It's likely not on your calendar, although it should be, but today's National Gay Men's HIV/AIDS Awareness Day.
While HIV/AIDS certainly isn't a "gay disease," men who have sex with men remains one of the most at risk populations: the CDC reports that 1 in 5 of these men are HIV-positive and about 44% are unaware. Jeffrey Crowley, director of the White House Office of National HIV Policy office, remarked, "We see large numbers of annual infections. We see very high relative risks compared to other groups, and most disturbing of all, unlike other groups, we see rising infection rates."The New York Times yesterday ran a feature yesterday called "Op-Ed at 40," a collection of opinion and editorial from the past four decades that included a poignant, timeless piece called "My AIDS Death," by media man and activist Robert Rafsky, who famously confronted Bill Clinton during his presidential campaign, saying, "We're not dying of AIDS as much as we are dying of 11 years of government neglect."
The piece seems appropriate for today.
Source Towleroad
