Positive Thoughts: Good Morning Vietnam

published on June 23, 2016 by DIANE ANDERSON-MINSHALL, in Pride Source

My stepfather came back from Vietnam in the mid-'70s, a broken man with post-traumatic stress disorder and health complications that grow more dire the older he gets. His PTSD has lasted 40 years; he couldn't "just let it go" as some people have admonished. I was talking with my friend Scott* recently and couldn't help but notice the similarities between the two men, veterans of wars they didn't want to participate in, both still suffering from PTSD. Scott, however, never served in the military. He is a veteran of the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and '90s, that first wave of battle before the enemy was known but not before his comrades were all killed.

Scott has AIDS. He's OK when I call it stage three HIV, as many activists and scientists now do to remove the stigma - after all, AIDS is simply the last stage of HIV disease - but he doesn't want the world, and the LGBT community especially, to know he's living with AIDS, and has been for 30 years or so.

Nobody listens to old gay guys living with HIV. Our world, from the prevention workers to the gay clubs to LGBT media, has focused on the fastest growing group getting HIV: young gay and bi men under 30. There's good reason for that both from a prevention standpoint and a sense of racial justice. Young gay and bi men, especially those of color, have the highest risk of HIV among all young people, and while African-Americans only represent 33 percent of people under 24 in the national population, they account for 57 percent of new HIV infections among those aged 13-24. For young black trans women the stats are even worse; 56 percent of all black transgender women already have HIV.

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Positive Thoughts: Good Morning Vietnam

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