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Break the Silence: Black churches must rise,
meet needs of people
with HIV/AIDS
Birmingham News
Birmingham, AL
03.04.01
By Christopher M. Hamlin
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The church is the strongest institution in the African- American
community. It continues to be the center of education, politics,
business, economic development, culture -everything.
But as strong as the African-American church is, the church has
been slow to grasp the challenging task of talking about sexuality
to its members. Talking about sex has always been a taboo subject
in the church and in the African-American family, especially people.
For many of us, our initial learning about the "birds and
bees" did not come from conversations with our parents or other
adults, but from the guys on the corner, the girls in the restroom
and the Playboy magazine hidden under our older brother's mattress
or father's closet. We saw young ladies become pregnant and figured
out what had happened, but there were very few discussions about
it.
There were even fewer discussions about how not to become pregnant
or impregnate someone. Safe sex meant that if there were no discussions
about it, no one was doing it and it was safe.
The escalation of teen pregnancy in the late 1970s and 1980s shows
that the sexual revolution had a devastating effect on the African-American
community. African-American adults have always been uncomfortable
talking with young people about anything regarding sex. The church
remained silent. The public school system did not see it as its
responsibility to teach sex education, and many communities fought
vigorously to make sure that sex education remained out of the classroom.
Because the African-American church remained silent for so long,
we are facing a new reality- a new sexual revolution that is affecting
all human beings. HIV/AIDS has become the most deadly disease in
the African-American community.
Most deadly disease
It is the No. 1 cause of death for African-American men and women
between the ages of 25 and 44. In 1999, African-American brothers
had the highest HIV/AIDS case rate, 66.3 per 100,000. Our sisters
followed it with a rate of 30.8 per 100,000.
As of Jan. 12, African- Americans represented 60 percent of HIV
cases in Alabama. There presently are more than 9,000 people living
with HIV in our state.
The Balm in Gilead of New York City reports, "Black people
are 13 percent of the U.S. population. But we are 46 percent of
all AIDS cases and 49 percent of AIDS deaths."
We cannot ignore these figures and the story they tell.
Because we continue to see this virus as the "gay disease",
we are not talking about the ways it transmitted. We cannot think
of HIV/AIDS solely as a "gay disease".
It is being transmitted at alarmingly high rates through heterosexuals;
sex between man and women in which one person carries the virus.
We are passing it in to our children through pregnancy when we infect
women. It continues to be transmitted through intravenous drug use
and homosexual relationships where safe measures are not being used.
We cannot be shy talking about sex. Our children, teenagers and
adults are participating in behavior that is contributing to the
increase of this virus. We cannot be silent in talking about preventing
this disease, whose transmission we can stop with a common sense
approach to human sexuality.
We have no guarantee that our sons and daughters will remain virgins
until marriage. That may be our moral goal, but there is no guarantee
that they will use condoms. There is no guarantee that they will
not succumb to being pressured by friends.
Therefore, it is important that we give our children, young people
and adults correct information. The first line of defense against
this virus is education.
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