Being the Change I Want to Be

A few months back, and a number of times before that, I bemoaned the lack of care & support for each other in the LGBT community.
The sad truth is that we've given each other a free pass to treat others in the community badly, often with no regard for the harm we're doing to our psyche or to the struggle for our rights.
Quite a number of people have since told me that this is a serious, community wide problem that needs to be addressed.

"Be the change you want to be," Molly
Mc Kay, founder of Equality USA told me.

Last week, a gay man in his 50s, HIV positive for over 20 years, reminded me that marriage equality is not our only issue. People are still HIV positive, and still dying from it.
Yet in California, those living with HIV are in danger of losing their funding.
Could I help spread the word, he asked me?

And so though I'm HIV negative, I wrote this short piece for Truth Wins Out:
http://www.truthwinsout.org/blog/hiv-positive-californians-in-danger-of-losing-support/

It was a basic & to the point piece, and it took me all of ten minutes to write it.
I'm glad I did.
I recall all too well the AIDS holocaust of the 1980s. Now, all these years later, it saddens me to see, post-AIDS and post-Prop 8, that so many LGBTs continue to behave as though it's beneath them to speak to each other.

It's time for us to be honest with ourselves about how we treat our fellow LGBTs.
Do we want a real community or don't we?
I do, and so when a fellow gay man asked for my help, I was happy to respond.
In my own small way, I'm being the change I want to be.

David Alex Nahmod
SF CA
June 2009