麻豆约拍

A reflection and prayer to start the day with Rev Cheryl Meban

Good morning.

On this day in 1981, the US Center for Disease Control reported on pneumonia affecting 5 homosexual men in Los Angeles. It is from this date that the AIDS epidemic is officially measured.

The virus was isolated at the Pasteur institute in Paris in 1983. Then an American-discovered virus was given a different name, though it turned out to be the same. There was wrangling over what it should be called until both names were replaced by HIV, Human Immunodeficiency Virus.

Naming is a powerful thing. One early name for AIDS was, Gay-Related Immunodeficiency syndrome. This effectively stigmatised its sufferers, implying causation or judgment, and made no room for complex lives or other causes of infection. Throughout the eighties one big debate was whether AIDS was 鈥淕od鈥檚 judgment on gays.鈥� A teenage contemporary of mine, as sexuality developed, would feel cosmically judged for sexual attraction beyond their control. The naming of, Human Immunodeficiency Virus, and the embodied and relational interactions of ordinary compassionate people - brought sufferers back, verbally and visibly, to human inclusion. But the economic divide between Global north and South still leaves vast swathes of the human race unable to access the lifesaving treatments UK citizens can take for granted.

God teach us to see and name each other first as human. Inspire and equip us -researchers, politicians and business-people - to support life and change how we do relationships (so no one feels inferior or excluded) and economics, so that all who need healthcare and treatment may have life, and have it to the full, as you promised us in Christ. Amen