On National HIV Testing Day, Remember This Rule to Avoid It: No Test, No Touch
Jun 27, 2007 | 3:38PM
He was Prince Charming. Tall, handsome, a real “honey-dip.” He swept her off her feet. He was flowers, expensive dinners -- even a dedication on the radio -- and attentive. He proposed within five months. Six months later, they were wed. It was supposed to be bliss Two years later, however, LaJoyce Brookshire discovered her husband had a big secret. He had AIDS. Full-blown AIDS. He knew it when he married her and never breathed a word. Back in the late 1980s and early ‘90s, many people still believed AIDS was a gay white man’s disease. Brookshire said her husband was clear that he had slept around -- with women. He was so stridently homophobic that it never occurred to her to get tested for HIV/AIDS or to ask her husband if he had been. In hindsight, she says, she should have told him what she advises sisters to say when they think they’ve found Mr. Right: “No test. No touch.” The author of the novels “Soul Food” and “Web of Deception” has penned “Faith Under Fire: Betrayed by a Thing Called Love,” which chronicles her triumph after discovering her husband had hidden the truth about his illness from her. Brookshire, who also is an ordained minister, told BlackAmericaWeb.Com that her story is one that can happen to any woman, even a woman of faith who believes she is more focused and careful about her relationships. “When I saw that tall, fine honey-dip, it all went out the window,” Brookshire said, adding that her story was like that of many women who threw caution to the wind in their haste to get married, ignoring the warning signs that Mr. Right wasn’t exactly. Brookshire said God protected her. Her tests for HIV/AIDS came back negative after a nearly month-long wait for the test results. And, she said, she never doubted the outcome. “I truly felt the peace of God during that time,” Brookshire said. “In 1992, you had to wait weeks and weeks and weeks for results … It was no way it was anything but God.” She doesn’t advise women to go into their relationships as blindly, however. Brookshire joins clergy, health professionals and other witnesses to the AIDS epidemic in encouraging people today, National HIV Testing Day, to get HIV counseling and testing. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 180,000 to 280,000 people nationwide are HIV-positive but are unaware of their status. Organizers around the country have distributed information about HIV/AIDS, testing sites and have targeted black and Latino populations, which are most at risk of contracting the virus. NHTD is an annual campaign launched 10 years ago by the National Association of People with AIDS, the oldest coalition of people living with HIV/AIDS, to encourage at-risk individuals to get counseling and be tested. The organization distributes testing day campaign materials to community groups and health centers. Women should consider being tested periodically, too (every three to six months if you’re not in an exclusive relationship), and insist that their partners do the same. Just because you’re married or in a steady relationship doesn’t mean your mate isn’t having outside activity or that a virus isn’t dormant. “In this day and age, you should not have a partner who is not tested,” Brookshire said. “Be safe, not just by using condoms, but be safe by collecting information. You want a health report, just like you want a financial report. How does he treat his Mama?" “The weakness of the flesh is that we’re ready to get involved, and we don’t really know these men. What’s his favorite color? Does he like ice cream?” Brookshire said. When her husband was initially diagnosed, he told Brookshire he didn’t know how he picked up the virus. She assumed he had contracted the disease from promiscuous, heterosexual sex. “One of the reasons why was he took a lot of care during our relationship” to point out women he had been involved with in the past. “He always made an incredible display to me of his machoism.” When he was diagnosed, she said, “I thought, ‘Oh my gosh! This is a direct result of promiscuous behavior.’ I was so enamored with that man that I was looking the other way when things were punching me in the face.” Looking back, Brookshire said, her husband’s over-the-top homophobia, which led him to forbid her gay friends from visiting their home, his reckless spending as if there were no tomorrow, his rush to woo and wed her, and a preoccupation with death and guns and other erratic behavior all were signs that something was amiss. After his diagnosis, Brookshire became her husband’s caretaker, tending to him until his death in 1995. She thought she had forgiven him, until just weeks before his death, when she finally learned he had cheated with men. She said she suppressed her anger and the urge to kill. “I almost checked him out myself, I ain’t gonna lie,” Brookshire said. “I did consider killing him twice.” Instead, she said, she remembered God’s pledge to care for those who do good. Ultimately, she wrote her book and has been speaking out on the issue of HIV/AIDS testing. “God has given me this testimony as an assignment. It’s going to help other people be set free,” Brookshire said. Brookshire’s testimony struck a familiar chord with Pernessa Seele, founder of The Balm In Gilead, a nonprofit organization based in Richmond, Virginia that trains church leaders to develop AIDS ministries to serve their congregations and communities. Seele, who founded The Balm in Gilead 18 years ago, said a few months ago, she met a man “I was really excited about. He was not anyone I would normally have been excited about, and he was not anyone my family would have been excited about my bringing home. But there was a certain energy there.” Instead of pursuing a relationship, however, Seele told BlackAmericaWeb.com, “I stepped back and began to think about the things he told me. He had been homeless; he had been this, that, that and that.” It was enough to make her back off, but she knows that many women still ignore the red flags. “You are looking for someone, and you start thinking maybe we’re not going to get the black prince on the shining horse” and you settle for less than you want because you start thinking this might be the best chance you’re going to get for love, Seele said. “You think you’d 'better get a man.' That feeds into why our numbers are off the charts." According to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and the Harvard AIDS Institute, more than 50 percent of the estimated 40,000 new HIV infections each year occur among black Americans. AIDS is the No. 1 cause of death among black adults ages 25 to 44, before heart disease, cancer and homicide. One in 50 black men is HIV-positive. One in 160 Black women is infected. Black senior citizens represent more than 50 percent of HIV cases among persons over the age of 55. Intravenous drug use accounts for 43 percent of infections among black women and 38 percent among black men. Further, many women contract HIV infection through sex with an intravenous drug user. Black children represent almost two-thirds of reported pediatric AIDS cases. The Balm in Gilead has spent the month of June encouraging churches to get their members tested, either by bringing in health care professionals to conduct testing on the premises or to direct congregants to testing sites. Seele said she is also encouraging women to “take a deep breath, put your professional cap on, and deal with life for yourself like you do for other people. We can always see what our girlfriends should be doing with their relationships. Ask yourself, ‘Is he a real match for me? Am I better off with him or better off staying single? Is he the type who is going to use condoms and not abuse me?’” Churches can help, she said, by bringing in AIDS educators and health practitioners to speak to their congregations, opening dialogues with their men’s groups and by ministers speaking out from the pulpit about the health crisis that HIV/AIDS has become in the black community.” People are more open to getting the facts about AIDS than they were even five years ago, Seele said. Last Sunday, she said, her pastor told the congregation that women must be empowered to question men about their sexual activities and men must be empowered to answer honestly. “He said, ‘There is no such thing as the down low. You’re gay, bisexual or straight. If you’re gay, be gay,’” Seele said. “He wasn’t saying it’s wrong. He said be truthful.” “It was well received,” Seele said. “When he said it five years ago, it was greeted by silence.” At a recent testing at a church in Harlem, 14 people were tested and five of them were HIV-positive. “These 14 people would not have gotten tested if it had not been in the church,” Seele said. Seele said the statistics in Harlem are alarming, with one in seven black men there infected with HIV/AIDS Last week, at another New York church, a 97-year-old woman who took the test was found to be HIV-positive, Seele said. “We have to begin dealing with the reality of people’s sexual lives past 50. We have to begin to talk to our mothers and grandmothers because it’s a real-life issue,” Seele said. “Some of them think if they’re too old to have children, they can’t contract the virus. In some communities, their numbers are higher than in our teen communities.” Seele also said there should be greater emphasis in getting the word out about HIV/AIDS in rural communities “In urban centers people may not know, but the information is available,” Seele said. In communities that are poorer and more isolated, getting the facts to them as a part of routine health care is more difficult. “We’re helping churches in Washington, D.C. add an HIV/AIDS ministry. They have ministries for obesity, hypertension and diabetes. They need an HIV/AIDS ministry. It’s not a sex issue, it’s a health issue,” the Rev. Susan Newman, director of the Balm in Gilead’s Washington, D.C. office, told BlackAmericaWeb.com. Newman said her office also works with the Congressional Black Caucus and legislative bodies that address health policy issues involving HIV/AIDS. “We work with advocates for policy as well as treatment and care with the political leadership and the clergy.” The issue for many churches, she said, isn’t whether to encourage testing, but how to go about it. Churches can set up testing on site or direct their members to places that conduct such tests or hold seminars that explain the HIV/AIDS crisis and what steps people can take to protect their health. “A lot of times people don’t want to be tested at their church,” Newman said. They will go elsewhere or to churches that host health fairs, which test for a variety of illnesses. That way, people don’t know whether you’re being screened for hypertension, diabetes or HIV.” National HIV Testing Day, she said, “is a day to note that this month has been HIV Testing Month. Just like brushing your teeth, it’s something you ought to do." “If you’re negative, hallelujah, and let’s start looking at ways you can continue to be negative and practice low risk behavior,” Newman said. “If you’re positive, let’s get you into treatment and care. There are low-cost options. It’s not about a 40-pill cocktail a day. There’s one pill that combines three medications that you can take.” “We're just asking churches to continue lighting the way for HIV testing,” Seele said. “It’s not about gay or straight. It’s about the family.”
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