World AIDS Day infuses critical assessment
World AIDS Day should be more than mere remembrance of those who have died of HIV-related illness. It should be a day of action, prevention and honest reflection, especially in our region where the LGBTQ+ community continues to struggle in finding its identity.
“The LGBTQ+ community in Northwest Indiana exists only as a euphemism,” one middleaged gay man from Hobart told me. “It is still mostly hidden and largely marginalized. If it exists at all, it is primarily on hook-up dating apps and within the kindness of strangers, as Blanche DuBois would say.”
He’s referring to the mentally disturbed character in the 1947 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “A Streetcar Named Desire.”
“We still do not offer comprehensive sex education to our young, and the idea that communities make a difference only imagines a sociopolitical utopia, at least for Northwest Indiana,” he said.
I’ve heard this description for more than 30 years.
“Sadly, I agree that we don’t really have a community here. I think it’s in large part to our proximity to Chicago which has such a strong community,” said Jeff Casey, managing director of the Towle Theater in Hammond, which hosted the Queer Youth Theatre Ensemble as a safe haven for gay tweens and teens.
This year’s World AIDS Day theme, “Ending the HIV/AIDS Epidemic: Community by Community,” is a clarion call for each community to address the fact that more than 1 million Americans are currently living with HIV and many more are at risk of HIV infection.
In this area, awareness of this international health crisis exists mostly in the shadows, continuing to be closeted by shame, stigma, ignorance and lack of dialogue by the straight community. Because of this, our region’s LGBTQ+ youth aren’t educated enough about its dangers.
“The gay dating app scene in Northwest Indiana is full of young boys who are not out to their parents and who confide in us older, out gays that they feel stuck and scared,” said Blake Zolfo, 27, a Crown Point High School graduate who now lives in New York City.
“In 2019, we should be past kids being scared to come out to their parents,” said Zolfo, an actor, educator and performance artist. “And with all the potential adult predators on these dating apps it’s not the safest place for a student to hear about being gay. Wouldn’t we rather educate them in safe spaces where they can be with other LGBTQ individuals?”
Founded in 1988, World AIDS Day is an opportunity for people to show support for people living with HIV, and to commemorate those who have died from an AIDS-related illness. Lake County is the second highest in Indiana for new HIV infections.
“The need for services and education is at a high,” said Reggie Austin, care coordinator of The Aliveness Project of Northwest Indiana, founded in 1984 as an all-volunteer HIV/ AIDS organization. “There are a lot of youth living in Northwest Indiana who are unaware of the dangers of HIV and sexually transmitted infections. Typically they don’t learn about these dangers until it’s too late.”
The organization offers educational presentations, prevention services, and free testing with same-day results at multiple locations. For more info, visit www.alivenessnwi.org or call 219-985-6170.
“Our organization is working hard to provide options for taking care of your health,” Austin said. “There is a major stigma concerning sexual health in general.”
This stigma has affected how our region’s LGBTQ community has continually reorganized itself while attempting to expand into mainstream society. This has been an ongoing struggle, whether it has been out of fear, non-acceptance, lack of support or lack of leadership.
“When we began in 2018, we definitely sensed a lack of any sort of cohesive community among the LGBTQ residents here,” said Elisabeth Menning, founder and president of PFLAG Crown Point. “We know it will be relatively slow progress, but already we have seen what looks like a groundswell of support from residents and businesses alike.”
“If we apply the 2018 Gallup Poll estimate of the LGBT population to Northwest Indiana, this means there should be approximately 37,000 folks here who identify as
LGBT. We definitely have not seen those kinds of numbers at our events,” she said. “And this doesn’t even include the Q (questioning or queer).”
Her spouse, Amari Victoria, who is transgender, is executive director of LGBTQ Northwest Indiana Inc., which co-organized the region’s first NWI Pride festival last year. She also is a board member and marketing director of NWI Pride Events Inc.
“My discovery in the summer of 2017 that I am a transgender woman brought to light the lack of LGBTQ support and services here,” Victoria said. “I plan to expand into the other parts of the LGB community and I am beginning to focus on two important aspects — suicide prevention and LGBTQ youth.”
This issue is also being addressed in Porter
County with a Valpo-based PFLAG group and youth center.
“In many ways we have welcomed members of the LGBTQ community into our city, but we have not taken the steps to affirm them,” said its elected president Debora Porter.
“While LGBTQ couples are free to live here, when they go out they feel they need to be guarded so they won’t be targeted. We do not have a space where members of LGBTQ community can be comfortable being themselves without fear of discriminatory comments or worse,” Porter said. “It is difficult for residents who are also LGBTQ to find other like residents. There is no social network or space where they can find one another, which causes isolation and lack of engagement in the community.”
Menning added, “We are striving to make a solid, integrated support network for the LGBTQ community. There has definitely been a lack of open support and affirmation, which has contributed to the description of inadequate. I am here to say that it is not delusional, but it is forming and growing.”