By Rick Rose Editor’s note: Recently, lgbtSr’s Rick Rose wrote here about his experience with HIV/AIDS 30 years on. Knowing that I was born in Mississippi, and himself living in Louisiana, Rick asked his former co-host from their days on WGEM in Quincy, IL and now on-air with Mississippi Public Broadcasting, Karen Brown, who to talk to about AIDS in the South. Karen introduced Rick to Robin Webb, an inspiration behind A Brave New Day, whose mission is to provide education and services and to advocate for people faced with life-challenging illnesses and conditions. RR: There is power in the name of your organization. How did you choose A Brave New Day? RW: Our organization is built on two complimentary principles, one, that personal empowerment is key to survival when faced with any life-threatening disease or condition and two, that every moment of every day must be fully embraced. For most of us in A Brave New Day’s peer survivor community, life and death literally tugs at you every morning you wake. It takes courage to take a deep breath, dust yourself off, dust the past off, endure the pains, the struggles, and choose life. I chose a Native American branding for A Brave New Day, using as our original logo a brave on a horse under the first light of day. He is essentially naked, surrendered. He is bowing to the sun with his spear at his side, clearly intent on conquering the day not so much with alpha force, rather in a state of humility and awe. For anyone who faces profound daily life challenges (don’t we all?), that image says it all. RR: 30 years into AIDS, is it really a pandemic anymore? Do people still care? How do you keep education and awareness alive? RW: We are still seeing 56,000 new infections in the US alone every single year. That number has not decreased for the last decade. American attention spans are short, particularly around HIV. Furthermore, people have always wanted to box HIV, to say “it’s just a gay thing” or “it’s just a black thing” or “it’s just this group that gets it or that group that gets it.” How far can one be from the truth! The virus knows no color or gender or sexual preference. We try very hard to continue speaking to the media, to continue offering community trainings and to advocate both on the local and national levels. Most of us who do federal advocacy, especially in DC, find ourselves fighting harder and harder to just hang on to medical and support services that already exist, which seem destined to be cut in this current political climate. This is discouraging, since we need ten times what exists now, to fight this pandemic. And oh yes, it’s still a pandemic. There are nearly 40 million people living with HIV and or AIDS on this planet today. There is a death from AIDS every 9 minutes. RR: The gay man you were then (as HIV entered your world) vs. the gay man you are now (as a senior, technically)? RW: Same man, different day, not so much different gay. Life goes on. You have a choice to say things like, oh I’ll never get intimate again, I despise my sexuality because of this virus, if only this if only that, but HIV is such profound experience. It teaches you who you are in no uncertain terms. It terrifies its host; it forces truth out of us. I have matured through this experience of aging with a lethal virus in my body and my psyche, so yes, externally speaking, I would have had a profoundly different life if HIV had never come knocking. Funny thing, though. Gay remains gay. Gay is gay is gay. Thank God it’s not a whim that just goes away if life circumstances go all wrong or if your partner dies, like mine did, or if a virus comes along. So if there is a deadly virus inside me, there is also “gay” my body and “gay” in my psyche as well, and for me that is a beautiful thing, nothing could be more life affirming.
RR: What is the ONE key difference between “AIDS in the South” and AIDS in the rest of the United States?

RW: The ONE key difference is – are — those TWO S’es with a line drawn through each one. $$, ching, ching. The South has been shortchanged, in terms of federal dollars and in many cases, nearly 10 to 1, for a long time and yet the epidemic has moved to the South. Putting it another way, the 10,000 PLWHA in Mississippi do no look the same in the eyes of the federal government as 10,000 PLWHA living in cities like Chicago or San Francisco. Housing assistance for people whose lives have been shattered, social support services, even access to life-saving medications, all components of comprehensive care are severely challenged in the South. Why is this? Because the feds just don’t like Southerners? No. Because since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, before HIV really hit the South as hard as it is hit today, major urban areas built local advocacy into their infrastructure. They fought for their own, rightfully so. I know, I was there, I was a New Yorker during the 80s and 90s. We fought hard for every pill, every life-saving support service we got. We got empowered. We “ACT-ed UP.” The South just needs to build its own advocacy community. Southerners need to get louder about HIV/AIDS.

RR: It is 2011, when will the walls of ignorance, fear and discrimination come down? RW: I can only answer that for myself. Those walls are already down. For society, probably never. History seems to send that message. However, it doesn’t mean we have to stop trying. Jesus said it all. Love one another. Buddha, Lao Tzu, Rumi, Muhammed, Mother Theresa, Ghandhi, Confucious, King, they all agree. We have to keep saying it, love one another. That’s the best we can do. RR: As a LGBT Sr. who will you support for US President 2012? RW: I’d like to see President Obama get re-elected. However, he must get tougher on HIV/AIDS. We felt such promise around HIV when he got elected, however, his track record ain’t so good. Yes, he inherited a national catastrophe and yes, he’s dealing with very stubborn, very dis-compassionate non-progressives. But we now have waiting lists for people needing life-saving medications, numbering over 8,500 Americans. Although most of the responsibility is that of individual states, and they haven’t done their job, the President has the power to step up to the plate and do something about making certain all Americans living with HIV have access to critical medications and stable housing. He loses my vote if he does nothing. RR: Share with me about one individual we have lost who would have the most impact on your mission today, if s/he were still alive.

RW: There are so many. Hundreds, in fact. That is no exaggeration. My dear friend Trey Mangum died just last month. I am beside myself. The cause of his death was a heart attack, at 37 years old, just having received his PhD. in Social Work. For several years he was Executive Director at Grace House here in Jackson, a transitional living facility for persons living with HIV and/or AIDS, then Trey became Director of Housing at NO AIDS Task Force in New Orleans. I can already feel the impact of not having Trey around. I miss his mentorship and his support for our organization. However, when someone like Trey leaves the planet so suddenly, with so little explanation, his legacy and post-life presence seem even more intense, so I always have that to keep moving forward. Trey is one reason we keep on forging ahead. The hundreds of others I have known and lost, all of them equally significant, are also reasons to keep marching on. RR: If AIDS ended tomorrow, what would your next life be? RW: An avid hiker in Zion Park, Utah, Canyonlands, Grand Canyon, Glacier National Park, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Yellowstone and Yosemite. Oh wait, I already do that. A world traveler, 77 countries, all 7 continents. Oh wait, I just did that, still doing it. A fierce voice for social evolution and justice. Oops been there, still doing that. Write songs, work-out, appreciate every day. Hmm, already claimed. Ah well, I guess I wouldn’t change a thing. (Antarctica was cold.)]]>

By Rick Rose Mark Reed-Walkup and his partner Dante Walkup made headlines for conducting their marriage ceremony via Skype with the couple in Texas and the minster in Washington, D.C. They were subsequently informed the marriage would not be honored, and had that disappointment compounded by the refusal of the Dallas Morning News to run their announcement. As it turned out, vindication was theirs, at least in part. Our own Rick Rose became friends with the couple through Mark’s niece Shanna. He caught up with Mark on the day their marriage announcement finally ran in the Dallas paper. Here they share their interview with you. RR: How did you first meet and did you know he was “the one” for you? MRW: I spotted Dante on the dance floor, dancing by himself, so full of life, self-confidence and thought he was the most handsome man in the world. We became best friends at first but on a trip to P-town together 11 years ago, we fell deeply in love and that trip changed our lives forever. RR: Was the thought of marriage even an option then? MRW: We never thought marriage would be an option in our lifetime. Same-sex marriage was not legal anywhere at that time. RR: At what point did you decide to marry? Who asked who and how? MRW: When we became partners, we created commitment vows that we would strive for in our relationship. One of those vows was to have “fun at fifty”, so when we turned 50, we decided it was time. I asked Dante to be my husband on a very romantic trip to New Orleans. RR: When was the first time you felt discrimination in your journey to marry and what emotions were evoked? MRW: We tried to submit our wedding announcement to the Dallas Morning News and were denied because of the ban on same-sex marriage in Texas. I had to go before a county judge to get a court-ordered name change because of the ban.. Discrimination has a very negative emotional impact every time you experience it. Its hurts, it’s degrading and it makes us both very angry at the way our community is mistreated and disrespected. RR: How and why did you decide to marry in Texas using a Washington, DC clergy? MRW: We’d been together for 10 years and had long intended to wait until marriage equality came to our state, but as we moved into our 50s we realized that time was still a long way off. Then Dante was in an automobile accident and our experience at the hospital put things into perspective. You can read all the details in an article I wrote after the wedding.
RR: How were you notified that your marriage was being contested and how did you react? MRW: We received a letter from the D.C. marriage bureau 6 weeks after receiving our marriage certificate. It was the day before Thanksgiving and it was devastating to us both. After so many legal analysts agreed we had found a loophole, they closed it and annulled our marriage without even attempting to contact us to confirm the “news” they read about was true. RR: When you placed the announcement in the paper, did you expect the response you got? MRW: Their 2003 policy still in affect allowed same sex couples to place engagement and anniversary announcements. It also allowed couples to place commitment announcements, which were seen as very progressive back at the time of their policy change. This change occurred before same sex marriage was legal anywhere. We fully expected them to place our wedding announcement because of their policy on engagement and anniversary ads. How could they allow those ads and not allow the announcement of the event itself? We assumed they would just update their policy again as Texas gay couples can get married elsewhere. RR: How did it feel when you were vindicated and the ruling came down in your favor with the paper? MRW: We were encouraged that the city agreed there was a possible case of discrimination when they launched the formal investigation. Once the Dallas Morning News responded via their legal team and had no interest in mediation, we directly reached out the CEO and asked for a meeting to try and work out this issue. We met with them twice and at the second meeting they agreed to make a change to their policy because as the CEO stated, “it was the right thing to do.” RR: Why does anti-lgbt discrimination exist in 2011 and what is the basis for it? How might anyone reading this help use move forward? MRW: Certainly religion has played a large role in the hatred felt by many toward our community as it has for other minority groups such as African Americans. Insecure people often fear the “unknown” and enjoy having a sense of power over people. Many homophobic people are also very insecure with their own sexual identity and express their hatred about gay people so others won’t think they are gay themselves. Thankfully, attitudes toward gay people are changing because so many people have come out of their closets and shared their true lives with their friends and families. The number one motivator for us to fight the Dallas Morning News was how it important it is for people to read stories about loving committed same-sex couples. We know that when people see that we are really no different than other committed couples, their attitudes will often change about gay people. We also wanted gay youth be able to see that marriage is possible and it might give them hope for their future.

RR: Projecting positively in the future, when do you think Texas will pass same-sex marriage, and if elected for a second term, do you think Obama should AND/OR would lead to overturn DOMA (the federal Defense of Marriage Act)? MRW: I believe marriage equality will come to Texas via a Supreme Court decision just as the Loving vs. Virginia case ended discrimination against inter-racial couples. If the Democrats take back the House and keep the Senate, we might have a shot of repealing DOMA if the Supreme Court hasn’t overturned it. DOMA is clearly unconstitutional now that a large population of citizens live in states where marriage equality exists. DOMA was passed in 1996 before same-sex marriages were legal anywhere in this country. RR: Why do you continue with this fight? MRW: We fight this fight because we don’t want the next generation to face discrimination and can live their lives to their fullest poten tial.

RR: With all your experience and vigor, what do you say to a new and young, say 21-year-old, member of the LGBT community…as far as what to expect and how to live, to make a difference? MRW: We would say to them to be very proud of who you are and believe in yourselves. We have come such a long way in forty years and we need you to join the battle for full equality. You have a wonderful life ahead of you because of those who have fought hard for the rights we won to date. Do not accept discrimination at any level and learn know that one person can make a difference and help change the world to make it a better place for everyone.]]>