Yes, or brush it off, as in the early days of the AIDS pandemic, when Reagan and his buddies refused to even acknowledge it because...well, it was only gay men dying. And some Haitian IV drug users. *shrug* Their straight, white, upright, uptight, lives and friends couldn't be affected by it, right? Wrong, as they found out. But the idea that lives didn't matter much because their sexual orientation or ethnicity was different, you know, it still makes my blood boil to this day.
After Magic Johnson announced that he was HIV+, and then less than 3 weeks later, Freddie Mercury died, I got busy! That was the catalyst for me to get involved. I didn't care that my cohorts and I weren't likely to get HIV, it mattered to me that people were dying from this horrid disease, and politics and prejudice had no place in it whatsoever. That led to one of the best, mixed with saddest, times of my life, volunteering at an HIV/AIDS clinic.
It's hard to believe that nearly three decades later, a virus has been politicized again.
We're here and we're a friendly bunch.
