it's world aids day...sad that we still have to have one. aids has been around far too long, i thought we'd have a cure by now. alas we don't. in honor of world aids day, we're asked to "link and think" - to take a moment and think about aids and maybe add a few links in our blog...

so here are some links:
lesbians & hiv
safersex.org - a journal of online safe sexuality
the NAMES project
the us department of health & human services

and the personal stories?

pastor jon was a close friend that died of aids. in the church, we didn't know he was gay, it was never mentioned. of course, all the signs were there, but we chose to be in denial or whatever. he was the leader of our youth group, and i worked with him quite a bit since i was the youth rep to the church board. it just blew me away - why him?!? he was such a good guy - why would GOD do such a thing to one of his servants, a man that devoted his life to Him? i think that was one of the major events that caused my agnosticism - if there is a god, why does he/she/it allow such horrible things to happen to good people?

i worked with indiana cares long ago, when they still existed, a separate entity from icaan...i worked with micheal breese in the stop aids project - we did "bar raids", going to gay bars in town with condom hats on our heads and smiles on our faces, passing out condoms, lube, gloves and safer sex info...it was a lot of fun, and it made the topic of safer sex easier to talk about...i wonder what micheal would say about us now if he were still alive? he'd be very disappointed, i think. all the in-fighting and crap - it disgusts me that this year's garage party raised 39,704.93 and only 4,738.45 ended up going to the cause. that's 8.4%!!! something is seriously wrong there...

i volunteered at parkview manor, a nursing facility for people with aids....no longer exists because the money isn't there for it...wonder where all those people went, how many of them are still around...*sigh*

more thoughts later...