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The deadly secret; Rudolph Carn finally faced it (cont.
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"We need to get our heads out of the sand," Wells said. "This
epidemic affects just about every family in our congregation. We need to deal
with it and get rid of all the misinformation that is being disseminated."
The African Methodist Episcopal Church is working to establish a local chapter
of the National Black Leadership Commission on AIDS here. Wells added that the
church plans "to open our facilities soon to do HIV education and to do lobbying
to make sure the money allocated filters to needy African-American communities."
Seele is optimistic. She said that attitudes about homosexuality in the religious
community are changing, slowly but surely. Just last month, she remembered, her
pastor at Grace Baptist Church in Mount Vernon, N.Y., talked about inclusiveness.
It was the first time she'd heard such a sermon in her 12 years at the church.
"He said that gay people are welcome in this church; get over it because
we are killing ourselves," Seele said.
Not everyone was happy to hear that message.
"The woman next to me, although she didn't like it, she'll be where we
want her to be this time next year because she'll be forced to deal with why she
is the way she is," Seele said.
'Double lives'
The issue is not only pressing for African-American gay men. AIDS researchers
and activists believe that men who have sex with both men and women may explain
some of the spread of the disease in black females, who through 1999 accounted
for 47 percent of cumulative AIDS cases among women nationally, according to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"Gay men are living double lives because our community forces them to,
because we don't accept who they are," said Pandora Singleton, executive
director of Project Azuka, a community-based nonprofit organization in Savannah
that provides AIDS education and services.
Of the nearly 2,000 women Project Azuka serves each year, Singleton said, about
125 are HIV-positive. Of those, about 80 percent were infected by the men they
loved and trusted -- husbands, boyfriends, lovers.
"One of the things that has been most striking with us is that if you
look at HIV statistics for the state of Georgia, the largest majority of people
living with HIV are men who have sex with men," said Singleton. "But
the fastest-growing population of new HIV infections is women."
According to the CDC, African-American women make up 19 percent of all new
HIV infections and 64 percent of new HIV infections among women of all races.
Since 1995, heterosexual transmission of HIV -- not transmission through intravenous
drug use or other causes -- has been the leading cause of exposure among women.
The most likely scenario in many of these cases in women is that their partner
contracted the virus after having sex with another man, said Dr. Helene Gayle,
director of the CDC's National Center for HIV, STD and TB.
Gayle said that research shows that about 25 percent of African-American men
who were infected with HIV through sex with another man identified themselves
as heterosexual. That compares to 6 percent of white men who were infected in
the same way and 15 percent of Hispanic men.
"It shows the fact that in the African-American community, there is a
greater problem of men having sex with men who are also having sex with women,"
Gayle said. "It gives a clear picture that this is an important issue and
one we must grapple with if we're going to reach young men of color who are having
sex with other men."
Carn acknowledged he once slept with both men and women. He was like the fictional
character John "Basil" Henderson in the popular E. Lynn Harris novels.
Even though he knew he was attracted to men, Carn dated women for nearly half
his life. He fathered a daughter, now 27, and married before finally accepting
his sexuality as a gay man.
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