But all I know is my beloved brother died of AIDS in 1995 and right now I'm feeling he just missed a cure. And it is making me very, very sad.
Yeah, my brother was a fagela, but please don't bash.
I just had to post this, and I'm sure the article is very interesting from a science/medical perspective.
Maybe I'll read the rest of it later.
I am so sorry you lost your brother. I have loved ones in my life who are gay and it never occurs to me to refer to them with epithets. I believe Christ died on the cross for me, you, your brother...all of us...and all of us are equally loved by Him.
My brother was born deaf and autistic because my mom caught German measels when she was pregnant. The vaccine was developed shortly after.
I also lost a friend to AIDS. A loss of a brother must be so hard. I am praying for your family.
800lb smoker with aids need insurance? No problem come 1/1/14.
Steve Schalchlin (born October 4, 1953) is an American songwriter, actor and musician. He is widely regarded as one of the first HIV/AIDS bloggers, beginning his in 1996 to keep family and friends updated on his failing health. When he responded well to a last-ditch effort in treatment by his doctor, he found out that his little “AIDS blog” had garnered a net following. A respected songwriter, Steve put his miraculous rebound into music that his partner, playwright Jim Brochu, turned into the critically acclaimed The Last Session.
In 2001, the New York Times profiled Schalchlin’s groundbreaking diary. The Times has also raved about Schalchlin and Brochu’s musicals, The Last Session and The Big Voice: God or Merman?
Schalchlin is cited in Shawn Decker’s 2006 Book My Pet Virus as an important historical AIDS blogger and an inspiration for Decker’s own AIDS blogging efforts.
Schalchlin volunteers time as a Board member of GLBT support organizations, Families United Against Hate and Youth Guardian Services. He marched with Soulforce on the historic first march to Jerry Falwell’s church. He was a featured performer at the PFLAG national conference and speaker at the March on Washington.
Steve will always be in debt to pop star George Michael for allowing him to play John Lennon’s IMAGINE piano in the front yard of Gabi and Alec Clayton in memory of their son, Bill, who committed suicide after a gay bashing (It was during that moment, playing an instrument of peace in a place of violence, that he conceived New World Waking!). Steve’s personal video blogs of the event:
I am sorry for your loss. In nearly every family there is a member with self-destructive habits ( crime, drugs, alcoholism, serial adultery, gambling...etc.) who are dearly loved but cause so much heartache for those who care about them.
Steve, born in 1953, grew up the son of a Baptist minister and piano-playing nurse from Arkansas. His beloved parents are trying very hard to figure out how to be proud of him, bless their little hearts. He draws his musical influences from the small town gospel church music he grew up with, along with the Top 40 radio of the late 60s/early 70s, blues he learned on the Texas Gulf Coast, protest folk and, later in life, musical theater.
http://newworldwaking.com/Steve_Schalchlin_Bio.html
Steve is grateful to Jim Brochu for keeping him alive, to Artistic Director of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, Kathleen McGuire for her vision, to Executive Director Teddy Witherington of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus for his creative mind and to the entire SFGMC for their emotional commitment and artistic excellence in developing this piece.
Steve’s early musical development was in the church where his mom played piano for the tiny country congregations. His piano lessons began when he was 7, but he wasn’t a particularly good student. He hated practicing his lessons. But he did love the church music he had grown up with and at the age of 10, after his family moved to Anaheim, California, he began playing for his dad’s congregation of 12.
Though he enjoyed playing in church, he thought the piano was basically for “squares” until the day he looked into Paul McCartney’s eyes on the night The Beatles sang “Hey Jude” on Ed Sullivan, a moment which also turned him gay. And he realized the piano could be cool, too.
His family’s move to a tiny backwoods town in east Texas on the Gulf Coast led Steve, in his high school years, to hanging out with the local blues and rock musicians. And though he couldn’t join a dance band (since Baptists don’t dance or drink), he found himself, instead, rocking out the little congregation each Sunday until his mother finally scolded him, “The church is not a rock group.”
It was the late 70s. One night, at the 7/11, he met an out gay boy his own age, fell tails over head in puppy love and told the band he was now an atheist, a piece of news he thought they could handle more easily than the truth. (He was right.)
Cliff wasn’t interested in falling in love (with Steve), so Steve moved to Denton, Texas just north of Dallas with group of Iranian engineering students who he had met working in the kitchen of a Mexican Restaurant after dropping out of the band.
Working as a night shift waiter at an IHOP, Steve met a transgender dishwasher who told him where he could find gay people in Dallas. This led him to being cast as a singing/dancing waiter at a “high class” dinner theater called the Gran’ Crystal Palace even though he knew nothing of musical theater, had never so much as seen a musical, and had no knowledge of jazz or New York or Gershwin or Sinatra or Sondheim.
To his surprise, he found that his storytelling songs were a perfect fit for theatre, and he began writing love duets and anthems for the stage shows. Unfortunately, the Gran’ Crystal Palace was on its last legs, so he accepted a job as musical director for a Vegas-bound Donny and Marie-style act, while writing songs and making demos with the other band members on the side.
Eventually, though, he landed back in New York, singing and playing down on Christopher Street where he played hustler bars and cabaret clubs, teaching himself the American Songbook along the way. He took particular pride in his interpretations of Stephen Sondheim and Jerry Herman.
A year-long gig on a cruise line out of New York led him to meet his now life partner, Jim Brochu, who had just lost his father to cancer. They collaborated on a few songs for a children’s show, A Wonderful Worldful of Christmas, which got published by Samuel French.
A job offer for Jim from Hollywood brought the couple out where Steve immediately jumped into the Los Angeles music scene by volunteering, and then quickly becoming managing director of the National Academy of Songwriters, a job that got him back into his first love, the art and craft of songwriting.
http://newworldwaking.com/Steve_Schalchlin_Bio.html
The problem is that your brother was encouraged to participate in a behavior that is deadly. And, it’s a behavior that still takes a decade or two off the lives of those that practice it.
It is a terrible thing for our culture to be encouraging people to engage in deadly behavior. The culture is killing these people. The behavior is killing these people.
It does such harm that it can only be classified as immoral.
I can understand how difficult it would be to read this. The sorrow you feel for losing a loved one never really goes away.
Sorry for your loss, but let’s all keep in mind, the number of innocent victims that male homosexuals infected with an uncountable number of diseases—many of their victims were young boys. Such a tiny group of deviants has done more to spread, the misery of a dozen diseases, death, and pain on millions of families. Male homosexuals are the modern day typhoid Larrys and have been an evil force in society since the days of Sodom and Gomorrah. Having worked in public health for a time, I have seen the lifestyle up close for what it is and I can offer little sympathy for the devil.