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One Black Church in Miami Takes A Rocky Journey to Confront AIDS
The Wall Street Journal
By ANN CARRNS
February 14, 2002
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She tested positive for HIV, but by taking the drug AZT was able to avoid passing
the virus on to her baby. She and her five children now receive counseling through
Movers. Confident in her fashionable wire-rimmed glasses, Ms. DeShazior is working
toward an associate's degree in education at a community college. She also works
as a paid counselor at a substance-abuse program and gives talks to prostitutes,
encouraging them to use condoms. So far, her immune system has remained strong,
so she hasn't had to begin taking the complicated "cocktail" of anti-retroviral
drugs used to prevent full-blown AIDS.
While much of the Mount Tabor congregation has cautiously embraced drug
addicts who contract HIV, the church hasn't directly addressed the
prevalence of AIDS among male homosexuals. Rev. McRae and his allies
maintain that drug abuse, not gay sex practices, is the main root of Liberty
City's HIV problem. Movers, the nonprofit spinoff from the church,
collaborates with another Miami organization that serves gay men. But Ms.
Kelly, who heads Movers, says many male drug addicts have unsafe sex with
other men not necessarily because they are gay, but because it is
"economically feasible for them to have sex with men for money. They're
doing what they need to do to get their drugs."
This perspective plays down the link between the sexual behavior of some gay
men and transmission of HIV. Rev. McRae says addressing homosexuality in the
black church is difficult. "Homosexuality, in the African-American
community, is an unforgivable sin," he says. "It's something deeper than the
church's stance on it."
'Question Mark'
Some white churches interpret the Bible as condemning homosexuality, as Rev.
McRae does. But the issue is more complicated in African-American churches
because it touches on the culturally fraught topics of black sexuality and
masculinity. "Once you admit you're gay," says Rev. McRae, "it puts a
question mark behind your manhood. It's like, he's not sure he's a man, or
not sure he wants to be a man."
Despite such attitudes, it is common even for socially conservative black
churches to tolerate gays in certain leadership roles -- such as
coordinating music -- as long as they don't advertise their sexual
orientation. Mount Tabor's late music minister was revered even though he
was assumed by many in the congregation to be gay. When he fell sick in
1990, no one pressed him for details. His death that year was publicly
attributed to cancer, although some church members today whisper that he
died of AIDS -- a belief that some of his relatives deny.
Although he has never identified the music minister publicly as gay or as
having AIDS, Rev. McRae says the popular minister's death presented an
opportunity. In the months after he died, the clergyman invited church
members to attend training sessions about AIDS and to accompany him to
Jackson Memorial Hospital to visit patients. The unspoken message: This was
a way to honor the minister's memory.
In response, members such as Marguerite McKain began volunteering. She
concedes that it frightened her at first to don protective clothing before
seeing AIDS patients at the hospital. But, she says, "We learned that when
we wore face masks while visiting patients, it was to protect them from our
germs, not the other way around." Today, about 15 church members continue
visiting AIDS patients, separately from the more formal clinical and social
services provided by Movers.
There is broader evidence of progress. Last spring, 10,000 black churches
participated in a "week of prayer" against AIDS organized by the Balm in
Gilead, a New York-based nonprofit group working to mobilize black clergy
against the disease. About 350 African-Americans, many of them pastors,
gathered last year at a separate training institute the group put on in
Tuskegee, Ala., to discuss expanding church involvement.
But Rev. McRae and Mount Tabor remain the exceptions, rather than the rule.
In the fall of 2000, he fielded a request for help from a minority
AIDS-outreach task force in Key West, Fla. The southern tip of the state has
at least eight black churches, but their pastors had hesitated to address
AIDS, says Charles Martin, executive director of the task force. "I was told
by one church, 'This isn't our fight,' " he recalls.
When Mr. Martin met Rev. McRae at a conference and vented his frustration,
the pastor offered to talk to the ministers. In December 2000, Mr. Martin
invited nine ministers to a lunch meeting with Rev. McRae. But when Mount
Tabor's pastor made the four-hour drive from Miami, just one minister showed
up.
Unwilling to concede defeat, Rev. McRae proposed an old-fashioned tent
revival in Key West. Over the course of three nights last April, he and
others delivered sermons and disseminated information about HIV testing. But
Rev. McRae was disappointed when only three local black ministers attended.
"There was an apathetic spirit you could just about reach out and grab," he
recalls. Generally, he says, "if the pastor doesn't want to do it, it's not
going to happen."
Write to Ann Carrns at ann.carrns@wsj.com
Updated February 14, 2002 1:40 p.m. EST
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