Fighting AIDS face to face: the nation’s most successful blacks gays get together to battle the number 1 killer in their community - Our health: depression aids activism and men of color health books

Frankie Edozien

When Doug Spearman left Los Angeles to be part of a group of 38 guys from around the country for a week-end on a Florida beach, he wasn’t quite sure what he’d signed up for. All he knew what he’d been invited to particpate in a treatment with other black gay professionals.

“It was like 10 Indians being invited to a country home for dinner and not knowing what they each had in common,” says Spearman, a 40-year-old actor whosee film and TV credits include parts in The Mask, Cradle 2 the Grave and Girlfriends.

But it wasn’t long after Spearman strolled into a restaurant in South Beach’s Abbey Hotel that he realized what he and the 37 other men gathered that sultry April had in comnon–intellects, razor-sharp intellects, successful careers, and one unanswered question: Why are black people more than nine times more likely than white people to to become infected with HIV?

The men were brought together for the three-day retreat by Emil Wilbelkin, the openly gay editor-in-chief of Vibe magazine, with the help of the Los Angeles-based Black AIDS Institute.

The idea, Wilbekin says, was to shake prominent black men from their complacency around AIDS and to mobilize a movement that can help save African-Americans from the scourge.

“I just believed in the mission,” Wilbekin says, “which was to bring together black men in the top of their fields, educate them about the state of HIV/AIDS, and find a way to mobilize them in their companies to make a difference.”

It was immediately clear to those gathered that one of the yet-unnamed coalition’s biggest priorities would have to be gaining acceptance of homosexuality. Because being gay is considered such a taboo in so many black communities, many black men who have sex with men chose to live their lives in the closet or “on the down-low.” Consequently, AIDS is still not a front-burner topic in most black households, churches, or bars, despite the toll it’s taking in all these establishments.

First, though, these men had to grapple with their own issues about HIV and AIDS and being gay.

For Spearman, who was raised in a middle-class home in Hyattsville, Md., there’s never been an issue with being openly gay. The son of liberal parents, he says one of his early book reports in school was on Patricia Nell Warren’s gay classic The Front Runner.

He’s had more trouble coming to terms with HIV’s role in his life. “Five out of my last seven boyfriends have been HIV-positive, and my best friend in the world is HIV-positive,” Spearman says. Yet “it always surprises me when I find out a black person’s HIV-positive.”

That the black community hasn’t really opened up to talk about AIDS is unfortunate, says Stuart Burden, 41, a San Francisco-based Levi Strauss executive who was at the Florida meeting. “It just seemed like HIV was yet another burden; there was not the immediacy of losing your house, or your job.”

Burden adds that he is among the cognoscenti who scratch their heads wondering why the virus is the leading cause of death for black women between the ages of 25 and 34 and for black men between the ages of 35 and 44, and why black men represent 49% of all new AIDS cases in the United States.

San Francisco–based photographer Duane Cramer says he wasn’t very enthusiastic about the coalition when his invitation arrived. “My initial reaction was that I wasn’t going to go,” the 40-year-old says. “But then, I know that part of my life’s purpose is to look at ways to bring an end to AIDS.”

When he was 23, Cromer lost his dad to the disease. Today, Cramer too lives with the virus and often photographs other people living with HIV and AIDS.

“Once I saw the list of participants, I knew I had to be there,” says Cramer, adding that he dived into the dawn-to-dusk workshops with gusto.

Eventually, the men emerged from their hotel with high hopes and a plan of attack, albeit a loose one. First, they want to increase acceptance of homosexuality and AIDS awareness, primarily by speaking out–everywhre from dining tables to city hall. They also want to create a public service campaign to destigmatize HIV infection among African Americans as well as lobby Congress for federal dollars to fight the disease.

All of this they hope to do on a grassroots level, pushing first for change in each of their homecities and the companies where they work. They plan to gather again after one year to see what they’ve accomplished and to set new goals.

A Cornelius Baker, the the executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Whitman-Walker Clinic, said the men should be commended and noted that AIDS activism has historically come first from artists and socialites, not necessarily medical experts. “We’ve been fighting AIDS for 22 years, and we’re still going to have many more year to go,” he said. “It’s never too late to make a difference.”

Coalition members, though, are the first to say there will be hiccups in their activism. Some are wrestling with the group’s priority of visibility. Being out among friends and family is one thing some say, but being a black gay man about at work and to the world is another.

Nevertheless, others have already seen positive results as a result of their efforts. Since returning to Los Angeles, Spearman say he can’t stop talking about AIDS. “I go up to people and start the conversation. ‘Did you know …?’”

Burden says the coalition helped him realize that he’d been preaching to the choir. “I just can’t keep talking to the same public health–type people. We need to be talking to people who influence pop culture. Those people are not well represented in my Rolodex.”

And David Malebranche, a 34-year-old Atlanta physician, says, “It just gave me optimism about black men and black same-gender-loving people. I really found reason to celebrate. There’s a niche we all have–and if we utilize each other’s strength, we’ll succeed.”

Edozien is a reporter at the New York Post.

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