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Health & Fitness

World AIDS Day

Rev. Michael Piazza, Senior Pastor of Virginia-Highland Church, shares thoughts about World AIDS Day. Recently returned to Atlanta after 25 years, it was here that he first learned of AIDS.

Rev. Michael Piazza, Senior Pastor of Virginia-Highland Church, shares some thoughts on this World AIDS Day. Rev. Piazza recently returned to Atlanta after 25 years. It was here, while on staff of a local church, that he first learned of AIDS.

Today is World AIDS Day. The good news for this day is that the death rate for HIV/AIDS actually went down this year for the first time in two decades. The bad news, of course, is that there is still no vaccine or cure.

I remember clearly one day in the early 1980s when the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta called my office. I was on the staff of a mostly lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender church in Atlanta, having just left the Methodist church. The caller wanted to know if any men in our church had been sick or died of a strange cancer. He went on to tell me that they were tracking a disease called GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency).

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That night, I went home and talked to my partner Bill. Neither of us could image a disease that would strike only gay men. How could that be possible? Cancer isn’t contagious. This was the 80s, so we were a little paranoid. What was the CDC up to? If this was true, was the government targeting gay men for infection? We didn’t give it much credibility when we first heard about it.

Of course, I had no idea that someday I would be the pastor of a church that buried hundreds and hundreds of young gay men from this disease. To tell you the truth, I’m glad I didn’t know. While I wouldn’t take anything for my journey with those wonderful men, I’m not sure I would have had the courage to take it had I known.

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At the end of the beautiful movie "A River Runs through It," the character based on the story’s author, Norman McLean, says, “I am haunted by waters.” That is a wonderful image of baptism. Since that day in 1981, though, I have been haunted by AIDS. It has taken the lives of too many of my friends. It has made too many people I love suffer.

Although people still die of AIDS, the treatments are much better. Still, it is a grave threat and a terrible enemy. My heart aches today for those whom we have lost and for those who struggle still. I pray for a cure to come quickly, and I pray for us all to not grow weary in the struggle and forget that it hasn’t. To paraphrase Mother Teresa, “The Body of Christ still has AIDS.”

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