HIV/AIDS crisis

The community must provide additional help to those who need it most.

Houston has never been known as a town of demonstrations. So it was all the more remarkable when thousands of people wearing black armbands with pink triangles showed up at City Hall 40 years ago this week to protest gay rights opponent Anita Bryant. Bryant, a 1970s vocalist and gay-rights opponent, was invited to sing at the Texas Bar Association meeting in Houston.

In the decades since, gay marriage has been legalized and Houston has elected a gay mayor multiple times. As a result, many have become complacent about LGBT rights, but the HIV/AIDS public health crisis provides proof of lingering injustice.

While the virus is no longer a death sentence and rates of infection have plummeted, advances have stopped on the doorstep of the African-American gay and bisexual communities, already struggling with low levels of education, high incarceration rates and poverty.

One in two gay and bisexual African-American men will be infected with the virus in their lifetimes if current rates continue, as predicted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Put another way, if gay and bisexual African-American men made up a country, its rate of HIV infection would be the highest in the world, according to an article by Linda Villarosa in The New York Times Magazine.

Let this sink in: In the richest nation in the world, one segment of the population has an infection rate surpassing impoverished Swaziland’s, according to the Times. Compounding the problem, now that the virus has concentrated on this doubly marginalized community, for too many people, the disease has ceased to exist from their consciousness.

In the 1980s, politicians, celebrities and community leaders came together, albeit too slowly. But they eventually united behind the goal of finding a treatment for HIV and developing a campaign to promote safe sex. The time has come for our community to take its blinders off as to this latest challenge and provide additional help to those who need it most.

Although the skeletal faces of AIDS victims marred with purple blotches initially appeared on the West and East Coasts in San Francisco and New York, the new ground zero for HIV/AIDS is the South, including Texas.

The Southern states — which represent 37 percent of the country’s population as of 2014 — accounted for 54 percent of all new HIV diagnoses, according to Villarosa’s article. The South also has the highest number of people living with HIV who don’t know they have been infected.

HIV/AIDS is not a “gay disease.” Thirty percent of those living with HIV in Harris County are heterosexual. This deadly disease must be eradicated everywhere.

It’s tragic that our region — famous for its warm hospitality and iconic music — is increasingly known for the poor health outcomes for the poorest of its citizens. HIV/ AIDS is a health systems problem, but it’s also an issue of poverty, lack of education, stigma and discrimination.

Here in Houston and Harris County, with 1 out of 200 residents having been reported as receiving an HIV diagnosis, Houston’s Department of Health is leading a planning effort in conjunction with other partners, including Legacy Community Health, to tackle this pernicious problem.

Mayor Sylvester Turner has endorsed the comprehensive plan, but he hasn’t committed local funding to bring it to fruition. Additional federal resources to aid in this fight may not be forthcoming either. President Donald Trump’s proposed budget includes a major cut in CDC funding for HIV/AIDS prevention, testing and support services. This is short-sighted.

In the 1980s, grass-roots support drove change, and it can drive it again. “A true ending to the epidemic requires a strategy that includes an expansion of nontraditional partners in coordination of resources and support from all systems of government and social services, not just the city of Houston alone,” according to city Health Director Stephen Williams.

Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s quirky fantasy world, the theme of the local LGBT Pride celebration on June 24 is, “Wonderland.” A true Wonderland would be a world where HIV/AIDS is eliminated for all populations. That Wonderland is within our reach if we come together as a community to rid our city, state and nation of this dread disease.

It’s tragic that our region — famous for its warm hospitality and iconic music — is increasingly known for the poor health outcomes for the poorest of its citizens. HIV/AIDS is a health systems problem, but it’s also an issue of poverty, lack of education, stigma and discrimination.