The AIDS Memorial
"HIV doesn’t lie…HIV doesn’t know race, religion, gender, education level, career, economic status, privilege or rank…
HIV "loves" everyone equally…yet people living with HIV, for the simple fact of having a health condition, a virus, are seen as weapons, as predators, as deviants, as deserving to die…deserving to be locked up and labeled.
On my 45th birthday, June 29, 2012, I had sat through a week of listening to a US Army prosecutor lie fabricate a story about me…without any evidence, or even an investigation.
Imagine you were in my position.
To hear a judge say “Guilty of all charges” with absolutely no evidence having been shown, or any physical way to expose your accuser to HIV having occurred.
To then be locked away in a US Army military prison for 272 days, without any proof or evidence of a "crime"…just because “you’re HIV positive…so it has to be you"
This is my story.
A lifetime of service to the Nation -- all retirement pension and medical benefits for combat and noncombat injuries take away…an entire lifetime...29 years and 2 months, literally erased as if I never existed…
This is why I speak out.
Why I have opened my life to scrutiny…I can’t let this happen to another person, military or civilian.
It's why we have to respond to those who call us “weapons” and “deviants” and “deserving to die” with the same level of TRUTH and ANGER with which they attack us with their LIES and FEAR.
HIV criminalization is nothing new… fear, hate, discrimination have all been around since the first days of the epidemic.
That fear and hate and discrimination have been codified into laws that allow and encourage the ignorant to take us out of our jobs, our homes and our families.
HIV doesn't lie, or discriminate…people do.
People create the systems, like HIV criminalization, that do…But people, and systems, can change.
I am not ashamed to be living with HIV.
I am not a weapon; and HIV is NOT a Crime!
This is why we remember…This is why we fight" - by Kenneth Pinkela
