it prolly still wants to blame God and US for it's problems
Posted on 06/02/2013 1:52:17 PM PDT by jocon307
Steve Schalchlin would be the first to tell you he lives in a time of miracles, and about how hard that can be. In 1995, as his body wasted away from AIDS, he took the limited time in front of him as a challenge: he would write songs, make amends, fill his remaining days with life. And by the end, with his digestive system shut down, his figure skeletal, he was ready to die. Then he won a lottery for a new AIDS drug that had been rushed through the approval process. Almost overnight his health began to return, and with it, another, more open-ended, challenge: life...
Suddenly the future seemed like this long, empty road going toward the horizon, and I felt like, what am I gonna do with my life now?” Mr. Schalchlin, 59, said the other day, still marveling at the turn of events. “I had already accomplished all my goals that I had set for myself. And now I had this endless amount of time ahead of me, and I felt depressed.”
Mr. Schalchlin no longer worries about dying of AIDS. But he has other health problems, more often seen in people 10 or 20 years older: kidney damage, diabetes, chronic fatigue, thyroid disease, partial paralysis in one eye and general weakness that limits him throughout the day.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Such a disease gets its own "civil rights," many radical homo-groups tell us that the carrier of the virus has the innate, absolute "right" to keep it a complete secret from everyone, even to their "sexual partners." Homosexuals, who are by far the most prone group to contract HIV, DEMAND to donate blood to the general population, despite the proven risks.
The article mentions that some infected men under treatment are able to get their viral load below a detectible level. Tell me how THAT is going to get caught by blood supply screeners if an unscrupulous, vindictive queer wants to lie when donating?
Sorry if I lack more than a little compassion for this disease and for those who WILLFULLY contract and share it.
Thank you novemberslady!
It’s an interesting article, but as cherry said, it cries out for martyrdom. It downplays (as usual) the way these people contracted the disease, except for the women carriers mentioned, which was always drug use. I guess the author just assumes that the reader will know that the men contracted it through anonymous public bathroom sex from one or more nameless Johns. But it’s impolite or politically incorrect to say so.
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.
it prolly still wants to blame God and US for it's problems
If you want to blame someone for AIDS, I thought we had Reagan.
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.
In Kali exchanges they don't.
damn... i forgot about that, everything being Bush' fault now days and all
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
I meant in terms of needing God’s grace...and not judging others...and having humility.
That certainly doesn't fit the meme.....we are repeatedly told that homosexuals are born that way, have no control, genetically wired etc.
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.
<Hate the sin, love the sinner.
Back in the early 1990’s, I did pro bono estate planning for people with HIV/AIDS. All of my clients were married women who got infected from their husbands.
Early on, some people got AIDS from transfusions.
Not everyone who got AIDS was a ‘sinner.’
I took 17 units of blood from strangers in 2009 after I got hurt. It was a bad hurt.
I'll have to wait to find out what I got in that lottery.
/johnny
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