height of the AIDS crisis, popular culture was riddled with representations of the horrendous havoc the disease would eventually wreak on its victims.

Theatrical works like “Rent” and “Angels in America” were venerated for their touching treatment of the issue.

But in 1989, the Centers for Disease Control began a public-service campaign with a picture of a young man’s driver’s license and the message, “If you get the AIDS virus now, you and your license could expire at the same time.”

Only a few years earlier, the AIDS Action Committee had produced a Rockwellian poster of a father figure having a serious conversation with a clearly-terrified young boy.

The poster urged parents not to “forget the chapter on AIDS” when discussing sex with their children.

Today, when the virus is caught early, patients with HIV live long, productive and almost completely normal lives.

Where before confrontational scare tactics with unfortunate stigmatizing side-effects were perhaps justified, we now have the ability and the responsibility to confront the issue with considerable sensitivity.

Analyzing history, we must be wary of assigning blame to the individuals responsible for these  original campaigns and the stigma they engendered.

Confronted with a ravaging and incurable disease and possessing only the information they had at the time, you and I would probably have made the same decisions.

But now Logo TV and “Avenue Q” have teamed up to produce television commercials designed to break the cycle of shame.

In a “puppet service announcement,” cast members of the award-winning Broadway musical urge us to communicate and “rethink HIV: spread the word, not the virus.”

We must treat the effort against HIV/AIDS with due gravity in a continuing fight against a still-dangerous and largely-preventable disease. But we must also remember the larger purpose of any drive to save human lives. Logo’s announcement shows us that we can do both at the same time.

If, in order to save lives, we dehumanize and stigmatize the individuals we hope to save, we have lost sight of the real purpose of our initiative.

We have a moral responsibility to ourselves and our community to inform and protect each other when possible, but we also have a responsibility to treat each other with the minimum respect our mutual humanity demands.

This weekend is Bloomington’s annual PRIDE Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Film Festival.
 
As you celebrate, take a moment to remember our duties to each other and question the assumptions we make about those affected by a disease which is inseparable from the  history of an identity many of us share.

­— drlreed@indiana.edu