Healing homophobia: Volunteerism and “sacredness” in AIDS

Abstract

That it is impossible to understand the societal response to AIDS, if not the very occurrence of the disease itself, independently of “religiously sustained” homophobia is the starting point and premise of this article. Unlike the reaction of the gay community, the institutional reply of the broader society, especially in the health care industry, has been less than optimal. After overcoming its own internalized and learned sense of shame, guilt, and sin, the gay community in New York was able to organize the most successful support system for People with AIDS nationwide. Through “bearing witness” to PWAs at the Gay Men's Health Crisis, Inc., an AIDS-specific social service agency, gay volunteers were brought into direct face-to-face contact with “the other,” and, therefore, with themselves. This reconciliation and acceptance (healing) made AIDS volunteerism a political event because the sacred was rediscovered in the community as an extension of the self. The power of established religions to define and control gay life was thus ended by the shift of self-adjudication from institutional approval to self-acceptance. This is why volunteerism heals homophobia in AIDS and is radical political and religious activity, and not mere charity or altruism.